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The career of David Johnson seems to be guided by what the young singer/songwriter calls a stroke of serendipity. Colorado-born Johnson, whose current base of operations is Californias Coachella Valley, cut his teeth on the work of roots-music mavericks like Ry Cooder and John Prine, and now the very same players who made the records Johnson absorbed as a developing artist are making magic happen all over again on his own debut album, Eights and Aces. How did it happen? Just another example of Johnsons bolt-from-the-blue destiny taking shape.
When Johnson, who had spent the previous seven years industriously writing and recording his songs on a home four-track machine, honing his sound and style to its finest possible point, was ready to put together an album, he started pounding the pavement for players. I picked some guys from one of the few bars in L.A. that plays good, live country, he recounts. One of those hot pickers turned out to be guitar legend Duane Jarvis, known for his work with Dwight Yoakam, Lucinda Williams, and unbeknownst to Johnson, John Prine. During the Eights and Aces sessions, while working on a cover of Prines Everything Is Cool, Jarvis revealed that he had played on the original version of the song. I picked a guy out of a bar, who had recorded the same song 20 years ago with my hero, says the singer, with an understandable amount of shock.
But the signature serendipity that follows Johnson around didnt stop there. Along the way, it also came up that Pat Rizzo, who plays all the horns on Eights and Aces, had a similar story. I had no idea at the time, but Pat Rizzo was on pretty much all of Ry Cooders records, Johnson reveals. Clearly, something was going on here, but to understand it you have to look deep into the nature of Johnsons music.
On first listen, you might be tempted to label him a country artist, but Johnson balks at that pigeonhole. While he spent plenty of time soaking up the classic country sounds of Johnny Cash and Roger Miller, he stands apart from the cookie-cutter soundalikes who dominate todays country scene, viewing much of that music as overproduced, uninspired, and made to sound just like everything else. Determined to present a style thats uniquely him, Johnson has masterminded a creative collision of country, roots-rock, and pop, with flashes of jazz and R&B. It all flows seamlessly together on an album that feels somehow undeniably American, as much for its stylistic multiplicity as its roots.
Sure, the country influences are there, most prominently on the title track, a honky-tonkin outlaw tale with a dash of Western Swing jazziness, where Johnson ratchets his strikingly flexible voice down to a deep-as-a-well Ernest Tubb-type register, and on Might As Well Take Up Jesus, where he puts his wry, Prine-influenced lyricism to work, turning country clichés about hard-luck salvation-seekers upside down. But then theres the more R&B-tinged side of Johnsons musical personality, most clearly heard on the soulful Vice Undone, where the female backing vocalists work as a Stax-soaked Greek chorus underlining the singers trip through love and regret, and the albums second cover tune, Captain of Her Heart, a mellow, jazzy R&B/pop hit originally recorded by 80s outfit Double. And speaking of jazzy, theres a subtle-but-significant touch of jazz that sneaks into everything from the twangers to the soul-stirrers on Eights and Aces, dovetailing with a cool, languid feel thats at its most melts-in-your-mouth on the laid-back, steel-guitar-kissed Movin On and the Chris Isaak-tinged My Troubled Mind.
All these seemingly disparate approaches come together on Eights and Aces in a completely natural way thats a testament to the complex musical mind and pure emotional output of David Johnson. The singer admits he felt blessed and sort of guided during the making of the album, bringing up that aforementioned stroke of serendipity that catalyzes the creative sparkAnd when it all effortlessly comes together and you feel the goosebumps, and the shivers up your spine, all that magic thats why I do it. And thats surely what the musicians who helped make the songs Ry Cooder and John Prine a part of our collective consciousness must have recognized in Johnson, and he in them. Its all part of the ongoing story of American music, in which David Johnsons Eights and Aces is a new and captivating chapter.
DavidDuncanJohnson
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