Daniel Dale Johnston (January 22, 1961 – c. September 11, 2019) was an American singer, musician and artist regarded as a significant figure in outsider, lo-fi, and alternative music scenes.

[2][3] Most of his work consisted of cassettes recorded alone in his home,[6] and his music was frequently cited for its "pure" and "childlike" qualities.

[8][2] He garnered a local following in the 1980s by passing out tapes of his music while working at a McDonald's in Dobie Center in Austin, Texas.

[9][10] His cult status was propelled when Nirvana's Kurt Cobain was seen wearing a T-shirt that featured the artpiece "Jeremiah the Innocent"[11] from Johnston's 1983 cassette album Hi, How Are You.

He began recording music in the late 1970s on a $59 Sanyo monaural boombox, singing and playing piano as well as the chord organ.

[13] Following graduation from Oak Glen High School, Johnston spent a few weeks at Abilene Christian University in West Texas before dropping out.

[9] When Johnston moved to Austin, Texas, he began to attract the attention of the local press and gained a following augmented in numbers by his habit of handing out tapes to people he met.

[26] McCarty supported the album with a North American tour,[27] and also issued an EP of additional Johnston material, Sorry Entertainer in 1995.

He refused to sign a multi-album deal with Elektra Records because Metallica was on the label's roster and he was convinced that they were Satanic and would hurt him,[19] also dropping his longtime manager, Jeff Tartakov, in the process.

[29] Ultimately he signed with new manager Tom Gimbel who subsequently negotiated a deal with Atlantic Records in February 1994 and that September released Fun, produced by Paul Leary of Butthole Surfers.

[31] After the record store closed in 2003, the building remained unoccupied until 2004 when the Mexican grill franchise Baja Fresh took ownership and decided that they would remove the wall that held the mural.

The first disc featured covers of his songs by artists including Tom Waits, Beck, TV on the Radio, Jad Fair, Eels, Bright Eyes, Calvin Johnson, Death Cab for Cutie, Sparklehorse, Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips and Starlight Mints, with the second disc featuring Johnston's original recordings of the songs.

[35] In 2005, Texas-based theater company Infernal Bridegroom Productions received a Multi-Arts Production/MAP Fund grant to work with Johnston to create a rock opera based on his music, titled Speeding Motorcycle.

[46] In 2009, it was announced that Matt Groening had chosen Johnston to perform at the edition of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he curated in May 2010, in Minehead, England.

[58][59] In July 2017, Johnston announced that he would be retiring from live performance and would embark on a final five-date tour that fall.

[60] Each stop on the tour featured Johnston backed by a group that had been influenced by his music: The Preservation All-Stars in New Orleans, The Districts and Modern Baseball in Philadelphia, Jeff Tweedy in Chicago, with Built to Spill for the final two dates in Vancouver, B.C.