Johnny Dowd played at Lucky Penny on June 10, 2023

Over the last thirty years, Dowd has been creating records that defy trends, a unique catalog of work that stands head and shoulders above many of his lauded contemporaries.

Now in his seventieth year on God’s good earth, Dowd has lost none of the vigor, enthusiasm, and attitude that has seen him forge his position as one of America’s most inquisitive artistic minds, a musical explorer who has charted expeditions to genre-defying destinations that, at their heart, question, challenge, and dissect notions of the American Dream.

Born in Ft. Worth, Texas, in 1948 and raised in Oklahoma, he attended high school in Memphis, crossed the pond to serve in the U.S. Army and then headed to California before landing in Ithaca, New York. At some point in these varied travels he picked up a guitar and never put it back down again.

As Johnny says, “my childhood was normal as was my adulthood, at some point i learned to play guitar, the future is uncertain.”