“Take the inventiveness of BOB
DYLAN, the melodic voice of JOHN DENVER, add the
showmanship of GARRISON KEILLOR and that’s MICHAEL
JOHNATHON.”
Bob Spear - Publisher, HEARTLAND REVIEW
Bio
Michael Johnathon is a folksinger, songwriter, concert
performer, author ... and now playwright ... who has a worldwide
radio audience approaching a million listeners each week. He
also created the world’s first multi-camera weekly series
broadcast on the Internet.
This ‘Woody Guthrie in a Cyber World” grew up in upstate New
York along the shores of the Hudson River. At 19 years old, he
moved to the Mexican border town of Laredo, Texas and found a
job working as a late night DJ on KLAR-FM. One night, he played
Turn, Turn, Turn by the 60’s folkrock group The Byrds. As the
song played, he recalled seeing Pete Seeger and Harry Chapin
performing in his Dutchess County hometown in New York. By the
time the song ended, he decided to pursue a career as a
folksinger.
“While folksinging, delightful
guitar picking, and environmental concerns have
defined his professional life, this popular
songwriter has embraced the modern age in a very
unique way. His new Homestead album creates a warm
James Taylor-like, homestyled musical storytelling."
Jonathan Widran - All Music Guide |
Two months later, he bought a guitar and a banjo and settled
into the isolated mountain hamlet of Mousie, Kentucky. For the
next three years, he traveled up and down the hollers of the
Appalachian mountains knocking on doors and learning the music
of the mountain people. Michael experienced hundreds of front
porch hootenannies throughout Appalachia where folks would pull
out their banjos and fiddles, sit on their front porches with
him and play the old songs that their grandparents taught them.
Soon enough, he began performing concerts at hundreds of
colleges, schools and fairs. He performed two thousand Earth
Concerts, plus benefits for the homeless, farm families, and
shelters helping battered women and children. In all, he sang to
over two million people in one four-year stretch. Billboard
Magazine headlined him as an “UnSung Hero.” He has been featured
on CNN, TNN, CMT, AP, Headline News, NPR, Bravo and the BBC.
Aside
from touring, writing and recording he continues work on create
new projects. A few years ago, Michael released his first book
and CD gift set called WoodSongs. The book included the 16-song,
all-acoustic WoodSongs compact
disc. The musical highlight of the album is a duet of a
mountain song titled New Wood that he performs with the
legendary Odetta and an eight piece cello section. Other
featured musicians on the CD include Grammy winning banjo master
JD Crowe, Appalachian icon Jean Ritchie and others.
The success of the WoodSongs book
and CD resulted in the creation of radio’s only syndicated
live-audience program dedicated to brilliant but unknown
artists. The show, called the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour, is
recorded each week before a theatre audience and broadcast on
over 460 stations from Australia to Boston to Ireland with well
over one million listeners tuning in each week. The multi-media
folk program is completely run by volunteers and available as a
syndicated radio show plus online streaming, archiving,
podcasting and now as a national TV series airing on PBS
stations in 2006.
Michael's
seventh album, HomeStead was
released in 2004 with Sam Bush, Rob Ickes, Ronnie McCoury, Mike
Cleveland, John Cowan and banjo master JD Crowe helping out. His
live CD was released in 2005, recorded with friends like Sweet
Honey In The Rock and others.
The new Evening Song album is an Americana, folk and bluegrass project filled with acoustic guitars, banjos, dobros and mandolins. Some songs are complimented by the rich classical texture of a real 22 piece orchestra section of violins, violas, cellos, and
French horns. He calls the musical style Folkestral.
His latest project is the performance theatre script for "WALDEN: The Ballad of Thoreau". It is a two-act, one set, four character play about the final two days Henry David Thoreau spent in his cabin at Walden Pond. For information about the play and script samples visit
www.WaldenPlay.com.
Write Michael
Michael loves to hear from folk and Woodsong's fans. E-mail him
at michael@woodsongs.com
Michael in Concert
Interested in having Michael perform a concert in your area?
Contact his booking agent, PoetMan Records USA at 859-225-4020
