New Website and New Blog!

Our new website and blog is now up and running!

Visit www.TheJohnsonStrings.com ! Do it now!

We are so excited about the wonderful new website Luke has created for us!

Take note: After today, all my blog posts will be at our new website's blog! 

http://www.thejohnsonstrings.com/all-strung-out-johnson-strings-family-music-blog/ 

(Click on "All Strung Out" under the header at the top right of the site.)

I'd love to have you continue following us through our travels only this time, all the news I post will be on our blog on our website!

Remember! I'll be posting on most Tuesdays over at our website!

1 Juicy Tidbit & 2 Kansas Christmas Concerts

In December, we did a couple of Kansas Christmas concerts. 

Whadjaknow. The cold weather decided to travel with us! Sleet, ice, raining at 27 degrees, snow... stopping several times per hour to bang/scrape/knock off the windshield wipers...

It's a good thing we have an all-powerful God to protect us, a great dad to drive for us, and an interesting story tape to listen to as the hours multiply and the speed divides.

Recording update: It's practice mania around here, so watch out! You'll get your ears blasted. If you want some quite time, go sit in a vehicle outside - it's pretty warm out there!

One juicy tidbit: We  will soon have a Johnson Strings logo! It is super cool. Very unique, and lots of fun. Interested?

It's an ice sun!

 da big one.

da little one.

Our new website is scheduled to be released in LESS THAN 7 DAYS!!!

Have a wonderful day, serving our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Our NEW CD - Phase #1

A nice, long post to catch you up on the goings-on around Eighth Note Acres.

We are back! ...from our Christmas travels to Kansas, Missouri, and finally, Iowa again. It is good to be home... Not to say that we aren't extremely busy. We are. With our 5^th Johnson Strings CD being recorded this month and next, our practice times have not decreased at all. On the contrary: they will be happening all the more often!

News flash: our new website ran into a few snags, so it will not be released until the end of January. This also means that you don’t get to see our new pictures for a while.  :(

This is the first of many posts, striving in a way to bring you along with us in the long journey through preparing, recording, producing and finally releasing a new CD. You’ll get the inside scoop.

Phase One in the CD making process:

We have decided on the list of songs we will be recording and have divided those into 3 sets for the 3 days we’ll be at the recording studio. The songs need to be grouped so that no one has two solos to several of their hardest numbers to record on the same day. All the singing must be recorded on the same day, and is done after the instrumental parts are recorded.

After we have the list of pieces we would like to include on our CD, we have to go through the very long and tedious process of tracking done all the copyrights, owners, composers, and arrangers in order to pay all the royalties. Some songs change hands so many times that it takes hours or even days to track down which publishing company administers the royalty rights, who we have to pay, how much, and anything else we need to do. Whew!!! What a job. It’s probably our least favorite step of the CD making process. All those royalties add up too.

The three studio recording dates are now set and the deposit paid. We like to schedule the dates a couple weeks apart so that we don’t have to get all the songs ready at the same time. That was learned the HARD way!!! Living close to a state-of-the-art studio is a huge blessing! Very little traveling, no hotel bills, and all the comforts of home – how can you beat that?

Basically every evening, we are practicing together as a group. During the day, we are practicing by ourselves. Soon, we will be having multiple group practices per day and keep building up until our recording date. It’s a lot of practicing. And yes, it does get old sometimes, but the result is worth it. Once we are in studio, we have to get it right - ALL AT THE SAME TIME – all eight of us. Challenging? Yes. Since we have to communicate visually with each other, we are all in the same room and each person’s sound bleeds into the next person’s mike. Picture this: it is the fourth take of a certain song. Five of us do a fantastic job and are thrilled. We want to keep the take. Then we hear that the other 3 of us made a mistake and the take isn’t usable. So, we start over. Take 5. Each “take” is important. It just might be the one to go onto the CD. Because of time constraints, we can usually only record a song up to about 5 times max. We better know it well. We better have done all our practicing at home. It is wonderful to finally listen to a good take and know that we did it. By the end of 5 hours, we are worn out mentally and physically and have hopefully recorded 1/3 of the songs for our new CD.

Pray for us!

At the Oak Tree Opry

Silas, a few months back when he was still on crutches. 

Sightseeing downtown before our concert.

I hope you have a wonderful day, praising the Lord for His goodness to us!

Until next time!

Food for Thought

I guess you  could say that one of the perks of being in a performing group is that you get to be a part of so many people's special days - ones they've been planning and preparing for weeks.

...and that means you get to taste their kitchen creations

...see their holiday collections and decorating ideas

...and try all sorts of fun new foods like this pistachio dish here.

We all love to cook in our family, so it's fun to try new things and then recreate our favorites at home!

Coming up later this month... Our new website's grand opening (It looks fantastic!) and the first look at our new Johnson Strings photo shoot! Plus, the story behind the missing blog post last week and our frigid trip north.

A day in the life of a performing family

~ Le Mars Bluegrass Festival, Le Mars, Iowa ~

After driving for several hours, we made a quick stop at Walmart before our first performance.

It's always good to arrive with plenty of time to spare beforehand! You never know what might happen on the road. Our van has over 230,000 miles on it. We are praying it holds out until we can get another vehicle!

Studying the performance schedules for the many different stages... 10, I think.

After lugging all the equipment across the field (We made it in ONE trip!!), through the people (hey! it's good promo!), to "back stage" behind this building before our first set, our next job is to get everything as ready as possible for a quick and smooth transition onto the main stage for our time slot.

At festivals, everything is timed and the more time spent setting up, the less time you get to play. Soooo... get ready to FLY! Everyone has a job, and things are set up in a jiffy.

After our first time slot, everything must be hauled all the way back to the van.

Then it's time for a watermelon break. :) Hot and tired, we rested for a while.

Then it's off to jam with some friends, listen to other musicians perform, and talk to many people - old friends and new.

 After jamming and talking, it's back to the van to grab the rest of the equipment before our second time slot. 

Unpack. 

Play.

Pack up.

After that performance...

Daddy treated us to Culver's. Thank you!

Then it's back to the van to get the equipment, unpack, play, and pack up once more.

Then it's.... ice cream time!!!

 At Blue Bunny.

Le Mars is the ice cream capital of the world.

See that huge bowl of frigid goodness? If you can eat it all by yourself in 15 minutes, you have conquered the Goliath! (Plus, you get a free T-shirt.) Any takers? 

This is only SOME of the grand array of flavors they offer.

One of our family favorites is huckleberry, only available at ice cream parlors.

Need the time?

Talking to friends and fixing the world over ice cream.  :)

~ Back to the van for the hours of driving. ~

And we're home!

And that is one day in the life of a traveling musical family.

Come back next week to hear about more of our adventures. Life is never dull around here.

A Joke, Some Sand Plums, and a Barn Concert

Earlier this year, we were engaged to do a Sunday morning church service for a local family reunion.

After the concert (and brunch!) we stopped and ate some sand plums. Tart, sweet, and small with a large pit in the center. 

This is what we do in program clothes - climb around in ditches! The guys actually were the ones who scrambled down and then threw the sand plums up for us girls to catch.

A TERRIBLE joke, don't you agree???  :( 

Violas are NOT fake violins!

Our Christmas concerts have begun!!! Check under the "Schedule" tab at http://johnsonstrings.net/ to see when we'll be closest to your area!

A Surprise!

(Two surprises, actually!)

1. We are going to record a new CD in January/February!!! We are all so excited and have been waiting and saving for quite a while! It has been a long time since we recorded our fourth CD (WAYYY back in 2011!) and we have been practicing like crazy since then. Just yesterday, we logged about 3 hours as a group and then did a concert last evening. This time, we will "take you with us" in the long journey - all the steps it takes to produce a CD. You'll truly get the inside scoop! So... stay posted!

2. Luke is designing a totally new, amazingly revamped and updated website! I've had a glimpse, and it is going to have lots of fun new stuff.

3. All of this means that I have a marvelous excuse to do a full Johnson Strings portrait session! (Pictures coming up soon!) It has been a while since we did a set of group pictures and we definitely need some new ones. Can you believe it? The poster we use on our CD table is from 2010. Silas was 8 and missing his front teeth.  :)

4. Our Christmas season has started! Yesterday was our first Christmas concert. We are doing tons of practice as we prepare for our next 16 Christmas concerts! We'd love to see you at one of them! Other than this next Saturday, all the rest of the concerts this year are Christmas concerts. With a bunch of new Christmas music (Karen and Abigail have been working hard arranging it all) it's going to be a wonderful season.

~ Two random photos of our family dog, Toby ~