Johnny Winter: Down & Dirty, the definitive, feature-length intimate documentary by acclaimed Lemmy co-director and producer, Greg Olliver, is now available worldwide on DVD and iTunes. The package will feature never-before-seen photos and bonus footage, including extended interviews and his final studio performance, a solo resonator version of the Son House classic, “Death Letter.”
Produced independently through Secret Weapon Films in NYC, director Greg Olliver was welcomed into the Johnny Winter family during the final two years of Johnny’s life, where he captured the making of his Grammy-winning album Step Back (Best Blues Album, 2015) and travelled the world from Beaumont to Hong Kong.
The result is an intimate portrait of Johnny and the blues (“guitar is the only thing I was ever really great at”); his childhood (“I got in a lot of fights…Just ‘cause you’re a different color, they don’t like it? You don’t like black people because they’re black? They didn’t like me because I was too white?”); friendship and loss (Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker); relationships (Janis Joplin and his current wife of over 20 years) and his crushing addiction to heroin and methadone. Winter continued to perform over 200 sold out shows a year until his death on tour in Switzerland in 2014.
Down & Dirty is an intimate portrait of Johnny and the blues (“guitar is the only thing I was ever really great at”); his childhood (“I got in a lot of fights…Just ‘cause you’re a different color, they don’t like it? You don’t like black people because they’re black? They didn’t like me because I was too white?”); friendship and loss (Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker); relationships (Janis Joplin and his current wife of over 20 years), and his crushing addiction to heroin and methadone (learn how his manager and bandmate Paul Nelson secretly weaned Johnny off a 30-year addiction).
“I grew up in Houston listening to the blues, so making a film with Johnny is a dream come true for me,” says Olliver, who premiered the film at SXSW to critical acclaim. “At the SXSW screening, Johnny was having so much fun. He was sitting behind me with a big tub of popcorn laughing at his own jokes and was really psyched to see himself on the big screen. At the time, there weren’t many blues icons left out there, I feel very honored to have worked with him. His is a story that needs to be told!”
Down & Dirty features Clive Davis, Edgar Winter, James Cotton, Billy Gibbons, Warren Haynes, Luther Nallie, Joe Perry, Tommy Shannon, Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks and more.
