Jack Drag

John Dragonetti, a Los Angeles-based composer, producer, and songwriter who co-founded the West Coast indie rock outfit the Submarines with his former spouse Blake Hazard, records under the name Jack Drag. During the mid-'90s and early 2000s he operated out of Boston under that alias and put out several lo-fi home recordings in the Elephant 6 vein, among them the 1998 album Dope Box on A&M Records. After the Submarines dissolved in 2011, Dragonetti devoted himself to scoring for film and television before reviving the Jack Drag identity for the 2018 LP.

His first release under the moniker, an eponymous 1996 effort that moved from ethereal dream pop to symphonic arrangements recalling the Wall of Sound, was followed the next year by Unisex Headwave. He joined A&M for his major-label bow, Dope Box, in 1998, then self-produced and self-released the subsequent pair of Jack Drag projects, Soft Songs LP: Aviating in 2000 and Sun Inside in 2002. Dragonetti launched the Submarines alongside Hazard in 2006 and issued the first of three well-received albums; by the time the band split in 2011 they had placed tracks in several Apple iPhone spots as well as series such as Weeds, Grey's Anatomy, and Nip/Tuck.

Throughout those years he also scored film and television projects while producing for Dylan Gardner and Chadwick Stokes and supplying remixes for Ra Ra Riot, Josh Ritter, and Avril Lavigne. Burger Records issued his first Jack Drag album in sixteen years, the 2018 collection titled 2018, which included contributions from Aimee Mann, Dylan Gardner, Belle and Sebastian singer/violinist Sarah Martin, and Mike Sawitzke of the Eels and Dispatch.