Howdy Folks!
Yep, its been awhile, but I guarantee you that our time has not been wasted. As you know, our last releases were James and my CD Singles and a couple of related Samplers back in 2012. In December of that year my friend Bart Plantenga's follow-up book on the history of global yodeling "Yodel In HiFI" was published. The timing was just right because I was holding up publication of my music anthology, "I Just Wanted to Be A Songwriter, A Mike Johnson Music Anthology" so that I could include part of my profile from his book. Happy to say that I'm on pages 30 & 31 in "Yodel In HiFi" with a photograph of a very young me looking country to the bone! Also included were photographs I had taken of some other yodelers I had known, McDonald Craig, Janet McBride, and Donna Hyland immediately come to mind.
"I Just Wanted to Be A Songwriter, a Mike Johnson Music Anthology" published in December 2012 with over 300 pages of nearly everything that has ever been written, published, produced about and by me from 1981 to December 2012. And yes, it does include page 30 of my "Yodel In HiFi" profile, as well as mine and James' CDs #41 and #42. Though me and my brilliant young musician were supposed to be working on our albums we basically spent most of 2013 rehearsing and performing locally. James went off to college out of town in the Fall and I started formulating our albums. Things started off kinda rocky in 2014 because of James being away, but in the summer we began swiftly making up for lost time. Long story short, we finished all of Master Vocals for James' 13-song CD "Old Time Country Songs Are They Really Dead and Gone?" in August 2014. Included is James' composition "Riversong" and our first co-write "Could Be the Whiskey Talkin'" He did such a great job on this that I decided that it had to be included. We also do a yodeling duet on "Your Old Lady Strut."
My 12-song CD "Doggone It I've Written a Sad Song Again" is absent any yodeling. I had one but wasn't pleased with my scratchy yodeling so I dropped it in favor of another sad song to keep with the theme. Our over-all theme and new label motto since James came aboard is "Keepin' the Traditional Sound Alive! Our scheduled release date for the new CDs is 15 November 2014. We've got some exciting songs featuring some exciting tracks, all of which were done by James, who also played all of the instruments except the fiddle. which was done by his good friend Michael Romans. We think you'll be more than pleased.
Mike Johnson, Roughshod Records
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