Paid to do therapy onstage
Forget everything you know about querulous couples who make music together. Amanda Sudano-Ramirez and Abner Ramirez, who record as Johnnyswim, say the bittersweet songs on their debut album, “Diamonds,” which came out last year, only make their marriage sweeter. Ramirez and Sudano-Ramirez, daughter of the late disco queen Donna Summer, spoke to us from their home in Los Angeles. Johnnyswim performs Tuesday, June 16, at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco.
Q: There’s a lot of complicated, sad stuff on your album, but you don’t seem like complicated, sad people. Where does the music stop and reality begin?
Abner: We jokingly but honestly say we write breakup songs because it’s good for our marriage. To be this happy couple onstage, we have to be able to walk through the hardest parts of our lives together.
Amanda: A lot of these songs came after we both lost a parent. There was a lot of change and confusion, but not in our relationship.
Q: At one point you said you had to write each song on this album, as if it wasn’t a choice.
Abner: This is the worst analogy ever, but I feel like it’s vomiting. You don’t want to, but once it’s out you feel better. We had to do it.
Q: How much are you saving on monthly therapy sessions? Amanda: So much money. We get paid now for our therapy.
Q: What’s it like waking up with someone prettier than you?
Abner: Amanda, what does it feel like?
Amanda: It’s really annoying. Q: The most impressive part of your whole story is you wooed
her through MySpace.
Abner: Exactly. The best part is, I saw her across the room and I said, “That’s the girl I’m going to marry.” The only problem is, I accidentally said it out loud and I was sitting next to a girl I was dating at the time. Q: When you started out, was there pressure on Amanda to do a certain thing, being the daughter of Donna Summer? Amanda: For sure. They would look at me and say, “You need to do electronic dance stuff.” For both us, even if it was part of what we loved to do, it wasn’t what we were trying to be. There was a sigh of relief when we both realized we got pressured in the wrong ways. Abner: We weren’t trying to be different. We weren’t trying to find hits. We were trying to be our most true selves on this record.