Artist Uncovered: Johnnie Bailey
Welcome to the second edition of Artist Uncovered, the series where I, Lofi Cody, seek to uncover the deep lore behind the worlds greatest instrumental, lofi, and downtempo producers.
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Johnnie Bailey (real name: Johnnie Bailey) is a Japan based multi-instrumentalist and producer originally from Chicago in the United States. Johnnie has a distinct minimalist approach to music production using improvisation and looping on his OP-1 to compose super chill and catchy melodies. Johnnie Bailey has a new album coming out February 28th with Humble Beats Records and I thought this would be a great time to discover the man behind the myth.
Q: Normally my first question is “what’s the story behind your artist name” but, unless I’ve been duped, your artist name is just your real name? Any insight as to why you were named Johnnie?
Johnnie Bailey: It’s a good question! I’m actually a 3rd, my grandfather passed before I was born but my dad and my son are both “Johnnie” as well. Originally I had wanted to come up with a cool producer name (my go to example is Bad Snacks) but my whole life people generally have referred to me by my first and last name. To many I’m not “Johnnie” I’m “Johnnie Bailey” so I decided to stay with it for my artist name and now it’s too late to change.
Q: How did you first get into making music?
Johnnie Bailey: I have a background in music performance, I started drums at 9, piano at 12 and vocals around 14. I grew up making music in church and had a lot of opportunity for stage time. I’m talking like, maybe 8-12 hours a week on drums and 2-6 hours a week on piano on stage. As far as music production is concerned though I started in 2018. I had always been interested in producing since I was a teenager but it’s super different from performing and I was never able to crack it until then. A friend of mine was moving to Japan and it all fell through so after living with my family for 3 months he ended up moving back to the states. I was pretty torn up over it and threw myself into learning music production and here we are.
Q: What drew you to lo-fi / chill music?
Johnnie Bailey: I remember the first time I heard “chill hop” from YouTube. I was living here in Japan and a friend suggested putting it on while we were working together at my apartment and I was in love. It may surprise people but I actually am a pretty intense person and I get pretty angry relatively often, I often listen to chill music/lofi as a way to maintain my calm.
Q: It doesn’t seem like you’ve got sucked into the world of VGM covers yet, but which game soundtrack is your favourite as a listener?
Johnnie Bailey: I actually started learning piano so I could play final fantasy covers (deep Johnnie cut). I love Final Fantasy VI, VII, really anything by Nobuo Uematsu. But I’m also a big fan of the Halo and Zelda soundtracks. As a side note if anyone makes some chill Spyro reignited beats I’ll happily give money to them.
Q: Do you have any specific goals for your main Johnnie Bailey profile this year?
Johnnie Bailey: I’ve been releasing music mainly on my own for the last 6 years and this year I’m hoping will be a year of collaboration! Meeting you and others in this whole chill music community has really inspired me.
Q: Do you have any music goals in general outside of the Johnnie Bailey moniker?
Johnnie Bailey: I have a side project called The Fox And The Girl. I work closely with an animator (she also does all my cover art) and we make chill, 1hr long videos that we put on YouTube themed around this girl with red hair and a fox. When they’re in a more fantastical/past setting I make more bardcore tracks and when we’re in a more sci-fi/future setting I make synthwave. We’re hoping to do 3-4 videos this year.
Q: Do you have any big releases coming up this year that you’d like to tell us about?
Johnnie Bailey: Here Be Dragons drops on 2/28 (presave here) with HumbleBeats. I’m super excited for this one. I also have a collab project Yamanote Line, Vol. 2 coming out in the spring sometime. I like to make music under ambient sound or talking, this album is the follow up to Yamanote Line, Vol. 1 (duh) where I sampled ambient sound from famous Tokyo train stations and we’ve got chill beats under them. Vol 1. was all me but 2 is featuring 5 artists other than myself. For those who like ASMR I work with an ASMRtist named Goodnight Moon ASMR and we’ll be releasing 2 albums this autumn and winter based on some of her themed videos as well.