Chuck Johnson is a composer and musician currently residing in Oakland, CA. He began playing fingerstyle acoustic guitar in the early 1990’s, inspired by the North Carolina Piedmont blues of Elizabeth Cotten, Rev. Gary Davis, and Etta Baker, as well as the “American Primitive” approach to steel string guitar as a solo concert instrument and vehicle for personal expression. These influences can be heard in his solo guitar music as well as his contributions to the Idyll Swords and Shark Quest, and in his music for film.

In addition to his work as a guitarist, Johnson performs electronic music using homemade and analog instruments, creates interactive and intermedia work with unusual interfaces, and works extensively with just intonation tuning systems – all with an ear towards finding faults and instabilities that might reveal latent beauty. Recordings of his music have been released by Communion, Amish, Merge, Umbrella, Phaserprone, Squealer and Threelobed. He has composed music for several feature-length documentaries, including Brett Ingram’s award-winning films Monster Road and Rocaterrania (as a member of Shark Quest) and Cynthia Hill’s Guestworker.