Johnston art tapped for mental health drive
Texas singer-songwriter and artist Daniel Johnston died in September, but his legacy survives in a novel way.
It’s the wellspring for the Hi, How Are You Project, a recently launched initiative for Mental Health Awareness Month. Musicians including Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Ryan Bingham, Sharon Van Etten, Adrian Quesada of the band Black Pumas and Britt Daniel of Spoon have all recorded messages using the phrase “Because mental health matters, I pledge to ask others, ‘Hi, how are you?’ ” The goal is to reach 100,000 pledges at hihowareyou.org, which will unlock a grant from the American Campus Communities Foundation.
The phrase became iconic in Austin in the 1980s and 1990s after Johnston made a cassette in 1983 with that phrase as the title, accompanied by his drawing of a froglike creature known as Jeremiah the Innocent. Johnston painted a mural of the image on the side of Austin’s Sound Exchange building in 1993.
A beloved cult figure whose renown grew in the 2000s, Johnston struggled with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia until his death of a heart attack in 2019. His family moved to Texas from West Virginia and settled in Waller. He worked at Astroworld briefly before moving to Austin, where he became a beloved independent artist.
Though he wrote hundreds of songs and made thousands of pieces of art, the phrase and frog are almost like avatars for Johnston — whose work often exhibited a lovable innocence and desire for connection that Johnston didn’t always find in the world.
Tom Gimbel, president of Austin City Limits Enterprises and the general manager of the TV series “Austin City Limits,” who served for a time as Johnston’s manager, is overseeing the project.
“I’m embarrassed to say I managed him for 25 years before really looking at that mural and seeing it the way he meant it,” Gimbel says. “This message of friendliness, of inclusion. A message of community. So many people would walk by it in Austin day after day without taking the time to think about what he was really saying.
“He was constantly documenting what he was experiencing in a very intelligent and profound way. We’re just starting to catch up to what he was trying to say. And I think his music is valuable in a time like this. It’s an incredible gift he left the world.”
Gimbel wanted to do something in the Austin community connected to mental health. He says his “partner in life and work,” Courtney Blanton, thought Johnston and his iconic image would be “the perfect conversation starter. And she was right: That concept resonated with people. It’s as simple as it is powerful.”
He says he’s seen great progress made in the way people deal with mental illness: diagnosis has increased, and families are becoming more comfortable talking about it.
But he also says half of suicides are committed by people without a previous clinical diagnosis of depression or anxiety. “That means someone has been living with this in a private situation. So our hope is to get people to reach out to talk and bring it to the surface where it can be addressed.”
The launch was timed for Mental Health Awareness Month even before much of the country went into lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic. With illness and unemployment rampant, and isolation as well, Gimbel sees a potential looming mental health disaster.
“We already had a crisis,” he says. “We still need to treat mental health the same as physical health. We’re more connected electronically, but we’re still somewhat disconnected from one another. An Instagram like may give a drip of satisfaction, but it’s not a true human connection. So this May could be the most important Mental Health Awareness Month of our lifetimes.”
He also hopes the work the organization is doing will encourage better practices beyond May.
“I get it, from a media perspective we give intense focus to one thing at a time,” he says. “But this shouldn’t stop in May. Our mental and physical well-being is our life. It should be 365 days a year. It should be part of who we are as creatures: to be healthy and thrive.”
As for “Austin City Limits,” Gimbel has seen his work change over the past two months as he ponders an ACL with a smaller or nonexistent audience.
“We’re hoping to get folks back in the studio even in a limited way,” he says. “The magic of the show is bringing audience and artist together and turning on the cameras and getting out of the way.”