Daniel Johnston, enigmatic singersongwriter with bittersweet touch, dies

Daniel Johnston, a singer-songwriter and outsider artist who battled mental-health issues while recording hundreds of humorous, bittersweet songs that made him a near-mythical figure in indie rock, died Sept. 11 at his home in Waller, Texas, a farming town outside Houston. He was 58.

With a high-pitched voice and mild lisp, Johnston bared his soul in folksy songs about unrequited love, existential dread, his affection for the Beatles and the thrills of a speeding motorcycle. Emerging on Austin’s underground music scene in the mid1980s, he used a $59 Sanyo boombox to record himself on acoustic guitar, organ and piano, and released cassette tapes decorated with his own ink and marker artwork.

His music was unabashedly simple and straightforward - “the amazing thing is half these songs are the same three chords,” Built to Spill musician Doug Martsch once said - but drew a cult following, notably after Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was photographed in a T-shirt bearing the cover of Johnston’s album “Hi, How Are You” (1983).