 His word is the lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path as you follow your dreams. In a quiet North Carolina town, 22 miles south of Raleigh, as a young nine-year-old girl, Paige King-Johnson spent her summers under crepe myrtles, imitating the styles of Loretta, Patsy, Whalen and Murrell. Inspired by her grandfather, Paige followed her dreams to the bright lights of Music City in 2015 and found her voice when she attended Belmont University in Nashville. Along with her music, God laid another passion on her heart, His land. This is her story. This is today's Nashville. This is Faith. Paige, it's so good to sit down with you today on a rainy day in Nashville. You've been busy. Yes, I have. What is going on with you? Just this year, really, I tell everybody, you know, January and February for touring artists are usually a little more low-key, but there really hasn't seemed to be any slowdown after the holidays. I've been on the road pretty much every single weekend and making trips back and forth to Nashville to do work stuff and play shows here and write and record and all that kind of, you know, all the regular things that happen, so it's been very busy. Well, I looked at your tour list and you are packed. You are on the road. Such a young artist. Tell me how, when you started and are you living in Nashville or are you still in North Carolina? I'm back and forth between the two. I tell everybody I'm fortunate enough to have two really cool homes. So, yeah, I do call Nashville home and I call North Carolina home and, you know, I started playing music at a very young age. I always say I was the kid that just needed attention. My mom loved, she always says that she loved being my mom and raising me as a kid because I was so vivacious and just all the time doing something and singing something or dancing in front of people just to try to bring joy to them. Are you the only child? No, I'm not, but my older sister was very reserved, very much so just to herself and so whenever I came along they were like, what do we do with this kind of kid? Just two of yours here. Just two of us. But I grew up singing in church. I grew up playing at family barbecues and birthday parties just anywhere and everywhere that people were and that they asked me to come and entertain for them. So, you know, I learned at a very young age the value of being able to bring joy and entertainment to groups of people and that was very important to me and still kind of what I take in my job. How old were you when you first performed? Well, I started playing guitar. I learned at the age of 10. So that was really probably my first official performance for people but if you asked my parents or my grandparents, I was performing for them in the backseat of the car every time the radio came on. Were you a country music fan then? Yes. I grew up on a lot of classic country music. So a lot of the Redalyn and Patsy Klein and Merle Haggard and all the greats. So I read that you would imitate them and... Yes. So after that, what did you do? Well, I started learning guitar at 10. My grandpa bought me a guitar for Christmas that year and he really wanted to kind of see... I'd been taking some piano lessons earlier and so that was kind of my first formal introduction to music and he thought, well, what happens if we put a different instrument in this girl's hands and see what happens and so encouraged me to get into lessons and that was really when I started falling in love with music and learning more about it and seeing what it could do for me not just internally but how I could reach bigger audiences and try to spread joy in that way and so that was really just what I clung to and I kept going from there and never really looked back. 10 years old. That's when it started. What were your teenage years like? My mom would say probably nerve-wracking at times. I grew up on a farm in North Carolina and so my teenage years were filled. That was really whenever I was trying to juggle both music being a huge passion of mine but also agriculture in that whole world. I had a 4-H and FFA my entire childhood and I spent nearly every weekend at a horse show or at a lamb show with our family. We traveled all the time going to those and that was our whole world. Did you have horses growing up? We did. We always had at least one but usually two or three that were roaming around the farm and I always had farm chores and my mom said that was what kept us out of trouble all the time. Did you have a horse? I had a few over my childhood. I had a pony that was named Lester. He was kind of my starter project as my parents would say and then I graduated up to a horse named Buddy and then my sister and I shared a horse named Butterbean the most country name for an animal ever and then my last show horse name was Bubba and he was the best thing ever and it broke my heart whenever I moved to Nashville to have to give him or sell him off to another family that would still be able to use him and get the good out of him. Did you have any trials or issues in high school or the typical teenage issues? I wasn't a problem child. My parents gave us enough projects to be able to keep us out of trouble. We were very active between being active in our 4-H groups our family has always been a very close-knit family we did everything together which I'm so grateful for looking back on now and we were very active in our church and our youth group and so between all that my parents were always were in the mindset of if you have enough enough things to do enough responsibilities enough good people around you then less bad things can come in so I'm so grateful for that childhood that they created for us. Tell me a little bit about your faith. I grew up in a faith-filled home from the very beginning we are Baptist Church which is where my dad went ever since he was little and my mom joined whenever her and him got married and that's always been my home church and it was literally a quarter mile down the road so on days whenever my parents weren't home and couldn't take me to church I could walk to church and I was there pretty much every Wednesday night for youth group every Sunday morning every Sunday night and I'm so grateful to have that community that really helped raise me and helped kind of get me to where I am now both in music and just in life in general and I wouldn't be here without them and the things that they allowed me to be able to do. Do you remember the time that you made that decision to give your life to the Lord? Yes, I do. My mom and I were actually just talking about this the other day when my sister and I decided we wanted to join our home church and my dad decided then that he was going to get baptized with us and it was just such a special moment and I will never ever forget that and it still holds so true in me. I was about seven or eight I can't remember the exact time but it was pretty young in my life and I knew that there's just something that comes over you that just keeps telling you and keeps telling you and I tried to fight it off for a little while and it was just something that I knew had to happen and was meant for me. So it's beautiful that you and your dad and your sister baptized all together. That's beautiful. I heard that at the age of 10 you got that guitar and you were so excited about it because it was from your grandfather. Yes. And there was a challenging time after that and we're going to talk about it when we come back. Paige, you told me earlier that your grandfather gave you that guitar at the age of 10 it was so special to you and he saw something in you. What happened after you got the guitar? Well, he was the first person who really pushed me to start taking guitar lessons and kind of explore that different side of music for me and see what that could do and loved, loved, loved every week after I had guitar lessons I would go, my parents would take me over to his house and I'd have to show him what I had learned and that was right around Christmas and the following Easter he got very, very sick and ended up passing away. How old were you at this time? I was still 10. I was very quickly after that and that was really hard. My papa and I were very, very close and he loved seeing the joy on my face whenever I was exploring that world of music and guitar and all that kind of thing and so he has kind of since then always been my push and my inspiration and the reason why behind the music and chasing a dream from the very beginning because I know that he would have loved to kind of see all the different stages and all the things that have happened since then. Was this the first time you dealt with somebody dying in your life? It was somebody, it was the first time that I was old enough to really realize what was happening and really truly feel that loss and it was hard especially being so close and seeing it was my dad's father seeing him go through that that was his second parent that he had lost and so it was hard. How did you deal with it? As a kid I think it's different than being a more mature adult but there was a lot of family time right there at the beginning thankfully my parents realized that even as 10 and my sister was 14 at the time that there needed to be some time away from school to just kind of deal with it as a family and really go through that go through the motions of everything that happens when there is a death in the family and so that was very treasured to me and we took a lot of time kind of reflecting on everything and going through stuff at the house and my parents shared all kinds of memories and going through a lot of pictures and that really was a very therapeutic thing for all of us to be able to kind of have good closure and good memories to cap off a very dark time in that. And you have that precious gift that he gave you with you always. Do you still use that guitar? I do. People ask me all the time they're like you would never get rid of that guitar I'm like there is no money in the world worth at that guitar. Do you use it on stage any? I don't it was a so for guitar nerds it was a baby tailor because I was so young at the time that I couldn't get my arms around a big guitar so it is a mini version of a guitar so I don't use it on stage but I will play around with it and bring it out from time to time in it whenever I do play it so it's a very important piece to me. So from there and your teenage years but then you came to Nashville yes right after high school I had set my eyes on Nashville whenever I was about to sophomore in high school that was really when the switch flipped for me and I realized that music was what I was supposed to do and what I loved and what my passion was and so I started looking into Nashville and I found Belmont University here in Nashville Tennessee and coming from a Christian home and having that cushion of you know moving from a very small town to a big city is a scary thing but knowing that I was going into a Christian community that was full of people who could support me in that and be there for me was very comforting for me and I fell in love with Nashville when I visited here the first time and fell in love with Belmont and everything that they had there between the music business program that I attended but also just the community and the possibilities of you know what could happen within my career in music and developing in faith as I kind of grew along with that. At that time were you connected with people in the Christian or country music or Christian music industry or no? I really knew nobody when I moved to Nashville which I think is you know quite a lot of people's stories and we have a dream and we have a hope and and that is so powerful that we're willing to step completely out of the box into a new situation and just put ourselves out there and have to see what comes of it and that was very much so my experience. I had a couple of friends from back home who had been to Belmont from time to time and so those were a couple of connections that I could lead on if I really got in a tough spot and needed somebody it was just starting from ground zero and building up from there. So your focus when you came to Belmont was just your education. So your focus on that you weren't really pursuing contracts or anything like that. Right. I knew that you know not everybody gets this time to really focus on this and develop and figure out what they want to do before then they jump into it and my parents told me from the very beginning they said when you go to school your job is to be a student and we want you to focus on that we want you to take in as much as you can we want you to learn and not have the stress of you know pursuing a career on top of being a student or pursuing a career on top of trying to find yourself because there's a lot of you know self reflection and all that kind of stuff that happens when you move away and you go to college and so I was fortunate to have that kind of environment and that stress taken away when I moved here I was chiseling away at you know becoming a better writer and meeting new people and trying to make connections but as far as stress of moving here and you have to make it in three months that wasn't a thing for me which I'm so grateful for and I really feel like that opened the doors for organic relationships to happen and people to fall into place that were supposed to be in my life that the Lord could bring to me at times which I'm so so grateful for. Did you have any challenges while you're in college? I mean absolutely I think everybody when they move away for the first time there's a lot of you know there's homesick and finding yourself but also you know there's the new temptations of being on your own and that newfound freedom and trying to figure out you know okay now I have this whole world in front of me you know what can happen and so coming from a very close family and then being 550 miles away from them was a challenge for me and something that I had to start navigating myself and figuring out but I was very fortunate to have a lot of people established very early on here in Nashville that were a good community for me and supporting me in that and kind of you know helping figure out and navigate the roads which was a blessing. You know I love how the Lord has given you the desires of your heart that you are just taking off in your career in music and we're going to talk about it when we get back. Paige your career is really taking off. You are so booked on dates let's talk about it. Well it has I mean right now we're working a single at country radio called Why God Made Small Towns and we just put out a music video for it and we're touring right now playing all kinds of shows and it really sometimes I'm like wait okay what day it is? What day is it? What is happening? Well when did it start? Because you were in college you graduated and then what happened? Right I started doing music full time in 2019 and so that was really when I started recording all of my first music I put out an EP that year which was really exciting my first official work of music out into the world and I started writing a lot and touring that year with my first single at country radio and then 2020 happened sadly and so I was off the road for a very long time and really just focused on writing which was all I could do then once things kind of started opening up and into 2021 I was grateful to be able to get back out on the road and it really it's just been all gas no breaks since then which I'm grateful for. Well in the midst of it you got married. Yes. What year was that? We got married April of 2022 we're coming up on our first anniversary which is crazy. First anniversary in the midst of all of this. Yes. I know I was crazy but it had to happen we were so in love. Well how did you meet your husband? We met at a concert actually which is the most cliche thing for an artist to ever say over spring break when I was back at home in North Carolina and had never known each other before and truly just saw something in him and so I was leaving the next day to come back to Nashville and he was in North Carolina and we kept in contact over the next couple of months and then when I went home for summer break that year he took me out on a date and there was no looking back after that. And how long after that did you get married? We were together almost five years before we got married so all throughout the time that I was getting on my feet in music and it's just he's the best and the biggest supporter and just a gift, truly a gift. Well tell me about the song God, what is it God made? Why God made Small Towns. What was the inspiration behind that song? My friend and I, Mike, we write together a lot and we wrote the song actually during the very thick of the shutdown in 2020 and we were FaceTiming and I was back in my hometown in North Carolina and we were just kind of talking about the way that we were raised and the places that we were raised and he grew up in a small town in Missouri and mine in North Carolina and even though we grew up thousands of miles away from each other I think everybody's experience in those small communities is kind of the same of being in places of very familiar places and people who are just rooting for you and whatever you're doing and supporting your dreams that's not something that you can recreate all the time and I'm just so grateful for being raised in a small community like that that is full of people that I've been able to lean on throughout my entire life and who have supported me from the beginning. Will you play a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. Welcome everybody. They are truly special places and I think there is a reason why God took a little extra time making those places. I love those. I love the small town. What do you think about Nashville and how it's growing? It is but you know what I've heard from the very beginning whenever I moved here this is a big city with a small town feel and it really is. It truly is especially being in the entertainment industry you tend to run into the same people and it truly does make you feel like you're in this small community within this craziness of a big city. It's so true. Sometimes you'll run into people and they know this person and that person it really is a small town but it's a small world too. It is. It truly is. So you've made a couple awards recently. Yes. Back in January at the Carolina Country Music Awards I was awarded Single of the Year for my song Baby Don't which I know you were talking about earlier. What's behind that song? It's actually an outside song so I was not a writer on this song but Pam Tillis sent it to me and she knew I was working on an album at the time and she found this song from some writers here in Nashville and really it would be a good fit for me and I fell in love with the energy and the just the fun sing-alongness of the song. How did you get connected with Pam Tillis? I still question that from time to time but she heard my song at the time called Just Like You that we were working on it was a nice little love song I wrote about my husband and she fell in love with my voice and really believed in me as a songwriter and so I ended up reaching out to my team here in Nashville and just kind of wanted to be involved in whatever way possible and ended up becoming the producer for three of my recent music videos and it's just crazy to have somebody who you looked up to as an idol and somebody who you want to base your career around to now call them a friend and a mentor and that's just amazing. We all women encourage other women especially as famous as she is but she sees that in you and I think we all should do that don't you think? Absolutely she's all about reaching down and helping the next person up and I wish there were more people like her in the industry and just in the world in general because she is truly a light. I love that so tell me what's going on do you want to just play all kinds of shows this year where playing a lot of new places I always challenge myself to play one new state every year and so this year we're playing Montana for the first time which I'm excited about and just continuing to this song has a long ways to go at Country Radio and hoping that continues to reach new people and the story and the message of the song continues to reach people's hearts and then kind of see what goes from there. Well Paige I am just so honored and excited that I got to sit down with you today. Thank you for having me. And I pray that you just huge success for you. Thank you. And I know you're going to be there. And very soon. My friend do you have a small town dream the Lord knows the desires of your heart trust him this is today's Nashville this is faith