JAMEY JOHNSON FEATURE - The Chicago Sun Times
Country Music Fest returns to Grant Park with hot lineup
10/2/09
BY BOBBY REED
Call it a homecoming. The Chicago Country Music Festival returns to Grant Park this weekend with 32 acts on four stages, plus a fifth stage devoted to dance instruction. The fest temporarily moved to the Soldier Field Parkland last year, drawing more than 100,000 fans. Now the fest is back where it was held every summer from 1992 to 2007 (as part of the Taste of Chicago).
CHICAGO COUNTRY MUSIC FESTIVAL
• 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
• Petrillo Music Shell and other stages near Jackson Boulevard and Columbus Drive
• Free
• (800) 745-3000; www.centerstagechicago.com/festival/countrymusicfest.html
This year's fest could be dubbed a celebration of the songwriter. Many country stars primarily rely upon professional tunesmiths to provide them with songs, but that isn't the case for the four acts performing at the Petrillo Music Shell.
All the Petrillo acts are known for writing their own material: philosophical outlaw Jamey Johnson (6 p.m. Saturday), Texas firecracker Miranda Lambert (7:30 p.m. Saturday), alt-country icons the Flatlanders (6 p.m. Sunday) and John Rich, who rose to fame as half of the duo Big & Rich but will play with a full band to promote his solo album "Son of a Preacher Man" (7:30 p.m. Sunday).
Jamey Johnson lives to sing about it
Johnson was country music's most unusual breakout star of 2008. With his dark-tinged album "That Lonesome Song," he pulled off the elusive feat of pleasing critics, radio programmers and industry powerbrokers. And he did it with music strongly influenced by Waylon Jennings, and lyrics that reference marijuana, cocaine, prostitutes and incarceration. This ain't fluffy kid stuff.
Johnson's roller-coaster career has including crushing lows and stellar highs. While he was struggling to make it as a musician in Nashville, he worked in construction. At one point, he vowed to try for six more months and if nothing happened, he'd move back to his home state, Alabama, to pursue another profession.
"I would've given up on it," Johnson said via telephone from Nashville. "You beat your head against the wall for as long as you can hack it, and then you just quit and start focusing on something else. Music is nothing to stress out over. The music business, on the other hand, can just about kill you if you let it."
Johnson eventually got signed by a major label, BNA, but his troubles weren't over. His debut, 2006's "The Dollar," was an uneven but commercially viable effort, and its title track was a hit single. Despite this success, BNA dropped him. After a reclusive period of lying low, he recorded a group of songs and posted them on his Web site. Executives at Mercury Nashville liked what they heard, signed Johnson and released "That Lonesome Song" last summer.
Between the release of those two albums, Johnson entered a phase of introspection and creativity that would drastically alter his life.
"I had quit drinking probably a month or two before I got dropped from BNA," Johnson recalled. "I was in the middle of a divorce, and I didn't want to wake up one day and feel like I had made a bunch of horrible decisions because I had stayed drunk all the time. If you're going through something like that, and you're putting too much alcohol in your system, you might be hurting yourself worse than you realize. So I laid off of it. I didn't hang out in bars with all my friends. I just stayed at the house. I wrote my songs. I dealt with life and the things that were going on around me, as opposed to trying to hide from them. By the time it was all finished, [the 14 songs on] 'That Lonesome Song' were there."
Johnson's single "In Color" climbed into the Top 10, and he became an unlikely star, heralded as a voice of authenticity.
Johnson dominated the Nashville Scene's 2008 country music critics' poll, and he is nominated in four categories at this year's Country Music Association awards show, taking place Nov. 11.
Comments
Going down in November. I cant wait. We are Third row. This is a great birthday gift. A hotel room, concert, and wiskey.
Hey Jamey, Saw you at Coyote Joe's in Charlotte. Best concert I've seen in years. I'll be at Dorton Arena On Oct 19th. Give a heads up to fans during the concert that we need to flood the radio stations with e mails and phone calls to hear JJ songs and not that bubblegum country _ _ _ _. When is the new CD to hit the market?? I've wore my That Lonesome Song CD slap out!! See ya in Raleigh with 14 of my fellow JJ fans.
After meeting Jamey several times and sending some time with him talking about life in general. It is no suprise that there is no limit to what he can do. He holds a wealth of information and ideas in that head and time will is on his side. Stay safe brother and we will see a couple more times before the year is out. ps. Try to keep Cowboy straight.
I love Jamey's music and so it seems does a lot of others and still it is like pulling teeth to get the radio stations to play it. It seems that he has not only won over us but his fellow musicians as well. Darryl Worley has him in his video and so does Miranda Lambert. I would like to see him in his own videos. What is wrong with these people who are making these decisions. I prefer to hear real music as opposed to just a catchy tune that is shallow. I don't understand why the radio stations can't play everyone that has a new cd out. Let the audience decide. We have to let them know what we want to hear. It seems that they are all a little slow on the uptake because I have to call every day to get them to play Jamey once a day. I just don't understand it. From all the positive reviews and all the fan comments that I have seen I am not the only one who feels this way, why aren't they listening?
Hopefully it is not raining tomorrow night! Hoping to see Jamey at 6 at Grant Park besides at Joe's at 11pm.
I have to restate this--"Jamey Johnson dominated the Nashville Scene's 2008 country music critics' poll, and he is nominated in four categories at this year's Country Music Association awards show, taking place Nov. 11. " Let's get the radio stations aware of this fact and get them to play Jamey's songs!! As always, I send my best wishes for Jamey's success!!
This sounds like a great event and I wish that I could attend. Just cannot get enough of him... :-)