Borrowing Your Grandma's Lincoln Towncar

The Leader of the Freak World

The Pet Store that Released the Burmese Pythons

Busy Bird Bath

I recorded this cover for a video. Good practice for reharmonization.

Wade in the Digital Waters

Melodies emerging out of the dense feedback cloud until a long section of counterpoint takes over.

Breaker, Breaker, This Is King Cobra

One of the first tracks I ever recorded. Kept it much simpler back in the day. Lots of tonal and volume shifts. Is it really one song?

She Was Always Jealous of Kansas Earthquakes

A wandering track with lots of drum fills.

Better Call the Locksmith Again

Here we have the archetypal hero, maybe having snarfed a few Amanita muscaria perhaps not, going on their epic quest to save the princess who never need saving all along. Super Mario Brothers meets a neo-Western.

The Princess Doesn't Need Your Saving

Midway through your hike the fog descends on the river bottom where you hiking on the edge of the Wasatch Range. The once panoramic views dissolve. You navigate through the dense fog of a mighty cottonwood forest hoping to return to your car by nightfall.

The Fog Clings to the Cottonwood Bottoms

Ambling along kind of surveying the scene. Feeling like the excitement of starting a journey just begins to fade away as the train crawls through the suburbs.

And That's How the Trains Run on Time

Perhaps it sounds like a old timey clockmakers workshop coming to life, but then the day turns rough and they need to go out for pie a la mode.

A Pie a la Mode Kind of Day

Mixing acoustic guitar with Midi drums, keys and lead synths. Dynamics lead from bouncy triumphant leads to slightly moodier territory. Reminds me of a Nebraska road with a lovely sunflower field and tourists dangerously parking alongside it.

Sunflower Field Photo Op

Usually I can't get enough of add new bridges and breakdowns to songs. This one I tried a kind of bold minimalism and stuck with a single saucy riff.

Ad Nauseum

Lots of ringing melodies layered over one another. The vibe drenched in exoticism kind of crept up on me until it had taken over and I figured just to roll with it.

Right After The Morning Cup of Coffee

Deep in the Lincoln, NE suburbs I was waiting for my car to be serviced. To kill time, I walked out and found a massive suburban home construction project paving over the very farmland locals were so proud to say that their ancestors had broken with ox and plow. Whatever might have been special about the place, if anything, would soon be gone...

Paving Over Another Farm

Starts of a little jumbled, but then finds its footing when the solo drum loop kicks in. Layered and shifting, it exits this jumbled phase to turn into the backing track for a the journey of an antihero. Inspired by all the adults from my post-industrial hometown who had to rely on a bike as their only transportation.

Back Alley Biker

When your planning on getting outside and a light rain starts. For a while you wait around hoping the sun will reemerge. As the day goes on the rain gets heavy and more persistent. Not a day for hiking but for making music.

When Melancholy Slowly Washes Over the Room

A simple, driving straightforward pop/rock song with some electronic twists. A song for getting down to business. Sometimes you've woking up late, perhaps didn't make the best decisions the night before and all that's in the cupboard is some microwave ramen noodles.

9am Bowl of Microwave Ramen

So many days when living in Miami I waited for a bus, never knowing when or if it would arrived. The longer I waited, the larger a crowd would amass. This group of strangers created a multi-lingual chorus all expressing a single idea: "How could such a rich city, a famous/notorious global city, dare to have such a miserable public transit system?"

Collective Gripe Sesh at the Bus Stop

The feeling of wandering around Vegas with the Buffet of Buffets pass, a 24 hour extravaganza where you can eat as many buffets as your constitution can handle. Not one for gambling or binge drinking, buffets are my Vegas indulgence. Definitely upgrade the pass for the Bacchanal, the best buffet I could image. Watch folks stack crab legs to the ceiling. Never once has our exploitation of the ocean been so visually obvious!

The Buffet of Buffets

The open drum beat promises a different track. Then we have a mixture of light pop with some hopefully catchy melodies before dipping into a long minor bridge. Not going to draw too much attention away from the good book you're reading.

You're Haughty, You're Naughty

As a member of Bachelor Nation, you have to be wondering when someone will first question if someone is there for the "right reasons". Whether to try to poison the well for your rivals or much rarer, a genuine concern for the shows lead, there must be a drinking game every time someone questions if contestants "are you there for the right reasons?"

Are You There For the Right Reasons?

Hammering piano, a big roomy bass, simple drums and all kinds of melodies floating around, it has the slight cacophony of a party trying to get started.
This is my 100th track. Hopefully I have the chance to chance 100 more, or better yet hundreds or more, still chasing the one that crystalizes my style into the sound for which I've been searching all along

Ringing In the New Century

This is a cover of "Run Indian Run" by Buddy Red Bow, sung by me, Johnny Lofenstein, a non-Native songwriter. Jarring no doubt as the person singing the song inevitably changes it meaning. I made the questionable decision of singing it from the original perspective of a Native person, as its written and not changing it to the colonizer's perspective. Purposefully fraught and a bit awkward to show another side of homesteading history. We cannot deny that our identity often shapes how we view history. Therefore, why hope for one all-knowing objectivist account? Instead, we need to amass diverse voice and perspectives and sort out the truth from these varied accounts.

Buddy Red Bow- Run Indian Run(Cover)

I had almost forgotten about this amazing Johnny Cash song until I stumbled upon the cover version by Floyd Red Crow Westerman, an indigenous singer, songwriter and actor. I will add one of his songs on here later. I appreciate the sweep of the song from the boarding schools to the stolen land. If I remember right, Johnny Cash believe he had Native ancestry when he created the album that featured this song. Though it didn't turn out to be the case, the deep empathy he infuses this song with is amazing. The cultural genocide described here hangs deeply to the idea of empty West that the government could "give away to homesteaders.

Johnny Cash-Drums (Cover)

The song title comes from Oglala Lakota author and activist Vine Deloria Jr.'s book,  Custer Died For Your Sins, which was published the same years as the Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island, before it became a NPS sites and prison tourist spectacle. 
Much like the Plains of Nebrasky-O, this song makes the history of the Homestead Act and settler colonial relevant to today. Custer's death and defeat at Little Bighorn by the Lakota and other Native people. It offers a kind of alternate history. The fact that we still think of this battle shows its relevance. What we forget is that the U.S. had dedicated soldiers whose only job was to hunt down Native people. At the same time, settler colonists homesteaders occupied land and exhausted resources that Native people depended on. Yet, despite this double invasion, Native people persisted. The U.S. did not achieve though boarding schools its "Kill the Indian to Save the Man" policy. Vine Deloria Jr. and Floyd Red Crow Westerman remained as dissenting voices to remind all of the history of Little Bighorn and the consistent fight by Native people for land, resources and cultural sovereignty.

Floyd Red Crow Westerman - Custer Died For Your Sins (Cover)

Sounds like I just found a bunch of random loops and stuck them together, but in fact as always I played all the instruments. More like an experimental blend of styles all tied together in the key of C. Probably happened over multiple days and instead of focusing on one or two of the best parts, I decided to not let anything on the cutting room floor.

Making a Collage Off His Meds

An echoing guitar bounces me back to my hometown many years ago and a small diner where my friends would smoke cigarettes and I would eat butter burgers and spin records on their old jukebox.

I Can Still Taste Their Butter Burgers

Finally the spring is set to arrive. The first shoots emerge from the melting snow. Soon it will be stinging nettle season, when this otherwise wicked plant because harvestable. A gift of a wild green that much like all that remains truly seasonal, something to appreciate while it lasts.

Stinging Nettle Season

The outcome of lots of early morning lounging around listening to dancehall playlists. Have a lot of work to get getting the vibe as well as playing around with heavy effects on the mix.

North Fork of the Candy River

Heard You From a Mile Away

Had all kind of riffs that as per usual, I couldn't edit out. First experiment with a toy foldable digital drum set that I got in the mail yesterday. Just like the track itself, the title is pure excess.

Posthemous Player of Pre-Impressionist Portraiture

A long jam like many of the Jan Fonk track, complied out of a lot of idea by these pure rascals. Lots of time for guitar solos and different flavors of the rockitude that had them banned in many a Lewis County township.

Please, Just Point Me to the Exit

Jan Fonk and the Lewis County Loverboys doing what they do best, playing Croc Roc. Lots of room for solos and guitar leads while never trying to lose the grove that keeps the feet tapping on a Saturday night in Chehalis.

Please, Just Help Me Find the Exit

The final track to the Jan Fonk and the Lewis County Loverboys Play Croc Roc album. As with any good Croc Roc sound adventure there is a lot of guitar soloing, without losing the beat and vibe that keeps thise Crocs tapping

Please, Just Point Me to the Exits

All over the map here for Jan Fonk and the Lewis County Loverboys, going on the kind of explorations of varying dynamics and instrumentation that the dive bars of 1970s Chehalis never imagined.

Why You Can't Ever Find a Good Pineapple

Johnny's Loaf & Stein was a restaurant in the mall in the town where I grew up. It always seemed to attract a cast of real characters. I imagine these songs playing as background music there. 
Having moved recently from the Great Plains to the Cascades and now to Lower Michigan, I try to release a track every few weeks of my own brand of instrumental music that mixes a hefty dose of 60's pop and rock with accents of blues, jazz and classical music.
I hope listeners will indulge me and take the attitude towards my music as listening to a crazed radio that will randomly change stations and never linger too long a single musical style.
I don't use samples or premade loops. I figure if it doesn't come from me it's not really my song.
Contact me at johnnylofenstein@gmail.com.
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