MICHAEL JOHNATHON: Evening Song

Michael Johnathon

Evening Song

© 2006 Rachel Aubrey Music Inc. (767187001526)

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Folksinger Michael Johnathon's new CD is an Americana, folk, and bluegrass project filled with traditional instruments and a 22 piece symphony section. We call it Folkestral.

notes

“October is the month for painted leaves. We become more pensive in the twilight of the year ... Ah, the beauty of the last hour of the day!”
Henry David Thoreau

The Story of Evening Song

Native American fables are filled with tales of courage, bravery and love. One story that I learned while living in the Appalachian mountains was very moving.

It seems an Indian warrior, brave and true and a good hunter, fell deeply in love with a beautiful young maiden. She became the light of his soul, the spark in his spirit. But the love was not to be and soon she left to become the wife of another. The young warrior’s heart was broken, shattered into pieces.

That night, he stood upon a cliff and looked into the dark, rocky crags below. Behind him, his great grandfather, weak and slow with age, walked up from behind. Silently, they both stared into the dark abyss and, after a while, his great grandfather spoke:

“My son, look into that darkness below.”
The young warrior looked quietly as he contemplated his fate.

“Now look at the darkness above you.”
And the young man raised his eyes heavenward.

“See each star, shining so bright in the dark heavens?”
And the young man gazed into the starry night like never before.

“This is the resting place of your love,” said his grandfather.

“I don’t understand,” said the young man.

His great grandfather explained,

“My son, Love comes to us from the darkness below. It fills your heart and your spirit. When it is dies, it ascends into the heavens above.

The young man held his fist over his breaking heart.

“Each time a man falls in love and that love is broken and leaves him far away, this is where the spirit of love goes to rest. Each star in the heavens is the love that some one held in their heart until it was released back into the nightime sky.”

His great grandfather placed his arm around him and said,

“The end of love is really the beginning of love. When I look in the sky I search for the star that is the love I had for your great grandmother. Our love lives on long after us as a star in the nightime sky.”

This beautiful, old Indian tale became the basis of the lyrics for my song, Nightime Star. As I assembled the compositions for this album I was surprised to find that each one had a lyrical thread in common: Evening. All the songs are either about, set in or were written in the Evening of the day.

“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.

reviews

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  • Splendid dance w/ celtic, Appalachian, folk, bluegrass & even symphonic partners
    author: Bob Hall

    Review By Bob Hall 1/28/07 - Michael Johnathon’s Evening Song CD is a splendid dance with celtic, Appalachian, folk, bluegrass and even symphonic partners. He has appropriately described some of the music as “Folkestral”. All the songs are written by this gifted songwriter, and the arrangements, harmonies and instrumentation are as tasty as it gets. This album takes a number of twists and turns, but all the songs have an evening theme and there is a delicate interplay throughout, between the mandolin, banjo, dobro, fiddle and even the cello which is featured on My Baby. The CD begins with the moody Blue Highway, which starts off soft and subtle and then intensifies with vocal harmonies and instrumentation. The shortest song, which is unfortunate, at just over a minute is the delightful Mandarin Mandolins featuring Michael and Andy Leftwich of Ricky Skagg’s Kentucky Thunder. This eclectic mix of contemporary folk music includes a cowboy/gambler murder ballad (St. James Hotel), some bluesy banjo on In the Evening, a classical/gypsy mix on Midnight Symphony and the lonely and introspective Benediction and Empty Pillows. Personal favorites include the celtic and Appalachian influenced Go Laddy Go and the straightforward Sunday Song, about being satisfied and happy being at home on Sundays with nothing to do but enjoy the love of family and music.

  • A cozy quilt of tones and rhythms that warms you at dusk
    author: Joe Ross

    Playing Time – 57:32 -- We often hear acoustic country and bluegrass being fused. Michael Johnathon, on the other hand, has a vision for his “folkestral” music that incorporates elements from folk, blues, bluegrass and classical genres. A consummate touring folksinger who plays guitar, banjo and mandolin, “Evening Song” features 13 originals from Johnathon (with the other two from Bob Dylan and Leroy Carr). We certainly know what Michael’s favorite time of day is. His inspired eclecticism does have a common theme – all of the songs are either about, set in, or written in the evening. That’s interesting because his last album (“Homestead”) also included many similar reflective pieces in our about dimming light (“Winter’s Eve” and “The Homestead Suite”) with that album’s title cut telling a story of a peaceful autumn evening at home. The notes on Johnathon’s eighth album quote Henry David Thoreau about becoming more pensive in the twilight of the year and the beauty of the last hour of the day. Most of his songs are peaceful and contemplative. Others, like “Mandarin Mandolins” and “Go Laddy Go” impart a little liveliness to the melodic step. The nearly hour-long set closes with “Troubadour,” a meandering and presumably autobiographical sketch about the poetry that lives in his guitar and the “peaceful dreams in everything I sing.” The clever singer-songwriter and radio host (WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour) enlists the support of 18 others for the “Evening Song” project. Noteable bluegrassers include Rob Ickes (Dobro), Don Rigsby (mandolin), and Andy Leftwich (mandolin). Although liner notes don’t clarify who is playing when, Ickes’ playing is immediately recognizable in the breaks and fills. But with five different mandolinists contributing, players should have been credited on a song-by-song basis, and some personal notes about the inspiration for each song would have bee helpful. Others in the patchwork of sound provide cello, bass, violin, viola, French horn, fluglehorn, trumpet, saxophone, drums, percussion, jew’s harp and background vocals. His accompanists successfully dispense “song conversation” to the music. Evening Song’s nicely-arranged, multi-instrumental tones and rhythms resemble a cozy quilt that warms you by the woodstove at dusk. (Joe Ross, staff writer, Bluegrass Now)

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