Written by Lexi Howard | Photo by Lena Warnke

This past April, on a cold, rainy afternoon at an outdoor market in Somerville, MA, I met up with guitarist, bassist, and vocalist Jon Wallis to talk about the debut release from his project Jonny Tex. “I needed to prove that I can make simple rock music,” said Wallis about Mark of Cain, the four track alt-western and indie rock EP about characters inspired by his time in Austin, Texas, where he spent most of his life before moving to Boston in his 20s. The debut is a long time coming for Wallis, who says he’s always wanted to have a rock project of his own. But it took leaving Texas and his Southern Baptist church behind, getting fired from a music residency at a local bar in Boston, and losing a laptop with over 400 demos to get here.

It’s not easy to stand out in 2026 as an indie rock band, but from my first Jonny Tex set last fall, I was hooked. Drawing from a broad array of sonic inspiration, Wallis certainly has a way of writing catchy, full sounding rock music. On Mark of Cain, the guitarist focused on his lyricism, and it shows. The four tracks feature parables and vignettes that touch on “an inherent absurdity or sinfulness that everyone has.” Said Wallis, “It’s a motif found in everything.” Hence Mark of Cain.

But Wallis brings this Christian motif to his music through humor and self awareness. “I’ve always been more inspired by the western caricature than country music,” said Wallis. “I like the silliness of it,” he said, before describing how the second track — “Bill” — is about his neighbor from growing up, a “frumpy Texas single guy”, who “says his life is awesome but it really sucks, which is a thing that a lot of southern men do,” he adds.

Wallis, for his part, grew up in a Southern Baptist church, leading worship music nights as a teenager who had previously spent time playing music with friends. “[The church] kept being like, oh you can be a youth leader,” said Wallis. “It was all bullshit.” Wallis decided to leave the megachurch and ultimately left Texas in 2021. “I realized anywhere I moved in Texas, my entire community would be people I [knew from the church].” He opted for Boston despite not knowing a single person who lived there. “It paid off. I love Boston.”

After arriving in Boston, Wallis spent time “gigging around,” including playing with Philly-via-Boston group Hereboy and post-rock/noise band Pew Pew. Along the way, Wallis managed to get a residency at a local bar, covering “beer country songs from the 90s” under the moniker “Jonny Tex and the Lone Stars”. Said Wallis, “I would get my friends to play with me [often on instruments that were not their first instruments]. One day they were like, you guys get so hammered on stage, you play too long, and nobody’s really enjoying this except y’all.” And thus was the end of the residency. “We stopped, and then I was like, okay, we’ll be an originals band.”

To his credit, by this point Wallis already had a laptop with over 400 demos that he had written and recorded over the years. That is, until the laptop crashed. Instead of devastating him, Wallis said this freed him up to start releasing music with “songs that I kind of just remembered writing that I was excited about” or new songs that he’s written since. “So that was like 3 years of practice pretty much.” I asked if he ever tried to get the laptop fixed, to which he responded, “I still have it. I just… I cannot. It feels kind of nice.”

Last year, Wallis released a double A-side via Happen Twice — Heifer/Cherubhead — with songs that he wrote after he decided to focus on originals. Within five months of getting fired, he was in the studio with his buddy Marshall Pruitt, recording four songs. The duo chose two that they felt were good enough to release. “It felt really important to record in Texas, those songs about Texas,” said Wallis. Wallis noted that on everything he’s recorded, he’s played nearly every part aside from a couple keyboard parts on the singles, and drums — played by Kyle Duggar of Virginia Creeper on the singles and Corey Camara of Spirit Ghost on the EP. He emphasized how important it is for him to make the recording sound as much like what is in his head.

Wallis spoke glowingly about his producer, Pruitt, whom he has admired since high school from his work with Austin bands Close By and Duncan Fellows. Wallis shared about how Pruitt has pushed his songwriting. “He’s pushed me to make songs to be more clear… It’s forced me to think about selling a song rather than a vibe… It’s been encouraging to work with someone who’s like ‘We can’t bury the vocals. We have to make a good sounding record.’”

For Mark of Cain, Wallis brought Pruitt up to Little Nice in Lincoln, RI last July to record songs that he started working on just 6 months prior. “I wanted to just try to make straight rock music that sounds good so I could prove that I could do it,” said Wallis. “Two guitars, bass and drums, and just me singing.”Mark of Cain might be the debut from Jonny Tex, but don’t expect this EP to define his sound. “I think the singles [“Heifer/Cherubhead”] kind of indicate that I have an ambitious mind.” Indeed, “Heifer” with its odd, whirling startup sounds that persist throughout; “Cherubhead” with its drum machine sounding kick and high hat and overdubbed guitars that sound like a large dying animal. Wallis mentioned that after Mark of Cain, we can expect some “weird ass shit” from him. “I go into every song with no mission. I think that’s something I value so much is really letting the weird sounds in my brain translate to pop music. I want the music I make to be singularly me.”

You can listen to Mark of Cain by Johnny Tex premiering here on the ugly hug.