Promise Land Blues

JOHNNY ROMEO

Promise Land Blues 2018

acrylic and oil on canvas

1530 x 1530 mm

There has always been an air of the surreal to Johnny Romeo’s Neo-Expressionist
Pop works. Promise Land Blues, however, sees the artist fully take the plunge down the
surrealist rabbit-hole to create a Technicolour acid trip that masterfully mashes the
Grateful Dead and Johnny Cash with Pop slickness and a gleeful flair for the absurd.
In the painting, Romeo appropriates The Grateful Dead’s legendary skull logo, taken
from their 1976 live double album ‘Steal Your Face’ and deftly replaces the lightening
in the skull with a confectionary-coloured portrait of Johnny Cash. The delightful
visual pun, which literally ‘steals’ Cash’s face, acknowledges the connection between
the country star and the Grateful Dead, who famously covered Cash’s track ‘Big River’
as part of their ‘Steal Your Face’ live set. With his penchant for boisterous wordplay
in full swing, Romeo transforms the word assemblage ‘Big River’ into ‘Big Quiver’,
a tongue-in-cheek nod to the shaky, weathered, baritone that made Cash one of
the most distinctive voices in music. The sugar-coated palette and playfulness with
which Romeo depicts ‘The Man In Black’ belies the underlying sense of melancholy
etched on to the singer’s expression, which becomes apparent when one considers
the parallels created between Cash and alternative rock crooner Jeff Buckley.
While never explicitly named, ‘Big River’ has long been considered a quintessential
‘geography song’ dedicated to one of the most iconic locations in American culture,
the Mississippi River. The river holds a sombre note for Buckley, who was found dead
after drowning in Wolf River Harbor, a water channel off the Mississippi River. Johnny
Romeo subtly pays tribute to Buckley through the arrangement of Cash’s head,
which floats within the skull motif as if drifting down a deathly river. Entitled Promise
Land Blues, the work pays homage to the influence of 50’s rock icon Chuck Berry,
whose song ‘Promised Land’ was covered by The Grateful Dead on ‘Steal Your Face’.
Considered one of the founding fathers of rock’n’roll, Berry’s fusion of rhythm and
blues with guitar solos and teenage rebellion left an indelible mark on the musical
landscape. This is reflected in the ‘blues of the title’, which also tips its hat to one
of Cash’s classic numbers ‘Folsom Prison Blues’. Romeo caps off the painting on a
cheekily speculative note that recalls a lyric from Oasis’ ‘Who Feels Love’, envisioning
Promise Land Blues as an imaginary Johnny Cash song in which the singer questions
whether the Mississippi River is the Promised Land of which people have spoken.