Four months ago, Nikhil Johns arrived at the Tampa Heights office of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay with just a guitar in hand. The St. Petersburg songwriter—who performs as Napoleon the Wilderness—stepped into our expansive ballroom/event space then found a seat in front of bright lights and cameras set up by Katie Talbert of Saved By Streaming. The event was the May edition of Rock the Park Tampa, a free concert usually attended by about 1,000 people in beautiful Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park less than a mile away. Instead, he played a 50-minute set for a virtual audience which was, at the time, just starting to settle into a life where clubs that hosted live original music were shut down.
Until Monday, that shutdown was still the reality. Clubs, now allowed to reopen at 50% capacity, are still in danger of not making it out of the pandemic thanks to a touring industry that is on hold until at least next year (maybe even longer for Florida thanks to geography and a haphazard plan for containing and contact tracing coronavirus).
That set was the first live music I’d seen since March, and I’ve seen only one concert in between then and today (July’s streaming-only Rock the Park at the River Center at Julian B. Lane), but one then-unreleased song Johns performed (“Good Vibes,” available now) spoke to me and has been a source of stability over the last 16 weeks. At the time, Johns, who turned 28 years old on Wednesday, explained that the tune was about toxic positivity.
“It's about when you're feeling kind of down, depressed or whatever, and someone who just doesn't want to hear it, wants you to be happy, no matter what. And I think there's a lot of that that we see on social media these days,” Johns, said.
In the half-tempo, polished-up, three-minute studio version, Johns lays bare his troubles and the problematic nature of being eternally positive before delivering this tongue-in-cheek thank you to online happiness gurus: “I saw a post on the internet, it told me happiness is just a mindset—cured my depression in a single step. It said, ‘No worries,’ and the hashtag said, ‘#blessed.’”
Johns is sharing the track with listeners here starting Friday, Sept. 18. He’ll also be donating half of the proceeds from the song and sticker sales to the Black Mental Health Alliance.
“Sometimes it's OK just to feel your feelings and live in kind of a dark space at the moment. And it's OK to have a down day or whatever,” Johns added when explaining the song back in May. “We don't always have to fake a smile.”
That’s a good reminder, and this is a reminder that a real-life, trained representative from the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay is always one phone call away (211) to help with anything and connect you with other professionals who can assist you with anything from food insecurity to mental health.
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This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2020.