B.A. Johnston is hard to describe, but he always puts on a hilarious and entertaining show in Lethbridge so he is looking 
forward to playing another one at the Owl Acoustic Lounge, Tuesday, Oct. 18 with local punk trio the Moby Dicks.
Anything can happen at a B.A. Johnston show in Lethbridge and usually does, from Johnston stripping off his shirt, singing from the roof of his van and setting off fireworks in the street, to putting on a sailor’s hat and crowd surfing or someone putting their fist through a window during one of his shows
“When the police pull over my van, and that happens a lot, I tell them I sound like Weird Al Yankovic, because they seem to like like Weird Al, even though I sound nothing like him,” he said.
He is looking forward to the show, premiering new songs from a CD that is about 90 per cent complete, as well as introducing a new costume.
“It’s kind of like the sailor’s costume. It’s getting washed right now,” said Johnston from Vancouver where he is beating himself up over the previous night’s show.
“I didn’t eat any dinner and I did a lot of shots and I tend not to play well when I’m drunk. I’m surprised I still have fans in Vancouver,” he said.
He noted other than the Vancouver show, his latest solo tour is going well.
He is looking forward to Lethbridge where people really respond to his quirky sense of humour and weird songs covering unusual anecdotes from his life like video games, Walkmen, Steve Guttenberg, bedroom deep fryers, food, robots, douche doormen and his failure with women all backed by him and his keyboard and guitar.
“ I won’t have fireworks this time. It’s pretty much the same dog and pony show, but this time I might have a new dog,” he continued.
He does have a new van.
“After the last tour, there was big dent in the roof of my van from where I was standing on it and water was starting to pool in it. I didn’t want to drive around like that. I don’t know if I want to do that with the new one, because it is really nice,” he said, though he is looking for a tape deck in it, or at least a ghetto blaster to put batteries in.
“The tape deck just exploded and you really need music on these long drives. I have thousands of tapes and no CDs so it doesn’t make sense to get a CD player,” he observed.
He also recorded a 7 inch record with the Moby Dicks, though it hasn’t been released yet.
“That’s the way it is with vinyl. It’s never out when you want to tour with it,” he observed, adding the Moby Dicks are his backing band on the record for three songs, “Robot World,” “Zombies,” and a new song “McDonalds Coupon Day,” which will also be on the new CD.
“It is a different version though. A lot of my songs have a lot of electronica behind them,” he said.
He didn’t know if he would be playing on stage with the Moby Dicks.
“Maybe if we got time to practice. But I’ve played with bands before and it doesn’t tend to go well because I tend to forget things,” he said.
He draws a lot of subject matter from the simple things in his life.
“A lot of songs come from my life. Food and failure with women — there’s a lot of inspiration there.
Others come from things that happened to me. I was in Montreal and went to a bar and asked the bouncer if the Canadiens were playing.
He said ‘If the Canadiens were playing, there would be a douche doorman here.’ And I thought what a great song title,” he said.
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