The newly released music CD entitled, “Lightning on the Earth” is a unique blend of country blues and contemporary folk songs. Clinton resident, Kevin Johnson has self produced a collection of original tunes and lyrics that sometime seem to border on the mystical. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Johnson has spent the last 20 years researching ancient culture, philosophy, natural health, sourdough bread baking and meditation. Recently, he’s taken to the art of writing songs about the advantages of living the simple life.
“Lightning on the Earth – Esoteric Folk Songs” was recorded and produced by Joel Whitten at the Metal Shed Studio in Baton Rouge. (It’s available at www.bluesandbread.newlibertyvillage.com.) The project began in early May after Johnson arranged a set of new material he’d written over the winter of 2011. Most of the songs are biographical in that they depict emotional challenges and hardships that have shaped and led he and his wife, Donna, to choose a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity.
“I wanted to write songs that poetically express issues that matter to me, rather than just telling stories.” he said. “A lot of the lyrics are ambiguous because they actually contain a couple of different meanings. The words can be interpreted in a number of ways.”
Several talented musicians assisted in the project, including Adrian Percy, “Fiddlin’ Doc” Chaney, Heather Feierabend and Alan Morton, all members of the local Americana Folk group, the Fugitive Poets. Also featured are Donna Johnson on baritone ukulele, Joel Whitten (bass & keyboard), his son Sam on drums, Steven Smith (lead guitar and harmonica), and Betsy Braud, an extremely gifted jazz flutist.
The title track, “Lightning on the Earth” is really a song about man loving woman with purity and integrity. Though it’s not a love song per se, the song is sort of a testimony to the spiritual love between a committed couple. The cover art was painted by Kevin’s daughter and depicts lightning striking a tree, the re-energizing connection between heaven and earth – male and female. On his blues and bread blog, Johnson writes, “I knew that song needed a female vocalist and that Heather had the perfect voice for it. She’s got that sweet country quality that makes the song credible.”
While in the process of working on the recording, Johnson said he kept thinking about the past, about all the incredible musicians who developed their skills watching and listening to other musicians, before radio and records. “What I really wished,” he said, “was that I could have heard my Grandfather, William Zurich Coglizer, play the fiddle. Since he died when I was very young, I never knew him. But he had an old German violin that was made sometime around 1870. After grandpa died the fiddle sat in the closet at my aunt’s house for 43 years, wrapped up in woolen cloth and duct tape. No one on that side of my family was interested in it, so one day I called my aunt and asked her if I could have it. Surprisingly, she packaged it up and mailed it to me last summer. I was absolutely stunned to see it for the first time and hold it in my hands. I wanted that fiddle featured on my new CD, so I asked “Doc” Chaney to play it on several of the tunes. When Doc played on the song “Hear Her Drawing Near” I just knew it was going to be one of the sweetest songs I’d ever recorded because of that fiddle.”
“To me, familiar songs bring back good feelings of a simpler time, but new songs give us hope for a brighter future.” Whatever economic conditions are unfolding in these challenging times, it will be those who come together in a sense of community and spirit of helpfulness that are going to get through it. This CD is filled with hope and vision for the dawn of a new and brighter world.
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