Piedmont Chris Johnson - ProfilesArchive

About Me

Born and raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I spent a year in Winston-Salem at the N.C. School of the Arts, before coming to St. Louis in 1979 on an art scholarship to Washington University.
After college, I lived in New York City and pursued a career as a painter for several years, before shifting my sights and returning to St. Louis, and entering the Writing Program at Wash U., as a poetry major. After several years of writing very oblique poems, in the mid-nineties I picked up my guitar and started writing songs again-- something I had done in my boyhood, before I decided to become a painter. I performed live around St. Louis, both solo and in my band, Pye-Dog. In the last decade I have been named both 'Best-Un-Folkie Coffeehouse Folkie' and 'Best Songwriter' in separate years, by our local alternative weekly, The Riverfront Times.
Today, I am still writing, performing and recording, am a devoted father to my daughter Ramona, and occasionally publish a poem or essay. I continue to play clubs and coffeehouses in the St. Louis area, do work in my community with the homeless and mentally ill, tutor Ged students, and tinker with guitars. -

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 08/04/2007
Band Website: ladydibluescorner.com/Chris_Johnson.html
Band Members: Mostly it's just me, sometimes know as 'Piedmont' Chris Johnson.
Influences: Mark Rothko, Willem deKooning, Paul Tillich, Franz Kafka, litter; Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Blind Willie McTell, Richard Hugo, Walker Percy, Melancholia; Rev. Gary Davis, M.L. King, Dementia Praecox; Wm. S. Burroughs, C.S. Lewis, Thomas Wolfe, Elizabeth Cotten, Wm. Faulkner, Wm. Shakespeare, Janis Joplin, Andy Warhol. Patti Smith, Lucinda Williams, Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Tar Heel basketball; Bob Dylan, Anselm Kiefer, Julian Schnabel. Allen Ginsberg, Raymond Carver, Ray Bolger, Margaret Hamilton, brick apartment buildings 'the color of dried blood'; Francesco Clemente, George McGovern, John Hammond, Howard Nemerov, Ray Bonneville, Ernie Hawkins, Mary Flower, columbian coffee; Jorie Graham, Jack Hardy, Jim Carroll, bad bud before and after. Mom, Dad, The Carolina Piedmont, Redbone Coonhounds, Walker Coonhounds, sunburst finishes on old flat-top guitars, National Guitars, Peace, tobacco, Love, southern angst, spaghetti carbonara, Understanding; and pecan pie.
Sounds Like: An interesting and compassionate pillow, set between a rock and a hard place.
Record Label: Perdition
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

PRESS NOTICES II

RFT - 2004: Best Songwriter - Chris Johnson As a creative idiom, the blues in St. Louis has barely survived; the well of songwriting from which all those bar bands guzzle all those tunes has all but d...
Posted by on Tue, 19 May 2009 08:45:00 GMT

PRESS NOTICES

The Riverfront Times, c. 1997:"Years ago a friend, a passionate woman with absolutely no patience for bullshit, used to tell me, 'You should meet Chris Johnson,' 'Chris Johnson has great songs,' 'You ...
Posted by on Mon, 18 May 2009 15:46:00 GMT

My Time In the Town

My Time In the Town /. I spoke to and tasted The rain, I Painted the storeface brown, I Danced, and even as My manners lapsed, I Caught the mirror, and Planted blonde tobacco in The crannies Be...
Posted by on Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:38:00 GMT

Heaven & Hell Explained

"Hell is other people." (Jean-Paul Sartre) /. "Therefore, it must be true, too, that, at least occasionally, heaven is other people." (Piedmont) /. I admired the literary existentialists as a s...
Posted by on Fri, 30 Nov 2007 08:41:00 GMT

Seasonal Affective Disorder, An Explanation In Verse

Seasonal Affective Disorder An Explanation In Verse /. It is autumn, and you wince As her cold blanket falls, smothering The wish you once described As fire. What is this--? It Is your heart slowing...
Posted by on Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:14:00 GMT

Letter To Donna

Letter To Donna /. That I walked as far as the shore To retrieve the stones Where you charted their breath, And said I cannot carve my name here. That I Broke down in the woods And breaded my h...
Posted by on Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:43:00 GMT

The Play

The Play The scene of my plumage Becoming unto your tutelage A dream for amateur Analysis, as I insist I ask Not your rank conclusion: it's Dust, air, innocence, enmity, a Play spent in ...
Posted by on Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:37:00 GMT

Madness

MADNESS You are in your broken room, and in tongues You mewl and take no counsel. You plagiarize And replace the scraps of your past, fanning A bad fire with earnest petrol-- with nothing But...
Posted by on Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:52:00 GMT

Am I Being Friendly Yet?

Am I Being Friendly Yet? Thoughts On Working A Warm Line The premise of a friendship line is basically this: A patient and compassionate consumer fields calls from other mental health consumer...
Posted by on Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:46:00 GMT

Finding My Voice

FINDING MY VOICE It's an integral part of any person's process of becoming, of growing "up", of finding, and claiming, themselves; it's the real, audible music of self-actualization, and it's how we ...
Posted by on Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:38:00 GMT