John Doe & Exene Cervenka

JOHN DOE: John Doe was born in 1977 when he arrived in Los Angeles. His previous life in Tennessee, Wisconsin & Baltimore was a great & fertile time but new music and social changes led him to events that created a life in art. He graduated from Antioch College in Baltimore in 1975, worked as a roofer, aluminum siding mechanic, and ran a poetry reading series. Ms. Meyers was his landlord in the rural black community of Simpsonville , MD.

John met Exene Cervenka at the Venice poetry workshop Nov 1976 and he started working with Billy Zoom around the same time. When DJ Bonebrake joined X in mid-1977 the line up was complete. They released six studio records, five or six singles and one live record from 1978-1993. Five of X’s records have been re-issued along with two compilations. The Unheard Music documents their lives and progress as a band from 1980-83. In 2009 the film was included in the Sundance UCLA Archive of greatest films of all time. They appeared several times on American Bandstand, Solid Gold and David Letterman. As one of the last original punk rock bands standing, they continue to tour. The day that X played a free noontime concert in Fullerton, CA, they caused Orange County’s greatest high school truancy rate to date.

In 1988 John started a family and lived in the Tehachapi Mountains, near the “Grapevine” of Highway 5, which separates southern and central California. He has recorded several solo records w/ numerous renowned singers and players, more recently including Patty Griffin, Dan Auerbach, Aimee Mann, Don Was, Kathleen Edwards and Greg Liesz. He has appeared in over 50 films and television productions, with some of his most notable roles in Road House, Georgia, Roadside Prophets, Great Balls of Fire, Pure Country and Roswell. He continues to act these days but more sporadically as his touring schedule has become more demanding.

Other musical side projects include work with the Knitters, Jill Sobule and The Sadies. He continues to write poetry and has even taught workshops from time to time.

EXENE CERVENKA: A true renaissance woman, Exene is a singer, artist and poet whose work traverses virtually every aspect of those disciplines. She is known for her work as singer for the legendary punk band X as well as The Knitters and The Original Sinners.

Best known as the singer for X, one of the leaders of the late-’70s/early-’80s California punk explosion, Exene Cervenka has also issued solo albums, launched several side bands, and penned books. Although Cervenka has been closely associated with California for a long time, she is not originally from the West Coast. Born on February 1, 1956, in Chicago, Christine Cervenka grew up primarily in Tallahassee, FL, before relocating to Santa Monica, CA, during the summer of 1976. Through a local poetry workshop, Cervenka met John Doe, and the seeds of what would eventually become X were planted.

With Cervenka changing the spelling of her first name to Exene, the group led the Hollywood punk movement, but there was much more to their sound than the average punk band — as country, rockabilly, and Exene‘s poetic lyrics set them apart from the pack. A string of classic (yet criminally overlooked) releases followed — 1980’s Los Angeles, 1981’s Wild Gift, 1982’s Under the Big Black Sun, and 1983’s More Fun in the New World — during which time Cervenka and Doe were married. In addition to her X duties, Cervenka appeared as part of the country spin off the Knitters (1985’s Poor Little Critter on the Road), and issued (also in 1985) a poetry collaboration with Wanda Coleman entitled Twin Sisters. But as the ’80s wore on, Cervenka and Doe’s marriage would collapse, as did X after Zoom’s exit and a few spotty albums. With X winding down, Cervenka launched a solo career, resulting in 1989’s Old Wives’ Tales and 1990’s Running Sacred.

Cervenka has issued several books, including the titles -Virtual Unreality (through Henry Rollins’ 2.13.61 publishing company), -A Beer on Every Page, and -Just Another War, the latter of which was a collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-nominated photojournalist Kenneth Jarecke, in which Exene supplied commentary to Jarecke’s photos of the Gulf War. The Knitters resurfaced in 2005 with The Modern Sounds of the Knitters, and the following year Cervenka released the solo album Sev7en.