When I first saw Johannes Möller perform, he was backlit in the oldest church in San Jose, CA, with a halo of golden curls. He looked positively angelic. Ethereal. Other-worldly. His music is like that, too.

Interview by Anita Stubenrauch, photographs by Alicia Chester

Introduce yourself. Who are you, where are you from, what makes you an Indoor Boy?
As I grew up in Sweden, it’s too cold to play the guitar outside for most of the year. And as music and the guitar have been my biggest passion since I was a young child, I certainly qualify as an Indoor Boy.

It appears you come from a very musical family.
Yeah. My grandfather was a viola player that worked in orchestras all his life. My father, too, was a musician all his life—a flutist.

When did you get started in music?
I seriously started when I was around ten. My father used to play with some guitarists, so I knew the instrument, and we had one at home so I thought it would be fun to start learning it. When I was younger I used to make my own little pieces on the piano, without really playing. I was really stubborn—I didn’t want to learn how to write music, so I would make little numbers on blue tack stuck to the keys. Of course, it’s a problem if you want to repeat the same note a few times—it gets kind of cramped up. So it didn’t last.

So, you made your own musical notation system?
Sure. I was always attracted to making my own things, creating my own music. And quite soon after I started on the guitar, I starting writing my own pieces.
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