Jeris Johnson Wants Both Blood And Love

By Ashley Oken


On a recent Friday afternoon, musician Jeris Johnson, 25, ran his fingers through his blond hair while settling into a nondescript hotel room in Nashville immediately after a frenzied few days of traveling on his first tour. Wearing a hat emblazoned with the message “Make Rock Wonderful Again,” Johnson shared his thoughts on the state of the genre of which his Instagram bio claims he is “the future.” “Rock has been stuck in the mud for a long time,” he told MTV News over Zoom. “It’s sounded the same for a long time. It’s the same old ‘man with drums and [a] guitar’ and whichever else.”


“Now I feel like we’re at a crisis point in rock music,” he continues, “where it actually will perish if it keeps going down the path that it’s going down, because it’s not keeping up. It’s not capturing anybody that’s young. It’s not doing any of these things.” The former metalhead turned TikToker, whose debut album I Want Blood/I Want Love, is out today (February 4), aims to be rock’s fountain of youth. “It needs to be brought into the future.”


Born in Eugene, Oregon to rocker parents — his dad was a drummer and his mom was a singer; they met while playing in bands — Johnson grew up surrounded by music. Right now, he is known for his covers of 2000s-era rock songs like “Never Also Late” by Three Days Grace and “How You Remind Me” by Nickelback, which he first posted to TikTok in 2021. These allowed him a platform to enact his mission. He believes that TikTok is a method to bring the genre caught up with the modern era, citing Tumblr, Myspace, and other sites that saw their rise linked with music within the past two decades. “TikTok has been poppin’ off for two to three years right now, and there really are still tons of artists and bands who are also cool for it, however they’re just behind,” he mentioned. “If you’re not riding the fucking TikTok wave, you’re falling beyond because it’s the only reason that my numbers are in the millions.” Johnson sees the platform as a stage, one where he can wild out as he wishes and embrace his confident and larger-than-life persona.


Given that 2000s radio rock was “all he listened to growing up,” his covers helped him pick up traction on TikTok and eventually hop onto remixed tracks like “Last Resort (Reloaded)” with Papa Roach frontman Jacoby Shaddix. Johnson affectionately calls the singer Uncle Jacoby and thinks of him as a mentor. Fast friendships have helped Johnson land other collaborations, like “Damn” Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger as well as a remix of Bring Me the Horizon’s single “Can You Feel My Heart” with Oli Sykes. Johnson unveiled his debut EP My Sword at the best of 2021, which showed off another key influence: the angst of SoundCloud rap. He also points to XXXTentacion and Ski cover the Slump God as influences.


Though Johnson’s latest releases, the sobering “27 Club” and the Trippie Redd collab “Friday,” showcase a upbeat, partying side, I Want Blood/I Want Love displays two distinct sides of Johnson — a compelling one willing to take charge of the rock scene and also a sentimental one looking to express itself meaningfully. The duality may surprise his fans and followers.


“When they go to check out the album, they’re gonna be like, ‘What the fuck is this kid smoking?’” He mentioned. “And that’s what it should be. Every time you put out music that’s different from what folks are used to, you’re routinely gonna make somebody irritated. If I’m not doing that, I’m not making art.”


His parents’ unwavering support of that art “has been the number one thing” and laid the structure for the life that waits ahead of him. Unlike those who use their parents’ dismissal of their artsy ambitions  as fuel for their creativity, Johnson considers himself lucky. “They didn’t care if I didn’t go to college. We didn’t have the cash for me to go to college anyway.”


Johnson started playing piano and drums at the age of 2 and went to metal band camps at 13, where he was able to hone his skills as a vocalist and percussionist. Here, he met his future bandmates and determined music was going to be his lifelong focus. The musician spent his high school years in a rock band named Audiophobia. Whenever they split up, he taught himself how to produce and set up shop as his own maestro.


“I realized bands were lame and being in one wasn’t going to work for me because they don’t make any cash. The computer is a musical instrument in and of itself at this point,” he mentioned. “[Rock has] traditionally been done with ‘real instruments.’ It’s a fun and cool challenge to calculate, how can I make rock without live drums and guitar? How can I distort my computer? How can I break the rules, fuck everything up, and still have that rock energy to everything?”


He honed this experimentation further on journeys to Los Angeles that he took at 21, attempting to network and lock in writing recording sessions immediately after 13-hour drives. Through this process, he learned that crafting a sound and getting to where you wish to be takes time and patience. “I was routinely confused while in that time period, like, why the fuck aren’t I making it nevertheless and how aren’t people signing me however? I knew I had all this raw talent,” he mentioned. “I look back right now and think, ‘You were just clueless.’” Since then, his skill level has caught up with his ambition, and right now he’s making the art he’s habitually wanted to make.


Johnson feels lucky that his first tour is “so dope,” on the road with Falling The opposite way, Waging War, and Hawthorne Heights on a three-week sprint around the nation. As ever, it’s all segment of his plan: “I think it’s destiny colliding and the universe matching it up where it feels like this is something I just have to do.”