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

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!