Johnnyswim, the Nashville-based husband-and-wife duo consisting of Amanda Sudano and Abner Ramirez, met in the most wholesome way: at church in Nashville 20 years ago.

Soon after they collabed during a songwriting session and started performing together and eventually formed Johnnyswim in 2008. Sudano, the daughter of disco legend Donna Summer and producer Bruce Sudano, and Ramirez who brought a background in jazz and theater to the mix, have an undeniable chemistry, that quickly became central to their appeal, blending elements of pop, soul and Americana.

Since their formation, Johnnyswim has released six studio albums including their most recent one, When the War Is Over (2025). They’ve built a reputation for deeply personal songwriting that can be sometimes quite emotional. And most importantly, they've produced three beautiful children.

When they stopped by the Setlist offices to speak with Bree Wilde, they discussed what it's like taking a family on the road overseas, their obsession with mahjong, and some of their favorite shows they've seen both in the audience and up on stage.

Click the video below for the whole convo and keep scrolling for highlights of the chat.

Family first

Bree Wilde:
Where are your kiddos today? Are they at summer camp?

Amanda:
They're all spread out today. We have one still in preschool, finishing her last week of preschool before she becomes a kindergartner. One is at a soccer camp. The oldest is at a soccer camp.

And the middle child is getting his mom and sister all to herself. They had lunch at her favorite restaurant, Costco.

Abner:
Favorite restaurant.

Bree:
That's cool. Not part of the summer camp racket?

Amanda:
No, no. We just would prefer to travel with them.

Abner:
We had some shows in Europe so we brought them with us... to London, Milan, Rome, Paris.

Amanda:
So we're like, that's your summer camp.

Abner:
It was very fun. And it was so much cheaper than LA summer camp. And that's not even an exaggeration at all.

Bree:
I know that what we put on socials is just the highlight reel, but you guys seem to have a really exquisite balance of work, family, life, music. Is it real?

Abner:
That is really sweet. I hope so.

Amanda:
I do think it is because I think something would implode if we didn't have balance. And he always says that balancing our life is not really a balance. It's like making a gumbo. So I guess flavor-wise it is a balance, but you just keep tasting things.

There's times when we're on tour and the kids are at home and in school and they're like, "We really miss you." And we're like, "All right, well then you're coming." We just change plans that they come with us and you just keep tasting.

Feist, Shrine Auditorium, 2022

Amanda:
Really one of the most stunning shows ever.

Abner:
I think the greatest show I've ever seen.

Amanda:
We get our tickets, Shrine Auditorium. But when we were choosing our seats, it wasn't auditorium seating, it was in the round.

Abner:
So the Shrine's like what - 3,000 seats or something? So you imagine you're going to go see Feist with 3,000 of your favorite people in Los Angeles. It's going to be a party, it's going to be busy. From the beginning, things were weird.

Amanda:
Right. Things were just, I mean, not weird. It was like, I don't understand where the setup is, but we have seats and there's only about 150 people and we're going to see her.

It's the tail end of the pandemic. Everyone's still wearing masks. It's a different smaller space. That makes sense. So we go in and it's just a dark room, black curtains around.

And she's in-the-round. And she starts playing an album that nobody's heard because I don't think she had even released it yet. So it's all completely new songs. Everybody's watching her. Other musicians, it's just her in the middle and then other musicians will show up and just sit in the seats next to us, next to people and play...

Then someone will just sit in the seats next to us, next to people and play along. While she's going, there's somebody with an iPhone, just taking video of somebody rubbing their partner's arm... and it's being projected around the walls, and so everybody feels this sense of intimacy that was really, really missing in that time.

Abner:
She printed out set lists at this massive old school printer with the rivets still on it. It maked this crazy sound. She printed out set lists, and she herself, while the lights are still up before the show starts, handed out the set list to everybody. It's just the order of the album.

And then one song, about halfway through the show... the printer starts printing again, and she uses it as percussion. On purpose, I'd imagine. But the percussion to the song was now the printer that she'd handed you the set list from.

Amanda:
Because it was at the tail end of the pandemic and it wasn't just going to a show/ I think for probably the majority of the people there, it was the first concert experience after being so isolated.

So even just seeing small snippets being projected around of people just being together was incredibly moving. So we're all there. Everybody's already completely in it. We just feel like the luckiest people in the world to be sitting there watching her play.

And it was so simple, but just so well done.

David Byrne, BJCC, 2018

Abner:
My second favorite show I've ever seen in my life was David Byrne in Birmingham, Alabama.

I knew the Talking Heads and I wanted to hear "Psycho Killer." And what's funny is we had an off day in Birmingham that day.

This is all about the confidence. This is in reference to your question about confidence in playing songs that nobody's ever heard before.

So we had a night off in Birmingham. And so everybody's looking up what shows are cool. Father John Misty was playing at Iron City, which is a great little club in Birmingham. And David Byrne was playing at the Symphony Hall, what is it? BJCC like Concert Hall or something? A theater.

So half the band went to go see Father John Misty, and half the band went to go see David Byrne. You walk in and there's bird sounds playing. Literally. Like nature sounds - which we tried to copy one time.

We did a whole tour where all the intro music was just nature sounds. And it was a time when Twitter was the main form of social media communication.

And it was like, "What the hell is Johnnyswim doing? Is this for real? Did they make a mistake? It's just bird sounds. This isn't cool. What are you doing?"

People were just complaining the whole time. I thought it was cool.

And then David Byrne played no songs that I knew. He played his whole new album at the time, American Utopia. He closed with the old Talking Heads song of "Burning Down the House," but the rest of it was just American Utopia.

Didn't know one song and it was the same sort of feeling.

But yeah, the confidence in that man. We are all viscerally connected to this art form, not simply because of its familiarity. There's something for that.

You watch movies that you love because you love them, right? And you know how you're going to feel. You know what it's going to do to you.

But when you watch new movies, it's often times the opposite. You don't know what it's going to do. You don't know the journey you're going to go on just yet.

Sure it's a movie or sure it's an album. There's typical notes it might hit, and you know the artist and you trust the person creating this thing, but you go for something new.

And there was something that in that show, the David Byrne show, and in this Feist show that I'd never really experienced as a fan and have absolutely at the time never experienced as an artist. All new music, a whole new journey. I just trust you to take me with you.

And we still haven't done it to that extent.

Amanda:
I think there was also the aspect of they're not just standing in front of you just playing their songs. There was a sense of they're bringing you into something.

And actually David Byrne specifically after that show, we started talking about writing musicals because we were like, "How do we do this differently?"

We're on tour all the time and we're always thinking of, "Okay, if you've already been to a Johnnyswim show this year and you're going to go spend money on a ticket again, what do you want to hear? What do you want to see? Is it different songs? Is it presented in a different way?" And we literally are now writing a musical because...

Abner:
It opens March 11th in Edinburgh, Scotland. Our first musical. It's called One Day.

Amanda:
And it was really because these experiences let us feel connected to music in new ways. And I feel like after, especially if you love music and you go to concerts all the time, being able to experience live music in a new way felt really, really refreshing and it felt viscerally connecting. I don't know how else to describe it.

Abner:
But to see that show with no band on stage, the drums... there's no drummer, right?

So a drummer, typically, if you count every instrument, they're playing like 12 things, 20 things sometimes, depending on the band. Carter Beauford plays like 100 things, right? There's symbols and toms and stuff everywhere.

David Byrne broke up the drum set into all its individual parts and one person was responsible for one thing. So there's one snare drum player, one hi-hat player, one tom player, floor tom, kick drum, cymbals, and they would wear the instrument and there was no stage setting.

You walked in and it was a blank stage. Well, there was a desk with a skull on it.

And Dave just walking around the stage singing and kind of performing in this really unique to him, but incredibly honest way where it felt like a play. It felt like more than just a show. It felt like more than just him offering some songs.

I think that's where the difference is with these two shows in particular. It didn't feel like an offering of songs. It didn't feel like, "Here am I giving you a song," which is often enough.

It felt like an invitation into something maybe a little more nuanced, a little more spectacular. And that was an addictive feeling.

Amanda:
We're like, "Do we need to become a marching band? Is this Johnnyswim 2.0 becomes everybody buckle up, put your Hokas on. We're moving on stage."

Abner:
But it literally changed our lives. Now we are writing a musical. We're nearing the end of the process of writing it. It's almost done.

But that journey would not have begun for us, I don't think, it would've begun... without seeing David Byrne turn musical performance on its head for us, I don't think we would have this whole other life of songwriting that we have.

Bree:
Nice. Man, I could be a part of a band if all I had to do was hit one thing.

Johnnyswim gets back on the road in the fall. Get your tickets on their website.