Jeff Johnson grew up in Los Angeles, Houston, Albuquerque, and the unwholesome parts of Missouri. He moved to Portland, Oregon as a runaway teen fleeing probable death in the addiction and pneumonia-ridden foster home system in 1986. Early on, he worked as a line cook in the swanky restaurant scene by day in the famed Cajun Cafe and the renowned Cafe Des Amis and played music by night, most notably in the grunge band Dirty Bird, and then the electric blues ensemble Jeff Johnson and the Telephones. From 1989 until 2014 he worked full time as a tattoo artist in Portland, Oregon, enduring much but also having a total blast. Tattooing as a field changes like any other, and he was lucky to live in the final days of what he thinks of as ‘the carnie period’. It was a heady time of mayhem, art, adventure, and more art. He became a full-time writer shortly after the publication of his first book, Tattoo Machine, Tall Tales, True Stories, and My Life In Ink, and credits the years of tattooing for his completely unlikely ability to concentrate for long periods of time. He never liked the cover of Tattoo Machine, likening it to trendy yuppie pajamas, and subsequent books have fared much better. He’s been featured in Rolling Stone, Reuters, TIME, and more, and favorably reviewed by The New York Post, The Washington Post, Suspense Magazine, The Eugene Weekly, The Denver Post, The London Times, and many more. He still tatt zaps, doing guest spots across the nation, and rocks the mighty with his San Fransisco-based psychonaut band The Chasteens. The Chasteens has new material coming.

Jeff is a lifelong voracious reader and book collector. He greatly enjoys travel, too. When Jeff was 17, he hitchhiked from the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska to Santa Cruz, California, and since then he’s traveled the world and intends to retire thirty years from now in a stylish Maltese prison where he will pen his final memoir, Smoothie. Jeff spends an enormous amount of time writing, something he greatly enjoys, easily his most peaceful pursuit. Most of his books have been optioned at one point, and he finds this easy money refreshing. Early on, he wrote in notebooks, often on the move. Tattoo Machine was written entirely in three notebooks he purchased at a RiteAid in Santa Monica. He rode a skateboard around night after night, stopping periodically to jot down passages. Most of Lucky Supreme was written on the graffiti-caked benches across from the loading docks behind Sheridan Fruit Company in Portland, Oregon. Long passages of Everything Under The Moon were written in Penn Sation in Philadelphia. The final touches to Deadbomb Bingo Ray were typed into the computer of Tory Seller while they drove around San Fransisco in the middle of the night. Many passages of Dime Bag Sadie and The Devil’s Rope were written in the rest stops and scenic overlooks between Hood River and The Dalles in Oregon. Perfect Lingerie was largely penned in bars. Recently, he’s developed a home office that consists of the couch in the living room, and sometimes he writes while lounging on the bed in the guest room. He still greatly enjoys cooking and works when time permits on his Creole and New Mexican fusion cookbook, Hot Food For Cool Fuckers.

He writes screenplays as well and got started directing with a film entitled The Dishwasher, a feature-length circus fu action thriller that never made it past VHS. The Dishwasher starred assorted luminaries from the Pacific Northwest punk scene, such as members from Poison Idea and Napalm Beach. Afterward, he was briefly wed to the stunning and witty Jenna Wilson, who played The Waitress in the film, and the two remain good friends to this day. Jeff can still juggle three guns, one of the prime Dishwasher stunts. He recently (pre-pandemic) wrote and directed a short film based on one of his published stories. Afterward, JJ decided to work forever in the greener pastures of other more satisfying and financially lucrative arts. His agent, film industry veteran Stu Miller, convinced him to press forward with filmmaking, and Jeff's current project is his screenplay Lemonade, a gangster rebirth feature flick set in Palm Springs. He’s also working on a documentary, Lost Roads Of Oregon. In smaller film projects, he has the zesty hitman short Iris of Jake, the cleptomaniac debutant superhero short Rocketgirl Rambobalboa, and the supernatural air conditioner repairman short The Birdcan of Santa Gertrudis de Fruitera, all in various stages of production and all very enjoyable, generously and respectively produced by the great Gabriel Garcia, the magnificent EDO2 Media, and Johnson’s own GowerTown Brasso. In hugely exciting film news, after endless revisions, flaming obstacle courses, snorkeling expeditions, and airplane wrecks, the screenplay for Dime Bag Sadie is officially making the rounds and being well received in the highest circles. Viva le Glue Boy!

His new series of paintings, Camels and Bees In Red, consists of large, overlapping anatomical mutigoginates of botoxed show camel noses and pollinators, rendered in red.

Happily, Jeff is engaged to the magnificent Portland painter and comic book artist Sylvia Mann. Though she’s a forest elf, she has agreed to marry the all too human Jeff Johnson this summer.

Jeff’s hobbies include cooking, boxing (he does not watch it on TV), running, riding his skateboards, and spoiling the neighborhood cats. He’s currently writing the third installment of the Sweetwater Junction series as part of a lucrative, open ended six book deal. He writes from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, and every Thursday he wears a tuxedo, though he never goes out in it.