As I prepared for this week my thoughts turned to an old friend who happened to be a big Country music record executive. (I refuse to drop names in just about every post) We met by accident and continued to talk and even help each other for many years. In fact, I recommended an artist that he came very close to signing. One lesson I learned about him was that the Country music artist was about 40% artist and 60% business person. It was important to sell music to a fanbase, but also to sell your time, energy and other resources to commercial enterprises. Yes, the Country music artist had to be marketable. He went on to show me examples of artists who had deals with Wrangler Jeans, Chevrolet and other large companies. The money had to be ahead of the music.
Those memories came back very clear as I examined the interesting life and career of young singer/songwriter Paige King Johnson. The more I read, the more I saw what my friend told me yeas ago. You see, it was difficult at times to show young artist the importance of working hard to market themselves, and in turn for them to understand the need to do so. The great artists of Country music did it and it kept them on top. Young Paige King Johnson is a lot like those great musicians. In fact, she has been like them for a while.
Johnson’s drive to entertain started at a very young age after she received a special gift from her grandfather. “My grandpa bought me my first guitar for Christmas when I was 10-years-old,” recalls Johnson, whose middle name King is her grandmother’s maiden name. “I’d been taking piano lessons along with my sister and singing in church. I enjoyed music, but I had never really taken it to the next level. My grandpa really encouraged me. I started to get a feel for guitar and was getting more into music and then the following Easter my grandpa passed away. I took that as my sign that I really need to put my head down and put some effort into the whole music thing because he had so much belief in me. He really was excited to see me learn guitar and see where it took me. So that was really when I started to get serious about music.”
Having that encouragement and relationship with her grandfather was a wonderful thing for Paige King Johnson. For any child I think it is important to know and enjoy grandparents. I have been blessed to watch my own grandchildren grow up and hope to see them become adults. Of course, sometimes it does not work out that way, but the memories are lasting. The love and encouragement from grandparents goes a long way in a child’s development.
Johnson began performing around her hometown and building a reputation as a gifted young entertainer. “I fell in love with singing and I started playing out. From then on out, I knew music was going to be a part of my life in some sort of capacity,” says Johnson, a three-time Carolina Music Awards nominee. “As things started to progress and I started playing more shows, people were saying, ‘Okay, you are actually good! You’re not just a little kid playing around,’ and I was like, ‘Okay well maybe this is something that I’m supposed to be doing.’”
The entrepreneurial spirit also began to develop for Paige King Johnson. As mentioned earlier in this post, that is the element that separates the good artists from the great ones. It is what propelled artists like Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and others to very long and successful careers. Yes, it appears that Paige King Johnson might be such an artist. The 23-year-old launched a dinner theater in her North Carolina hometown while still in high school, providing the local community some well-deserved entertainment while simultaneously sharpening her business and performing skills.
“I started that actually when I was a sophomore in high school,” Johnson says of Country on the Outskirts of Town in Angier, NC. “We have a five-piece house band that we put together and we’ll do two-hour shows. It’s mostly classic country covers mixed with some newer stuff mainly by myself and two other singers. We are the main people who play every single show and we may have a guest artist or musician come in. We serve a catered meal beforehand and then we do a live show.”
The pandemic came along and plans changed drastically for live venues, including Johnson’s dinner theater. However, the young artist persevered and was able to eventually deliver live music once again. She put together her own music festival, the Country Yard Party. “We knew that we couldn’t really do it like we normally would so we had to postpone it a little bit,” she admits, “but we were able to work with our town, our county’s health dept and our county’s Sheriff’s department to figure out how we could do it safely. We finally got everything put together and we were able to do it. It went really well. We were just happy to have some kind of live show.”
Signed to PCG Artists Development Records, headed by accomplished industry vet Bernard Porter, Johnson released her debut single/video, “Water Down the Whiskey,” in 2019. The song immediately drew attention thanks to her personality-packed vocal performance and the way she enthusiastically embraced promoting the project. “Last year, being able to be out on the road and doing a radio tour with my first single and everything that came with that with releasing the music video, it really solidified my thoughts that this was what I was made to do,” she smiles. “I had the time of my life being able to travel around and visit radio stations and play different shows all over everywhere. It was a good first taste. I was super excited for this next year and had a lot of cool shows planned and then it all got ripped out from underneath me, but it makes me so excited for what’s to come once things get back to normal.”
Paige King Johnson knows music is her future. “There’s no plan B. There’s only plan A and that’s music,” she says. “No matter what capacity it is, I’m going to be doing it because it’s in my blood. I love playing music. I love writing music and I love getting to play shows and all of that, but I know that growing up in a household where my parents started a small business and kept that business running, I know the sheer realities of economics. At the end of the day, the music industry is still a business and it’s my career. I know if I want to be able to do this as a career that I’m going to have to work my tail off and do things like Dolly and Reba and create avenues anywhere and everywhere I can.”
“This is my time,” she says confidently. “I’m going to do everything that I can to prove to everybody else and prove to myself that I’m supposed to be here. This is what I was made to do. For the past two years, I’ve been doing music full time. Some days it’s a struggle. It is a challenge and it will beat you down to the ground, but I keep coming back for more. I know that there is nothing else that I want to do.”