We are excited to announce that our latest album, "Long Way Home" Is now an award winning album with wining the best Rock Album in the new Utah Music Awards.

You can see the award by clicking here

The event was put on Warren Workman and was a good start to years to come of awards celebrating Utah's vast musical talent.  

We are honored and humbled to have won this as we have heard so many talented rock groups.  Excited to add the to the title as an award winning group and album!

Much love to you all and thank you!

So one of the exciting things to announce is the release of my third album and first official one with the Krew, "Long Way Home"  You can find it on iTunes or on www.jhonnyk.bandcamp.com

A couple of months ago, I had an aha moment when I realized and remembered why I got into music in the first place.  I originally wrote "Break Free" as a way to create music that wasn't cheesy with an upbeat tone and message.  I found that this last year, I got to busy worrying paying the band members, making sure we had people at shows, and booking more then I lost sight of that.

So finally after 100 shows in 2013, I came to a decision.  I am going to go back to doing music for its original purpose.  That is, to uplift, heal, and inspire those who hear it.

My focus in the year of 2014 is the ARISE Suicide Prevention Concert series and getting it up and running.  This is part of my calling, to create a way that we reach those who are lost through music, and then funnel them to the resources they need to recover from the darkness.  Whether thats mental health help, or just a community to go to and know there are people there for them.  

I will probably do some more Youtube Videos and house concerts, but I will keep my performing live restricted to those times when I am able to really inspire someone, not just entertain at a bar with my music.

I am humbled and so pleased to see how much has been given as of lately.  It means more then anyone can understand and for that I am truly humble.

Keep in touch and just wait, this next step is going to be awesome!

So first off, I am going to commit to writing in this blog weekly, more so for my records and journal keeping.  If any of you enjoy these posts then thats awesome, but for me its getting my real thoughts out about this journey I am on.

STUDIO

So last Saturday, the Krew and I were in recording at Art City Sound with Jason Jones.  www.artcitysound.com.  First off, I love Jason.  I decided to work with Jason on doing my next musical album called, "Long Way Home"  So we were slamming down track after track and got the foundation built for 6 songs in 8 hours. Drums, bass, guitars, keys.  It sounds amazing and cannot wait to release it.  It will be finished later this month and I will have a release party next month sometime. Looking forward to things ahead.

UPROAR ROCK FESTIVAL

So while we were at the studio, a guy name Adam wrote to me on my facebook page and said, "Hey saw your stuff on the UPROAR battle of the bands, (we were #2 in line to win the contest) and we love it! We would love to have you open for the UPROAR Rock festival as the sponsored band for ColdCock Herbal Whiskey company."  

First off, I do not drink so i was not sure what to do with this, but I talked it over with the band and we decided to take the opportunity with less then 36 hours to prepare and be ready for a performance on Labor Day.  

I am sad to say that the only person who could not join us was my lead guitarist Aaron Lee, was not the same without him. However, I am glad to say that we made it work with the addition of Lee Sebel on Keys.  We sounded tight and did a 20 minute set up front.  One of the owners of Uproar texted our sponsors later and said, "Where did find these guys? They kicked A$$"  Yes mom, he swore.. sorry I am quoting... :)

SLC COMIC CON 

So a good friend of mine hooked me up to play at the first SLC Comic Con.  It was a freakin mad house... We played Fri night after William Shatner and Adam West spoke.  Crazy night.  I am very grateful for the opportunity, however was disappointed in how disorganized it was and also how much support I did not receive.  We were pushed back to 9 pm and as we were setting up, all the guards outside in the hall were telling people to go home and that it was all done.  Even some of my friends were turned away from coming because they were told that the event was over.  So I had a smaller crowd full of my friends which I am so grateful for, but I was hoping for a larger attendance which was the original reason of playing at Comic COn.  Overall, great opportunity and was fun to play with the band, and always helps to put on the resume.  The good part was we got killer passes to the event and the band and I enjoyed going and enjoying the festivities... so that was very nice...  I just hoped it would have turned out better for our actual performance.

ARISE CONCERTS

ARISE is moving forward.  My friend who works at Adobe designed me a killer brand for it and I have all my artists in line to work with us.  If you do not know about ARISE it is a multi genre suicide prevention concerts for high schools that I am putting together.  My musical artist team consists of Mallory Ownbey for my pop singer, Jodi Lee Nicholes for my country singer, Andrew Kemp for my hip hop guy, and myself for the rock genre. 

Jodi's brother is 1 of 41 superintendents in the state of Utah and was chosen to help bring suicide prevention programs into high schools state wide.  His boss is a lady who is already excited about working with us and will open massive doors to move forward.

The struggle has been waiting for the 501c3 to get finalized.  My booking agent has been so kind to help me with this part, but its been 2 months and things are moving way slower then I expected  Because of lack of funds it has been hard to get stuff done in the time frame that I would like.  All things hinge on this one activity, then I can move forward and pursue grants, private donations, sponsors and so on.  We just have to wait til then...

It has been a long hard road, but one I am most willing to walk down to pursue and make sure we get into schools to help kids.  I feel like this calls to me to get done.

MOMENTUM

I have realized that there are ups and downs regardless of where you are in life.  Overall, I feel this sense of momentum moving forward in my favor.  I am very grateful for that.  UPROAR was way fun, Comic Con was fun just need to adjust some things, and the studio is a blast.  Things are moving forward and I have held the #1 spot on Reverbnation for rock groups in SLC and I am #5 overall in my area.  Pretty darn good if I may say so.  

I am grateful for everyone and anyone who comes out to my shows.  For those who have booked me and believed in me this last year.  I have accomplished a lot and in other areas have not gotten as far as I hoped.  The key to me is to be grateful regardless and adjust things so that they can be better next time.

So I cannot believe I have not done a blog post yet for a while!

Well I am humbled to say the least about this year.  There are things that I wish would have gone faster and other things that have just flowed into my life.  

One of my musical blessings is my Krew.  I have a great band that we sound great together.  Tonight I sit here at my chair thinking of tomorrow playing at the Osmonds Pioneer Day and we are ready and excited to play.  We all sound good together and not only that, but we love playing together.  I also love how we have no drama.  I have found that this one thing is rare in bands.  We just get together and have  fun time.  I am in currently several other bands and in each one they have drama on some level.  However, my Krew is above such nonsense and I love every minute of it.

I still help Priddis do karoake tracks but the videos for them are slow coming.  So I have combined my powers with Jodi Lee (www.jodileemusic.com), Jason Jones my old drummer and his studio, (www.artcitysound.com) and my bassist Matt Boles in a youtube project.  We just released out 3rd video and it is our best to date with the best performance yet.  Exciting to see it climb after 2 days of release.

On the downside, ARISE is taking time to get going.  People who were excited to join in and help have been hard to find and disappear with responsibilities that I cannot fulfill because of contacts.  It feels like sometimes its 3 steps forward and 4 steps backwards that takes months to do.  A little frustrating at times, but I feel it is important to keep moving forward in this cause.  I know it will be a crucial thing for my career as well as assisting hundreds of kids with mental health and suicidal issues.

Above all, I am grateful to be alive.  To have the ability to do music full time even though its stressful and I sometimes do not know where money will come from, it always does.  I give thanks to my God for that one.

I am truly grateful for my family and friends who support me. Sounds so cliche to say that, but it truly means the world and I would not be where I am without them.  If and when I do or go anywhere with music, it will be because I have amazing people behind me supporting me.

Love you all

So I just had the pleasure of playing with my newly formed Krew.... very talented group of people who are going to be amazing to play with as I develop my new sound...

In the past i was more of a blues rock pop acoustic sound... but since been to Nashville and back and being a rocker at heart... I am moving into a more inspirational southern rock feel.

So on March 2nd.. I will be headlining a Charity gig along with a group that I like a lot... Parlor Hawk

Its for the "Excuse Me While I Change the World" Festival... You can go here to see details about the event itself... it will be going Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with fashion shows, food, and of course on Saturday... rocking out...

Here is the Facebook invite... come! https://www.facebook.com/events/154264108059858/

Or their website... http://excusemewhileichangetheworld.com/tickets/

ARISE Suicide Prevention Concerts are coming along very nicely... The team is put together and now I am in the process of just getting the foundation built, creating the necessary relationships and getting everything cleared so we can go into schools on all levels.

Its been a humbling thing to see all the help that has come from people wanting to be involved... suicide is such a taboo subject... its time to talk openly about it and help those who need the help.

In support of making sure we have funds... I created the 2 songs for $1 Monthly Music Club... which you can go to the main page to find... www.jknation.com

I send you 2 songs a month, both covers and originals and you only pay $1 for a month or $9.95 for the year.

The funds go towards supporting me getting the ARISE organization created and moving a long...

One last thing... Aaron my guitarist and I are doing what we call "Bedside Sessions" Where we are randomly recording covers by a bedside somewhere... if you wanna join go to my youtube... www.youtube.com/jhonnykmusic

And if you want to know about my Krew... go here 
http://www.jknation.com/bio-jhonny-k-and-krew.html


Thank you to all who have helped... I appreciate you all so much! Love you

2013

I just wanted to post real fast about some things coming up in 2013.  I have been working on the song, "Goodbye My Love" with producer Tyler Monks, who worked with OneRepublic and Colbie Callait.  Excited for this and will be expecting a finished product by the end of January 2013.  

I also am going to be releasing my acoustic albums that I am working on with Priddis Recording Company.  www.priddis.com  I am arranging songs for their karaoke albums via acoustic and having a blast doing it.  Excited for that!

I also am going to be offering a 2 for 1 subscription music deal that I will talk about in a post coming up shortly.

Thank you for all your support on the Christmas Album.  Everything went well and I learned a lot, especially humility with all the support that came together so fast in support of this.  

Love you all!

Everyone has seemed to forgotten that its almost December 21st 2012, the supposed end of the world, I wonder sometimes if the Mayans put that date and maybe its their version of Y2k?  Not sure... nonetheless I digress.....


There is so many good things happening right now for me in music, I thought I would share here some of them.  In no particular order

1-Jhonny K and Krew Christmas Album--- I was approached by a friend of mine, Denise Bagley, who is a brilliant marketer and supporter of my music.  She asked me if I ever thought of doing a Christmas album, which I had, but did not think I had the time nor finances to pull off an album before this season.  So she and I put the funds together to create my first Christmas album.  I arranged pretty much every song on the album, with one original that I helped produce that my sisters wrote called "Christmas Angels"  I honestly cannot believe we got so much done in so little time.  I could not have done it without the support of Priddis Recording group at the Castle Studio and Bryan Sansom the engineer who spent a lot of time with me pounding out everything.   Also, could not even come close to it without the support of my so many talented friends and bandmates.  Truly this is an album I am excited about, not just because they are some of my favorite christmas songs, but because of all the talent and how it will turn out.  Way excited for it!  I will be posting details on my website about it when I release it November 26th, 2012.

As part of this, I am going to be playing my version of "I saw 3 Ships come sailing in" for Gaynor Brunson's "A Musical Christmas" production.  http://www.amusicalchristmas.com/

2-My ex-manager Andrea Fierro (Who is amazing by the way) hooked  me up as one of the acoustic groups arranging full and karoake versions of pop songs for Rick Priddis and Priddis recording.  I am so excited to get some of the songs out to you all.  I am in the studio every week working on a different song in the order that the studio gives them to me.  The versions are way fun and I will be releasing a new single with each acoustic album.  TOTALLY STOKED!  I will be posting them here as they come.

3-Utah Music Association---So this actually started a while ago, however it finally is picking up some steam.  Tyler Monks (one of the engineers/producers for Colbie Callait and OneRepublic)  and I have been friends for a while and started to talk about how cool it would be to create an organization that is like the Grammy's, but specifically for Utah artists. We also knew, just between the two of us, so many talented artists, producers, engineers, venue owners and connected music professionals, but none of them knew each other. We knew that we needed to do something about it.   So we began the organization in effort to bring all the Utah music professionals together to collaborate with each other, celebrate each other, and provide ways to reach our goals as music professionals.  I love it!  We are having a christmas bash on Dec 8th at Club Infinity in Downtown SLC..  you can see the event details here on SmithTIX...http://www.24tix.com/

4-ARISE Annual Suicide Concert Prevention Series---- This is something I am very passionate about and will be obviously writing more about.  I am writing music with a couple of people with the goal of taking a full blown rock/pop concert to high schools, colleges, military, and public events and making the topic of suicide prevention a mainstream conversation like the bully conversation.  My goal is to provide hope to people who may struggle with it.  I am working with the local Utah Chapter of the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention in regards to programs that we can help funnel people to after being to a concert.  I want to bring the conversation to our youth through music that they will actually listen to.  Totally excited for this to happen, more as it develops.  www.arisewithus.com

5-GOODBYE MY LOVE---When I was in my band Everson (www.myspace.com/eversonband)  We released an EP that my friend Tyler Monks loved one of the songs on there called, "Goodbye My Love" which was written by all of us in the band.  Finally after 4 years, we are recording it for my new album "Arise" which will also be the album for the suicide prevention concert series.  I just got back a sample of what it is becoming and its freakin amazing.  So lucky to work with so talented musicians and producers like Ty... It will be done before the end of the year and I am stoked.

6-Much more to come!! Keep posted on what is happening by being on my email list which you can go to the main page---www.jknation.com and sign up for.  Love you guys! 

I am excited to start sharing all the cool stuff going on in my world with music, there are so many things I will be writing, video'ing, blogging about with music.  Sometimes, I do not know where to begin! Hope this is enjoyable and that it uplifts in some way.