Daniel Johnston Day

Yesterday I wore my Daniel Johnston t-shirt. No special reason; it was near the top of my t-shirt drawer. (T-shirt drawer #1, anyway. I have a lot of t-shirts.) I first learned of Daniel Johnston when I was a college DJ at Pittsburgh’s WRCT. The station had a recording of Daniel doing an impromptu over-the-phone version of his song “Speeding Motorcycle” with Yo La Tengo. Little did I know then that Yo La Tengo would become one of my all-time favorite bands, or that I would live in their home base of Hoboken, New Jersey.

Johnston would also become a favorite. He was indie music’s entry into the hallowed “fragile mad-genius songwriter” camp, popularized by Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett, and Roky Erickson. Johnston’s raw but heartbreakingly beautiful homemade cassettes from the early ’80s were being reissued on compact disc in the early ’90s, increasing his exposure.

The t-shirt—reproducing the cover of Daniel’s Hi, How Are You album—became iconic when Kurt Cobain (no slouch in the troubled-young-songwriter arena, himself) wore it to the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards.

I’ve seen Johnston perform live three times. The first was a very under-attended show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken in the mid-to-late-’90s. That’s when I bought the shirt, which I was wearing last night at Tierney’s Tavern in Montclair, New Jersey. A couple of bands on the bill had direct connections to New Jersey indie-rock legends the Feelies, and 3 of the 5 Feelies were in attendance.

One of them was percussionist Dave Weckerman. When my friend Jeff and I went to see R.E.M. at Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum in 1986, the Feelies were the opening act. (R.E.M.’s Peter Buck had produced the Feelies’ recent “comeback” album.) Impressionable high-schoolers that we were, Jeff and I were pleasantly freaked out that the Feelies had a drummer, and then another guy who sat on the ground and was also sort of a drummer. That was Weckerman. (I also bought a t-shirt that night.)

Weckerman was called up on-stage at Tierney’s, and lo and behold, he was wearing a Daniel Johnston t-shirt.

Struck me as coincidental, but I wasn’t shocked. In 2008, I had a brief chat with Weckerman at Maxwell’s, as the reunited Feelies were warming up for a big Fourth-of-July show in Manhattan. He was wearing the Johnston shirt, which sparked our conversation. Totally nice guy.

Between bands, I was wandering around Tierney’s, when a random guy said, “Nice shirt.” OK, OK, joke’s on me, I’m wearing the same shirt as Weckerman, I’m used to it, people tease me at work when I’m coincidentally wearing a similar outfit as my friend Bob. But this guy wasn’t giving me a hard time; he genuinely appreciated the shirt because his brother directed the superb 2005 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. (Which you should totally see if you haven’t. It’s a poignant and fascinating story. Now that I think of it, a previous time I was wearing the shirt, a guy on the street in Hoboken started talking to me, mentioning that he appears in a scene in the movie, filmed in the late, great Hoboken record store Pier Platters.)

Huh. Small world. And this Tierney’s patron was another nice guy. (His brother is working on a documentary of boxer Chuck Wepner, the “Bayonne Bleeder.” Can’t wait to see it.)

I excused myself to walk up to the bar for another Yuengling. Bartender took one look at me and asked, “Did Daniel Johnston die today or something?”

No, sir, he did not. In fact, I like to think that maybe, somewhere out in Texas, he was feeling just a little more alive.