John Doe Gives His Album a Name

John Doe is one of modern music’s most authentic & enduring songwriters. A keystone of the legendary LA punk rock band X, Doe has also cultivated his own career as a solo artist, diving head-first into alt country, folk, and gut-wrenching rock’n'roll.

His latest record Keeper was recorded with hit-making producer/mixer Dave Way and features performances from Patty Griffin, Don Was, Smokey Hormel and Steve Berlin along with Cindy Wasserman and Jill Sobule.

This is a record by a veteran artist who has come back from the brink with his arms full of fast and beautiful songs. The LP version includes the additional bonus song “101%.”

For those not familiar here’s a potted history of this artist. John Doe is an American singer, songwriter, actor, poet and bass player. Doe founded the much-praised L.A. punk band X, of which he is still an active member. His musical performances and compositions span the rock, country and folk music genres. As an actor, he has dozens of television appearances and several movies to his credit, including the role of Jeff Parker in the television series Roswell.

In addition to X, Doe performs with the country-folk-punk band The Knitters and has released records as a solo artist.

In the 1989 biopic Great Balls of Fire!, Doe played Jerry Lee Lewis’s cousin-turned-father-in-law J. W. Brown. He starred in the 1992 film Roadside Prophets and in the 1998 short Lone Greasers. Other movie acting credits include Road House, Vanishing Point, Salvador, Boogie Nights, The Specials, The Good Girl, Gypsy 83 and Pure Country. As a musician with X, Doe has two feature-length concert films, several music videos, and an extended performance-and-interview sequence in The Decline of Western Civilization, Penelope Spheeris’s seminal documentary about the early-1980s L.A. punk scene.

Along with co-writer Exene Cervenka, Doe composed most of the songs recorded by X. Wild Gift, an album from that band’s heyday, was named “Record of the Year” by Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. With Dave Alvin, he co-wrote two of the songs on the Blasters’ 1984 album Hard Line, “Just Another Sunday” and “Little Honey”. He also wrote “Cyrano de Berger’s Back” for the Flesh Eaters LP A Minute to Pray, a Second To Die.