Johnny Daukes was born in Camberwell but sadly his parents elected to move to Didcot (change for Oxford). He was educated at a couple of Jesuit comprehensives where he learned that all alliteration is deliberate and that pretty much everything else is a sin. The sixth form brought sexual frustration, a love of distance running and a predilection for crashing motor vehicles. Eschewing a University place reading English, Johnny was introduced by a friend to the world of video post-production; and a year spent as a film and video edit-assistant quickly resulted in an appointment as editor (which quickly resulted in several years shut in a darkened room, drinking too much strong coffee, learning about how and why pictures and sound work).
By the early 90’s Johnny had become editor of choice for MTV’s titles and graphics, for the prestigious documentaries of Equinox creator Patrick Uden and countless other music-project related clients. Just as the world of directing began to open up through MTV and Rapido, Johnny (who had been writing music since his teens) walked away from TV and walked towards the world of song-writing, forming indie-band Fin.
Fin received much critical adulation, earning Johnny the title ‘the Dennis Potter of Indie Rock’, and for a couple of years were ‘London’s most likely to…’ They then spent a further year looking less likely to and Johnny moved on to form the harder edged 3-piece Senna. Commercial success proved elusive, but all the time Johnny was mastering the recording studio and further honing what would be described as his ‘Orson Welles-style mono-creator attitude’.
Around the late 90’s Johnny began writing comedy sketches and the result of winning the BBC’s Greenlight Award for new comedy writing was a half-hour on BBC2 for Hello…I’m Jack Berry. A chance meeting with stand-up comedian Hils Barker lead to the creation of the cult Radio 4 series Radio9 which the pair co-wrote and Johnny recorded and mixed in his own Pro-Tools studio. Described by the Financial Times as ‘weird, wicked and wonderful’ the series was re-commissioned and Johnny went on to develop it into the BBC3 TV series theMessage. Unfortunately, the TV series (described by the Sunday Times as ‘a huge step forward for BBC3’) fell victim to executive staff changes at the BBC and despite much positive press, received no support from the channel’s new regime.
Undeterred despite having thrown enormous reserves of energy into writing, directing and producing the show, Johnny moved on into a new period of fresh productivity, writing an album and feature film script. The album, Promise, was released in early 2008, garnering records of the week from The Sunday Times and Rough Trade, amidst a slew of positive reviews. The film script was Acts of Godfrey, which Johnny attracted independent finance for and subsequently went into pre-production at the start of 2010. Written by Johnny throughout in rhyming verse, the film has been selected for London’s Raindance Festival in autumn of 2011 and has recently signed a distribution deal for a release in early 2012. During this last two years, the songs that make up A False Parade have been written and recorded by Johnny and share elements from the self-penned score for Acts of Godfrey (The Emperor’s Old Clothes plays over the film’s end credits).
Johnny’s next completed script ‘Ghost of a Chance’ is ready to enter pre-production and he is currently writing a musical film entitled ‘Goodbye Mother’. Alongside this, he is working with producer Gareth Jones recording the songs for the next proposed album ‘The Man Who Cannot See’. Johnny requires very little sleep.
