Will Johnson (born March 23, 1971)[1] is an American musician, singer-songwriter, author and painter who was the lead singer of the bands Centro-matic and South San Gabriel.
Called "one of the most prolific artists in American indie rock",[2] Johnson has also released solo records, and is a member of the bands Monsters of Folk, New Multitudes and Overseas, and has also performed as part of the Undertow Orchestra.
After moving to Killeen, Texas, from Kennett, Missouri, he was a founding member and drummer for the jangle-rock band The Benjamins.
While there, Johnson played in bands such as Polyester, Salt Lick, The Dooms UK, and was a founding member of Baboon.
On Super Bowl Sunday 1991, Johnson joined Peter Schmidt and Clark Vogeler to form the band Melt, which changed its name to Funland in 1992.
A handful of 7-inch releases followed, and Johnson began playing live under the Centro-matic moniker in March 1996 as a solo performance with electric guitar and vocals.
Johnson played all the instruments except violin (Scott Danbom) and cello (Lindsay Romig), with a longtime friend Matt Pence engineering the lo-fi record.
In February 1997, Johnson started performing full-band Centro-matic shows with Mark Hedman on bass guitar and Pence on drums.
It resulted from Centro-matic wanting to collaborate with and include other musicians while experimenting with a more spacious and atmospheric approach to writing and recording.
[1] Johnson has performed as part of the Undertow Orchestra with David Bazan, Vic Chesnutt, and Mark Eitzel.
Johnson said Chesnutt was adamant that the shows not feature any solo performances, with the members working to play each other's songs as backing musicians.
[4][5] From 2009 to 2012, Johnson collaborated with Jay Farrar, Jim James, and Anders Parker on the Woody Guthrie archive project New Multitudes.