About Johnny Indovina
Singer/songwriter Indovina has crafted a long, storied career through his thought-provoking work, both solo and with his band Human Drama. Through years of sold-out live performances and critically acclaimed albums, Indovina’s insightful songs about the frailties of the human condition have consistently found a receptive audience and a constantly renewed fan base.
Since 1985 he has fronted Human Drama. From their formation in New Orleans, through their scaling the heights of the fertile mid 1980’s Los Angeles club scene, their moving live shows, fueled by Indovina’s poetic imagery, have built a huge, devoted following.
The combination of Indovina’s impeccable songwriting and the band’s fast-growing popularity led to a contract with RCA records in 1988, where they released two records, Hopes Prayers Dreams Heart Soul Mind Love Life Death, and Feel. In 1991 they moved to Triple X records and produced what many consider Indovina’s masterpiece, The World Inside. Thus began a string of critical successes which continued with Pinups, The Human Drama EP, Songs of Betrayal, 14,384 Days Later, Solemn Sun Setting, In a Perfect World: The Best of Human Drama, Moments in Time, and Cause and Effect. Despite flourishing primarily in the US underground, Indovina and Human Drama achieved almost legendary status within the large music communities of Mexico and Latin America, which they still enjoy today.
In 2005 Human Drama disbanded, and Indovina pursued a side project, Sound of the Blue Heart, with whom he released two solid albums: Beauty?... and Wind of Change. Indovina finally released his first solo album in 2015 with Trials of the Writer, an intimate and deeply personal reflection on the intense emotional connection between the songwriter and the soul-bearing compositions that document his life with honesty, poignancy, and sometimes rage and heartbreak.
However, Human Drama was not quite finished, and the encouragement of their fans brought them back together for two landmark shows. The band reunited in August 2012 for a triumphant performance at El Plaza Condesa in Mexico City, where Human Drama has amassed a sizable fan base. Three years later, on Halloween night, 2015, Human Drama marked their 30th anniversary by delivering a marathon show at the Circo Volador in Mexico City. They played 42 songs in all, ending with the first new Human Drama track in 13 years, “The Liar Inside.”
The enthusiasm of the fans and the successful first experiment in resurrecting Human Drama in the studio with “The Liar Inside” led to Indovina diving into an intense period of songwriting, the result being Broken Songs for Broken People. The album delivered the essence of what Human Drama has always been about: emotional songs that range from those brimming with delicate beauty, and those that are piercingly fraught with tension and pain. Indovina led the charge as always, and from the chill-inducing opening chords of the title song, it was clear that Human Drama was back from the shadows of memory.
Seven Days in Mexico, a documentary film released in 2020 on Amazon Prime and Apple TV followed Johnny's journey into rediscovering his musical purpose after years of feeling creatively drained within the music industry. The film examined Indovina’s struggle to continue to build a career and a catalog of work despite never having huge commercial success and dealing with falling out of love with the thing that had dominated his life.
In 2021 Human Drama presented Blurred Images, a concept album comprised of songs that were originally written, recorded, and released as singles. The album included a special bonus disc containing music from the film 'Seven Days in Mexico'.
In 2022, a book of Johnny‘s lyrics, My Bag of Secrets (The Words of Johnny Indovina), was published and is available on amazon.
Human Drama returned to Mexico City once again in 2022 for a celebration of three of their most popular albums, presenting The World Inside, Pinups, and Cause and Effect in their entirely to an ecstatic audience at the legendary Teatro Metropolitan.
In 2023 Human Drama released Ten Small Fractures. Ten re-workings of classic Human Drama songs. Regarding the title of the album;
This came from many questions by interviewers over the years about the personal issues Johnny discusses in his lyrics, and the honesty of his approach. “Is it difficult to expose yourself as you do? Are the songs painful to relive?” Johnny’s answer to this in one interview was “No, not at all. I feel the story, write the story, record the story, and then let them go. The songs may be painful in the moment, but they are not like broken bones that stay broken. They are more like small fractures…”
In 2024 Johnny brought Human Drama back to Mexico City for five shows in five days, titling the event “Five Nights on Insurgentes”.
Learn More About Johnny
Seven Days in Mexico Documentary- Amazon Prime
Johnny Indovina "My Bag of Secrets " Book
Human Drama YouTube Channel