Robby Johnson From Quebec to Nashville, and back
What happens when a boy from the Beauce moves to Nashville? In the case of Robby Johnson, the answer surprised even him.
“It’s not like I was a singer and I wanted to sing all my life,” Johnson recalled. “It’s more like I’m a creative guy that happened to write songs and sing them wherever.”
Self- described as a guy who would write songs to sing in the shower, the factory worker-turned rising country star said that he never dreamed of a career in music until his wife pushed him out of his comfort zone.
“My wife decided to pay for a demo session as a Christmas gift,” he said. “To me, I am not a singer and really not an artist, and I thought it was the worst gift ever.”
Still, a gift is a gift, so Johnson went into the studio in Montreal with what he said was a “feel-good song.”
“We didn’t go in to cut a hit,” he said. “I just wanted to have fun and then be done with it.”
Things didn’t go exactly according to that plan. According to Johnson, the recording team loved his work and encouraged him to take his sound to the homeland of country music. Before long, he said, the family had moved to Tennessee and things in his life changed dramatically.
“It went really good, and a lot faster than everyone thought,“the musician said, explaining that record label representatives told him it would take five to ten years to make a name for himself, but he found himself flying high after only a year and a half. “It was crazy; the first time I was on TV was The Late Show with David Letterman,” he said, adding that his first real performance that wasn’t part of one showcase or another was opening for Keith Urban in front of 35,000 people.
Asked about how he came to be writing English country songs as a rural Quebecois man, Johnson explained that the answer is twofold. On one hand, he has always felt a strong connection with country music; citing Garth Brooks as a major influence on his work, and on the other hand he has a lot of family in Conneticut and a longtime love of American culture.
“I was practically raised by sitcoms and movies,” he joked.
More seriously, Johnson said that although he loves his mother tongue and is currently working on a French-language project, the reality of writing songs in French is just not the same.
“The first songs that I wrote are French, but in English you can sing about anything and it sounds cool,” the musician said adding that because of the interaction with the melody, “there are many words that you would never be able to pull off in a French song.”
Johnson is among the headline acts at Sherbrooke’s Fete du Lac-des-nations this summer, set to play the Lotto Quebec main stage on the night of Thursday, July 19. Looking ahead to that performance, however, the country star said that he won’t be coming alone.
“It’s going to be a party with friends,” Johnson said, explaining that in addition to playing all of the top 30 hits that he has come to be known for and well loved country classics, he will also be joined by Quebecois artists Gregory Charles, Marie-mai, Corneille, and Wilfred Lebouthillier.
“It’s going to be an incredible show,” he said, noting that although his lineup of guests includes some high profile local artists, it also represents a kind of homage to his own musical journey. Lebouthillier, for example, played alongside Johnson the very first time he came back to play a show in Quebec, while Corneille co-wrote the bilingual single that has been released for Johnson’s upcoming French album.
Although Johnson highlighted the significance of each of his friends’ involvement in the Lac-des-nations show, it is the participation of Gregory Charles that has, perhaps, the greatest significance for the musician’s current plans for the future because he credits the artist with inspiring him to really try writing songs in French after the two created a mash-up of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and the Quebec classic “La Bitt à Tibi.”
“It was his idea and at first I didn’t think it was going to work, but it turned out perfectly,” Johnson recalled. “I sang in French, and that’s when it confirmed for me that I wanted to sing in French. I’d had the idea, but still I wasn’t sure.”
Johnson and his friends start playing at 10:30pm, after the evening’s fireworks. They represent one of 24 different musical performances being given at the festival site between July 17 and July 22. More information about the festival is available at http://fetedulacdesnations.com/en/