Jazz singer/songwriter Karen Johns writes and performs sultry, swinging jazz standards. Her
co-writers and arrangers include Lori Mechem (founder of the Nashville Jazz Workshop), Justin Kessler, Joel Bolen, and Jim Hoke. As is custom with all of her studio work (though Lucky Day is Karen's second jazz album, it is her sixth CD album overall), everyone of the Karen Johns album projects render recorded performances by some of Nashville and the international music industry’s finest session players including saxophonist/instrumentalist Jim Hoke (Mark Knopfler/Dire Straits, Alan Jackson, Billy Joel, Don Henley, Emmylou Harris, NRBQ...); drummer Chad Cromwell (Mark Knopfler, Neil Young, Peter Frampton, Amy
Grant...); bass player Luis Espaillat (Lava/Atlantic Records); harmonica player Mickey Raphael (with Willie Nelson for over thirty years); drummer/engineer Mark Niemiec
(Grammy Award nominee, 2001); violinist Aubrey Haynie (Clint Black, Dolly Parton, Ricky Skaggs,George Jones, Martina McBride, Porter Wagoner...); pianist/composer/conductor Ken Moore (Steve
Earle/MCA); Nashville producer, engineer, musician Scott Baggett; Canadian flutist, Vania Levans;
Venezuelan lyricist Ingrid Petit; and Costa Rican guitarist/percussionist Laurence Fernandez.
Together with her husband, James Johns (producer/songwriter/engineer/musician), under the project name of Karen Johns Band, they wrote, recorded and produced their first three CD albums on Music Row (RCA
Studio B, Omni, Sanctuary Sound). Later, in their own recording studio, they produced her last three albums on location in Saskatchewan, Canada; Nashville and Franklin, Tennessee.
In 1998, the Johns couple and their two sons, departed for four years to attend graduate school in Canada.
In that time, Karen graduated from Canadian Theological Seminary with a Master of Arts degree, produced
an international band with members from Canada, Costa Rica, Kenya, and the US; and began writing, producing, and filming a joint Canadian/USA documentary film: Profiles from Womb to War.
Karen Johns was born in Washington state and raised in Alaska. Since early childhood and well into her
college years, she studied classical and modern ballet, acting, theater performance, and music. Karen studied voice with Gloria Marinacci (Bella Donna: Portland Opera and Anchorage Civic Opera), and she graduated from the Alaska Conservatory of Music. By the time she was eighteen, Karen was Alaska State Champion Actor (solo acting, duet acting, dramatic interpretation), a member of the All-Northwest Choir, the recipient of three performing arts scholarships, and a lead actor and singer in professional musical theater, dinner theater, and light opera. Karen began her undergraduate studies at San Francisco State University. She later transferred to University of Oregon in Eugene, majoring in Music, minoring in Journalism; she studied voice under Dr. Leslie Breidenthal, and Dr. Richard Clark. She was accepted into
the Danish Inernational Studies program at University of Copenhagen in Denmark, Europe. There she traveled throughout Germany, Sweden, Russia, Czechoslovakia, and
Israel. Karen returned to the University of Oregon,
School of Music. After her return, she was the recipient of the Phi Beta Patrons Scholarship for Performing
Arts; and won a number of performing arts scholarships in the pageant arena as Miss Lane County, and Second Runner-up to Miss Oregon. After University, Karen cultivated songwriting and worked with cover and original bands in Oregon, Arizona, and Alaska. She eventually moved to Seattle where she met her husband, also a songwriter, musician and engineer. Karen and James married and
moved to Nashville, Tennessee. There they developed an independent record label and publishing
company; and founded FaithSongMission, a music publishing division in international missions, domestic and prison ministries (FaithSongMission.com).
Karen Johns has also recorded numerous lead vocals for Stormworks Productions film soundtrack
recordings by composer/conductor Stephen Melillo. Her recorded rendition of the ballad, “I Never Had a
Love Like You”, was featured in the Miramax motion picture, Benefit of the Doubt, starring Donald
Sutherland and Amy Irving.
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