I received a special card in the mail.  She never fails.

Paula Lincoln is a friend of mine.  I have known her since I was in high school.  Our first official introduction was when I looked at Mick Rutherford as an announcement was coming over the school intercom.  Mick and I were in English class and we just happened to have a substitute teacher that day.  An announcement came for all the choir members to report to the gym for a picture.  I looked at Mick and cleared my throat like any good choir member would.  I gave him the nod and he followed me out of the room.

We were not in the choir.  He asked where do we go now?  Paula Lincoln, listening to two brash 9th graders looked in our direction and barked “GET WHERE YOU BELONG!”  I swear there was fire coming out of her eyeballs when she said it.  We scurried back into English class and told the sub we decided to quit the choir that day.

Paula Lincoln turned out okay.  We got past that first meeting.  She was a great teacher and an even better friend.

Paula is sitting to my right in this picture.  Her husband Walt “Old Sport” Lincoln is to her right.  To my left are Kelly and Nancy Samons.  kKelly and I met in 1979. Jerry Brown, a guy who knew me long before anyone else in the picture is to your far right.  This was my birthday dinner in 2014.

Paula Lincoln always sends me a birthday card.  Without fail.  I turn 49 on March 18th.  She sent me another card.  She always does.  Though I have not kept all the cards she has sent me over the years, I have held on to a few that I will share with you.

In earnest, I think this was my 40th birthday.  I keep it not far from where I am typing these words.  I consider it a classic.

This was the one I received this year.  I hope I can Golf-a-Lot this year.  I hope the back holds out.

Some of the other cards I have gotten over the years are…

This was the 40th birthday.

This above was given to me when I graduated from college.

In the late 1993 the Nebraska Cornhuskers Football Team was taking a beating from the media because they were beating foes up and did have a relatively weak schedule compared to other schools and other conferences. I was sick of the criticism.  I say down and wrote Coach Tom Osborne a note of encouragement.  This was in November for sure.  In December I was delighted to receive this card.

Two summers ago I was inventorying football cards.  I came across some cards from 1990 or 1991.  Jack Elway was coaching a World League team…the Frankfurt Galaxy.  I had about five football cards of his.  I looked at them and decided then and there that these cards need to go to John Elway, Jack’s son.  A month and half later I got this card in the mail…

Below 2014 on the balcony at The Ryman to see The Moody Blues.

A few days later…

That day was in the cards, for sure.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Last weekend I put the closing chapters into an album of songs that are very important to me. I did not think I could be this pleased with a group of tunes.  It was a nice surprise.  I will say it here, as I have said it to a select few that I have discussed this with…though it is not the simplest thing to verbalized or write about.  For better or worse or good or bad I feel like I have finally found “my sound”.

That may seem odd.  It is not odd to me.  I got to music via a crooked road that I have written about in the past.  After my dear friend Malcolm Todd “Corner King” Lincoln, Sr. passed away in late August of 1997, I was reeling.  At the behest of my dear wife, Carrie (we had been married less than two years….she knows me well), I took up the guitar.  This was October 1997.  In August of 1998 I was in front of a church singing and playing songs that I had written. In the next few years I played a bit in front of some folks at a place or two.  I enjoyed it.  I did not enjoy the fact that for oh so many years I felt like I was trying to just plain keep up with everyone else around me I was playing or working on music with.

I never learned how to play the guitar very well.  I can, however, meld words and melodies that make sense and go well together.

For the longest time that was just not enough.  I was struggling trying to fit in to a musical sensibility that allowed me to be comfortable with everyone else in the room.  I just didn’t feel like I was worthy of being there.  Know that I have been, thanks in large part to my dear friend and recording partner, Jeff Carpenter, SURROUNDED by musical greatness from my first trip into the studio in 2001 until now.

In 2001 I found myself with a large combination of songs that I had written. The CD Leap of Faith was recorded. The songs were all over the board.  Rock, Country, Spiritual, Rootsy….I was glad to be in the room with them.  I had a friend with a great studio and we were off.  It worked as well as it could have.  I knew nothing about what I was doing.  I brought my songs played them and started taking orders.  Not thinking you belong at the grown-up table will do that.  The irony is that all these people were gathered together to make music because I was the one that brought the songs.  For me, it just still wasn’t enough.  I saw the talent they had as musicians and as people.  I felt I had no business to be playing in their ball park and I was the one pitching.  It was an opportunity and an experience that I will always be thankful for.  The song I wrote and sang about Lewis Grizzard was good to me.  I was on a television show in Georgia and I was awful.  I was so nervous and, yes, thinking I did not belong there.  Alex McRae was very kind to me that day.

In 2004 I had another sack of of songs that I had written.  I really liked them and I thought they were a leap of improvement.  One day I was talking to Jeff Carpenter and he mentioned to me that Tim Krekel had expressed interest in working with me.  What a compliment this was.  Tim had written hit songs for the likes of Crystal Gayle, Patty Loveless and was the lead guitar played for Jimmy Buffett during two different stints one in the 70s and one in th 80s.  Legend has it that Buffett was in Nashville looking for a new guitar player.  Also in the audience was Chet Atkins.  Atkins pointed at Krekel and told Jimmy Buffett he had found his guitar player.  Tim also toured as a member of Billy Swan’s band during the time he hit it big in 1974 with his classic “I Can Help”.  Ironically enough, that was the first song outside of church that ever got my attention.  It is on my IPOD.  It was on 790 WAKY when I was a kid.

So there I was.  Ready to record with a solid player and a rock solid band that included Mike Alger on drums, Jim Baugher on bass, Rod Wurtele on keyboards, and Jeff Guernsey on fiddle.  I was, once more, the guy who brought the songs and handed the process over to Jeff Carpenter and Mr. Krekel.  Who in the right mind would not do that?  The result was the CD The Best Thing You Did Yesterday and to this day I am very proud of it.  I brought the songs.  I turned my guitar over to Tim Krekel.  I did not play on it (save a couple songs added from sessions with Tim).  Krekel played the rhythm guitar and I sang when we recorded the rhythm tracks.  We did some signing together as backup on a few tracks and I am so glad we did.  We lost Tim in 2009.  It feels like much longer than that.

While I will cherish the time I spent with the people that made The Best Thing You Did Yesterday (finished in 2006) what it was and that result, I still have a bit of a disconnect to it artistically. You may think that is hard to believe coming from the songwriter.  I was still in Minnie Pearl mode….I was just proud to be there.  And you better believe I was.

It is now 2017.  I have recorded 16 new tunes.  Not sure what the collection will be called.  Don’t want to think about that right now.  I want to sit here and enjoy it.  I am sad that the process of recording is over.  I am elated that I feel like I was in the conversation and had a thumbprint on every aspect of this recording including playing acoustic rhythm guitar.  I go back to the first paragraph… For better or worse or good or bad I feel like I have finally found “my sound”.    I was comfortable speaking up and giving my 2 cents.  I was there for every session….every instrument that added…every time the red light came on I was there to help see it through.  I knew what I needed to hear.  That was when I knew I had found my sound.  It was a liberating time, I can tell you.  I did belong in the room.  I was at the grown-up table.  And I let me tell you…it was a nice table.

John Burgard helped me immensely.  He and I took the songs and gave them the direction they needed.  Thank you, John.  Oh, John was in a group that opened for The Rolling Stones at Louisville’s Memorial Auditorium.  A blues guitar master, I am proud to know him.  He has liked my songs since the start in 2001.

Barry King played guitar….and did so superbly.  His lead licks are very tasteful and pack a punch.  Barry played with Charlie Daniels.  He also went to Woodstock.

John Hayes played the drums.  He is a tap-happy drummer who has played with everyone in town and for good reason.  He hears it two beats before it gets there.

Jason Sturgill was a rock solid bass player.  He could not have done better.  Knew where the song was going at all times.  Was harder on himself than anyone could have been.  Great player.

Jeff Guernsey played fiddle and banjo and lead guitar.  He has appeared was here in 2001, 2006, and 2016.  This was the first time I had been there for his playing.  He has played with The Gatlin Brothers and was in Vince Gill’s band for many years.  He has a music school.  Good thing, given he is a virtuoso.

Rod Wurtele of The Wulfe Brothers has played on all of my recordings.  He is a master.  I wrote about him in a post I wrote in November when Millard Dunn came over for a session.  That too made things special.  Rod’s keyboard playing is just what I need to help fill in the space that is reserved for only him.

Robbie Bartlett and my sister, Lynn, sang backing vocals last weekend.  That is when we turned off the red light for the last time on this project.  They did a great job together.  They sounded like they had been singing together for years instead of meeting for the first time that afternoon.

Jeff Carpenter.  He is the man.  Engineer extraordinaire.  I thank him for his love of the music.  Thanks in part to Jefferson and all of the folks I have mentioned on this post, I found my sound.  How does that make sense.  It is more “our sound”.

Speaking the music rights.

Danny Johnson

I told a classic tale today.  It was framed around the Edward Hopper painting “Nighthawks”…the one in Chicago that still makes me nervous.

I caught our art teacher extraordinaire, David Shiner, heading out after school today.  He seemed genuinely interested when I told him I visited my old friend “Nighthawks” at the Art Institute in Chicago a couple weekends ago.  He was even more interested as I told him my near and dear association with the painting.  He agreed that a Hopper can “do that to you.”

What Nighthawks did for me was keep me out of trouble.  When I was in that 11th grade English class Hades that I was subject to, I was able to turn back to the period art in the back of the book and get lost in the microscopic rendition of the painting that was a scant few inches on a page in the book.  I got lost nonetheless.  It was pure mystery and well, fate, I suppose.

I enjoy art.  I do.  I want to know more about it.  I know that on a trip to The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis I saw some stuff that I could have taken a hammer to just to give the “modern art” an even more modern feel.  That is just me.  I enjoyed some of it.  I loved the “Spoon” in the courtyard.  The one with a big cherry on it.  You could look it up.

I suppose the best art I saw in Minneapolis that weekend in 2009 was the sculpture of Mary Tyler Moore that was on the street to commemorate the show in her name that was set in Minneapolis.  That and the play action fake bomb that Brett Favre threw to Sidney Rice after winding up as he rolled out to the right before he heaved the pass.  That was truly art.

Sorry Brett.  You have nothing on Edward Hopper.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

It has been over a week.  That is embarrassing.

I have had some great intentions of writing lately.  I really have.  I have also been very busy.  That is not a great excuse.  But it is the one I will use today.  I will have another tomorrow.

Last weekend my dear wife, Carrie, my brother Darrell and his wife Emily, and my sister, Lynn, and her daughter, Katie, went to Indianapolis to watch our North Harrison Lady Cats play in the State Championship basketball game for Class 3A in the State of Indiana.  We had a marvelous time…sort of.  It was more fun last year.  Last year it was that Minnie Pearl thing…we were just glad to be there.  This year there was much more optimism that the Lady Cats would be bringing home the big hardware.  It did not work out that way.  Losing stinks.  But…there are more ways to win than just on a scoreboard.  Our Lady Cats are winners.  Believe me.  They are winners.

I was a winner this past weekend…thanks to the Lady Cats.  Just like last year, the line-up of family I listed in the previous paragraph was together again.  We went to the game together.  We ate and laughed together.  We stayed at the same hotel together.  We stopped in Columbus, my birthplace, and we ate breakfast together.  We laughed.  We reminisced.  We enjoyed our time.  That is the way it is supposed to be.  Shame on us that ONLY the Lady Cats have ever done this for us…uh…two years in a row.  Am I glad we have a great basketball team?  Well, for obvious reasons, yes.  That they got me and my siblings together for two wonderful weekends will mean more to me than the trophies that will collect dust somewhere.  I do thank them.

I was asked if I would write anything up special on this team.  I could go on for days.  I feel like I did that last year on this very space.

I may put some pictures on one day.  By the way…Brilliance here left his SD card in this computer and packed an empty camera to the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indy where the Lady Cats played for a State Title.  Not good.

John Wetton

John Wetton died at the end of January.  You may not know the name.  You do know the voice.  I am sitting here listening to the John Wetton Official Bootleg Archive Vol. I.  6 cds of three concerts….one in Argentina and two in Japan.

John Wetton found his greatest commercial success when the first SUPER GROUP came on the scene.  A guy from Yes, Steve Howe, a guy from The Buggles and Yes, Geoff Downes, and Carl Palmer of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer fame joined with John Wetton, who had played in King Crimson and Uriah Heep, to form ASIA.  In 1982 and 1983 their sound was EVERYWHERE.  Heat of the Moment…Don’t Cry…The Smile Has Left Your Eyes…Hold Me Now…Only Time Will Tell.  Those were all great songs.  Though it never hit the radio…the song Heroine (the woman….not the drug…) is my favorite.  John Wetton at his best.

In 2008 this original line-up made a comeback (Heroine was on the return album PHOENIX) and made many more great albums.

I always wanted to see these guys.  Figured one day I would.  In 2009 they played in a small now defunct little joint in Indy.  It was in the middle of the week.  I wish I would have gone.

Between Justin Hayward and Elton John and John Wetton, I can tell you I have always had a soft spot for English guys whose songwriting appealed to me.

I love music.  That is why I make it.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

My dear wife, Carrie and I have spent a few days in Chicago.  I now share with you an few images and some commentary to go along with them.

A photo out the hotel window.  We are less than a block from Michigan Avenue on the Lake side.

I got to have a sit down with Johnny Carson at the Museum of Broadcast Communications.  Johnny is a nice guy.

Carrie told a few stories to Carson as well.  She was glad he had Lewis Grizzard on…twice.

This is the actual camera that caught Nixon looking less than graceful in his debate with John F. Kennedy, a debate that went a ways in making Kennedy even more likable.

I let out a sigh of relief when I found Captain Furrillo and the Sarge.

A Chicago legend, I listened to Larry Lujack when I was in high school.  He was on 89 WLS The Rock of Chicago.  It was AM’s last vestige of rock and roll significance.  I loved it.  When the sun went down I could pick it up 300 miles away.  When the sun was coming up…it would fade away as I listened.  It was a friend you tuned into when you knew you could.  Animal Stories was a bit he did with partner Tommy Edwards.  It was the greatest thing I ever heard on the radio next to this guy…

Listening to Jack Buck call a football game on the radio was pure significance.  His voice made each play sound like a time you needed to straighten up and pay attention to.  Class.  Pure class.  He and Hank Stramm did Monday Night Football on radio and it was wonderful.

The Chicago River.

A cup of coffee before going to The Art Institute this morning.

The Art Institute of Chicago.

Remember the painting Cameron looked at and stared at and stared a little bit more at?  The Seurat.

My dear Carrie admiring a piece of work.

Carrie looking at Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”.  This is my favorite piece of art in the the world.  I wrote about it many many posts ago.  It has been a friend to me. I keep a copy of it in my office.  We also have one at home.  I was 16 years old when this painting took me in.  Painted in 1942, I still get nervous before I walk in to gallery room 262 to see it.

Carrie and me by The Bean.

Speaking the Chicago rights…

Danny Johnson

Got a great deal of catching up to do.

I plan on doing just that this weekend.  I will have my camera ready.

There will be a picture or two.

One of my favorite movies was not a blockbuster.  It was a story about how a father and son communicated back and forth on a HAM radio over a span of 30 years or more.  I know…but it was still a good story.  I really enjoyed it.  The movie is called “FREQUENCY”.

My two word title here is a nod to that movie’s grand climactic scene.

Speaking the Rights…

Danny Johnson

A friend of mine asked that I smoke a rack of baby backs on Super Bowl Sunday.  Make that FOUR racks of baby backs on Super Bowl Sunday.  My arm did not have to be twisted too much to acquiesce.  I was glad to do it for my old friend, Carl.

In my travels over the years I have seen both coasts of the United States with 2 folks…my Dad and Carl.  Know that my Granny and I saw the Atlantic Ocean together and we saw the Pacific Ocean as we were surrounded by it in Hawaii.  Deference goes to Granny.  I think Granny and Carl would have gotten along.

Take in there, Carl.

Carl has a friend.  Carl is the only one of his kind that gets preferential treatment from the hound Hot Rod.  Hot Rod loves his vittles too.  Hot Rod has a weakness in the extremeist for carrots.  I have no doubt that Carl is glad of that.

Hot Rod does love his carrots.

I mean he REALLY loves his carrots.

Hot Rod is a good one.  He loves his carrots

Thanks to my dear wife, Carrie, for helping Hot Rod and me tonight.

WHAT ABOUT THE SUPER BOWL?

How many folks told me they went to bed after the 3rd quarter.  I wish I were one of them.

Love them or hate them, you got to give Brady and Coach B their due.  I don’t want to watch this the rest of my life.  I am afraid we will hear nothing but PATS for a very long time.  This one put it over the top…even for us PATS nonconformists.

If only Hot Rod and Carl had been there to keep the Falcons cool last night.

Oh well.

Speaking the rights…with the help of Carl, Carrie, and Hot Rod…

Danny Johnson

At this moment I am listening to the new mix of the music I sang on last weekend.  All I can say is …Wow.  Jeff (Jefferson) Carpenter knows how to turn those knobs.   I sang about it.

Thanks to goes to all the players on this thing.  I am not going to mention them all individually right now.  That day will come.  Right now I am enjoying their gift of music and the way they bring the music forth.  It is truly amazing.  Did I say I was fortunate?  I just sit here and shake my head.  Maybe one day a few of you will get to hear some of this.

Tonight is a big night for the North Harrison Lady Cats.  They are playing the Charlestown Lady Pirates  for an Indiana High School Sectional Championship.  The winner gets to move on to the Regional, ironically at Charlestown next week.  The winner gets to keep playing.  The winner gets the good sweet memories.  The winner also gets a nice trophy to put in the school’s trophy case.  Last night the Lady Cats dismantled the Corydon Pantherettes 55 to 11.  With that game well in hand in the third quarter, my dear wife, Carrie and I headed to the exit.  We drove into the cold Southern Indiana night sky…dodging a few deer on the way…to the Class A Orleans Sectional.

There were a few seconds left in the 1st period as the West Washington Lady Senators, coached by my old friend Darrin Russell, took on the Medora Lady Hornets when Carrie and I got there. They just stopped collecting the 6 dollar admission.  We were not disappointed with that.  The game was not a match.  West Washington won easily.  But I can tell you that the Medora team, small and mighty, did not give up.  They did not quit.  They did a great job.  I was proud of them and my friend, Brad McCammon, their coach.

Right now I am listening to a cover tune we recorded.  It is the first of such I have ever attempted to undertake.  I recently heard a nationally famous recording ladyperson say how singing the National Anthem was difficult.  Like many I have heard talk about singing it they call it a “hard song to sing”.  I have never thought that.  I have sang that song on occasion.  It is a pleasure to sing.  The song, no matter the national horizon, is still “our song”.  I enjoy singing it and I don’t think it is difficult.  Singing the chorus of “Nights in White Satin” is much more demanding.  I just listened to myself sing it.  We pulled it off.  But…it sounded like paint was being gently ripped away (in a good way) as that chorus was going on.  It sounds good…but man is it a powerful tune.

I suppose it is what you put into it.  It’s like that for most things though, isn’t it?

The greatest compliment I ever received from singing came from my friend Pat Bahan, a former Army Ranger, when I sang the National Anthem at a high school basketball game.  Pat told me it was the best rendition of the song he had ever heard.  He said that is how it was meant to be sung.  Hearing those words was a humbling experience…but one I will treasure.  He didn’t have to say it.  He did.  He didn’t have to mean it.  He did.  That is what makes it so very special.

And so it goes.  The song of life keeps playing along.  We all have an important stanza to offer.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

There are no pictures of the studio to share.  I am glad there aren’t.  It was not about pictures yesterday at Al Fresco’s Place Recording Studio.  It was all about music.  It was all about songs.  I did some singing.  I did more singing than I ever planned to.  Some times you just have to follow the music.

My dear wife, Carrie and I showed up at Jeff Carpenter’s studio Sunday afternoon and the intent was to sing a few of the songs over again that we had already recorded.  It is a common practice in recording.  You do what is called a “rhythm track” first.  This is getting the drums, bass, and rhythm guitar parts in order to form the foundation of a song’s sound.  When you are pleased with that you decide what other parts can be layered on.  A lead guitar piece where you left room for as you were making the rhythm track…or some supplemental keyboard here or there…an organ bit…some fiddle…some banjo….whatever you can imagine. Perhaps even a triangle.

When the music layers are added and you feel good about that, you then go forward with re-singing in order to get a stronger vocal performance.  This time was a bit different in that regard.  The thing is we were pretty happy with the sound of some of the vocals on the original tracks.  They had a nice feel.  They were, shall we say, in the groove.  We looked at each other and wondered if we could do better…if I could do better singing again.

Well…it worked out.  I found a groove.  I found the pocket. I put on my headphones and heard sounds I had never heard before.  My voice, for whatever reason, responded in kind.  In three hours I must have sang twelve songs or so.  My voice was being pushed and it pushed back.  I would sing a song and drink some tea and sing another song and drink some more tea and sing another one harder and grittier than the last and I would drink some more tea.  It sounded so so good in my ear.  I sang my heart out and I doubt any of it will ever sound as good to anybody as it did for me in that moment.  Me included.  It was a beautiful thing to be a part of.

I truly think a few people listening to it will agree that it is the bet work we have done yet.  I was 33 years old the first time I recorded.  That was sixteen years ago.  Nearly a third of my life ago.  That is frightening.  Still, I could not be more pleased and thankful to have a great recording partner in Jeff Carpenter.  He knows what buttons to push on the control panel and the ones in me.  He can take my voice places I did not know existed.  I thank my Mom and my Dad and the rest of my genetic code for the ability to sing.  I thank Jefferson Carpenter for bringing that ability out in ways I never dreamed were possible before I met him.

My favorite song in this collection is called “That Sky”.  I wrote it on March 25, 2016 in Topsail, North Carolina.  It was inspired by a sky Carrie and I had witnessed the previous October near where we were sitting in March.

Though pictures can’t do that sky justice, I knew the night I saw it I would be carrying it with me…forever.

Me remembering, longing for, and writing about that sky.

And now I sing about it.

And speak the rights about it.

Danny Johnson

In my home office there is a basketball goal.  I bought it for my brother-in-law, Stevarino.  It remains here.  As I type he is waging war against the basketball goal I got at a great price thanks to Sams Club.

I just tried to take a picture of it…but my camera is out of battery!

I did make a shot, finally.

Good Shot!

That reminds me of the guy that got thrown out of the Greensburg, Indiana movie house.  He was watching Bambi.  When Bambi’s mom got killed he got up and hollered “Good Shot!”  That was not good.  But it is legend.

Legend.  That is a great word.

Do you know any legends?

I hope you do.  And instead of me talking about some…go think of a few.

And in turn…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson