Johnny Mullenax’s ‘Funky Country Bluegrass’
Photo: Brian Harrington | Western AF
Written By: Meredith Lawrence
Borrowing from many and beholden to none, Johnny Mullenax plays a raucous musical smorgasbord he calls “funky country bluegrass.” Though it’s rare for an Americana/country band lead singer also to play lead electric guitar, for the Tulsa, Oklahoma native, splicing lightning-fast solos in between lyric lines appears to be second nature. Mullenax is singularly unconcerned with meeting the expectations of any one descriptor precisely. Instead, with a calculated jam-session ethos, he blends rowdy energy and clever lyrics into a captivating romp.
Photo: Mike Vanata | Western AF
“We don't want to go too off the rails, obviously,” Mullenax says. “Being a musician is knowing when you do go off the rails and start jamming, knowing when to bring it back on the track.”
Mullenax draws a crucial distinction between being a musician and simply making musical notes: “There's 12 notes in music, in all of fucking music — western music,” he says. “And a guitar player plays guitar or whatever, but a fucking musician understands how all of it works.”
Not surprisingly, Mullenax had high standards for whom he wanted to make music with. “Everybody in the band, they're fucking musicians. They know how it works; they know how music works. So it's easier to communicate, more efficient…we've never had a rehearsal or anything,” he says (although they did rehearse once, maybe).
That heady blend of bravado and fluidity is readily apparent on Mullenax’s first EP, 2023’s This Joint’s For You. Just three songs long, it’s a tour-de force display of funky country bluegrass. The album opens with “Used to Work for A Living” an anti-capitalist anthem about ennui, which Mullenax wrote after quitting the job he had building fences during the pandemic to go back to music full time. “Don’t work for your money/ don’t work for your pay / go find something that you can hold onto and throw the rest away,” Mullenax sings through the smoky front porch hang session, reminding the listener to find time for joy.
Mullenax grew up in a musical household in Tulsa. His mother played in rock band Eric and the Blasters, and kept many musical instruments around the house. Watching his mother and cousins play in bands, Mullenax wanted to be like them (or as he puts it, “if you can't hang then nobody wants to play with you”). After an ill-fated short stint with piano lessons – and his first appearance on stage at age 5 playing “The Star Spangled Banner” at the annual Fourth of July festival with his uncle’s band — Mullenax gravitated to the guitar. Almost as soon as he learned to strum, he was writing songs, too, although it wasn’t until he wrote “Used to Work for a Living” that he got serious about songwriting.
Photo: Ryan Cass
“I didn't play music to be a songwriter. I wasn't like ‘I just got to get these words out of me, I know I'm a wee child, but I have emotions,’” he quips of his childhood fascination with music (which included an obsession with the Ramones from an early age). “It was more like ‘wow, this is fun, and you can make your own songs.’”
By age 12, Mullenax was practicing an estimated eight hours a day trying to get good enough to keep up. As he improved, he played with his mom and cousins occasionally. For high school, Mullenax attended the Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences, which taught him music theory, as well. Well into his 20s, Mullenax played guitar in other bands, before forming his own Johnny Mullenax Band.
“I've always had a deep feeling that music was just something that I was supposed to do,” he says.
In addition to Mullenax’s deep music theory grounding, his music stands out because of its vast range. His second EP, 2024’s Friend Like You, is four songs long, and none sounds like the last. The album starts with the sweet, banjo and fiddle-driven song-of-summer-esque title track. It’s easy to imagine cruising around in soft summer twilight blasting “Friend Like You” with the windows down and singing along with friends. Next, on “Sitting on Top of the World,” Mullenax’s fast picking drives a frenetic, chugging breakup song, in which he’s actually not sorry his girl’s gone. Slowing down again for “Pining,” Mullenax allows himself a little sadness and a lot of bluesy swoon.
“It is hard as fuck; it’s almost laughable how we get to live these lifestyles that are just insane, and travel all the time and have a fucking ball”
The album ends with a funky, bluegrass old-time ballad, “Desha County.” Mullenax wrote the song on tour after reading about the town of Napoleon, Arkansas, which was largely swept away by floods after a civil war general made a new cutoff to connect the Mississippi River to the Arkansas River in order to thwart confederate attacks. Slowly the newly-powerful river eroded its banks and the town. Set within the years of the town’s decline, Mullenax’s song is gritty tale of cyclical family loss to the floods: “Down in Desha County the river always flows hard as my love for my Desha county rose / she used to be my sweetheart, but she never learned to swim / she’s been gone since the mighty Mississippi took her leg and dragged her in.”
Though Mullenax often writes about blowing off steam, smoking weed, and not wanting to work for a living, he considers music his calling, and one he’s dedicated to making a reality. “It is hard as fuck; it's almost laughable how we get to live these lifestyles that are just insane, and travel all the time and have a fucking ball,” he says. “But on the flip side of that coin, there's shit that you have to sacrifice; time is a valuable thing, that's what it takes.”
“I'm gonna convince myself that it's worth it for the rest of my life,” he continues. “You'd be surprised what you can fucking endure if you're like, ‘it's worth it.’”
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