Michael Johnathon
Hometown: Lexington, Kentucky
Genre: Folk, Singer/Songwriter
Website: www.woodsongs.com

We are pleased to announce that folk singer/author Michael Johnathon will be both performing his musical craft and hosting Woodsongs Sunday at Chattahippie, which will feature a wide and ecelect mix of folk and roots music throughout the day.

Every Monday night, musical history is made as the Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour begins its regular radio and television broadcast at the Kentucky Theatre. Tour buses deliver visitors from faraway places; crowds scramble for good seats. Volunteers wearing black shirts finish their sound checks and adjust their cameras.

The house is packed as stage lights dim. Michael Johnathon comes onstage and introduces himself as a folksinger, songwriter and tree hugger. What he doesn’t say is he’s also a playwright, producer, author and touring artist. Johnathon has a worldwide radio audience exceeding a million listeners each week. He also created the world’s first multi-camera weekly series broadcast on the Internet.

This ‘Woody Guthrie in a Cyber World” grew up in upstate New York along the shores of the Hudson River. At 19 years old, he moved to the Mexican border town of Laredo, Texas and found a job working as a late night DJ on KLAR-FM. One night, he played Turn, Turn, Turn by the 60’s folk rock group The Byrds. As the song played, he recalled seeing Pete Seeger and Harry Chapin performing in his Dutchess County hometown in New York. By the time the song ended, he decided to pursue a career as a folksinger. Two months later, he bought a guitar and a banjo and settled into the isolated mountain hamlet of Mousie, Kentucky.

For the next three years, he traveled up and down the hollers of the Appalachian mountains knocking on doors and learning the music of the mountain people. Michael experienced hundreds of front porch hootenannies throughout Appalachia where folks would pull out their banjos and fiddles, sit on their front porches with him and play the old songs that their grandparents taught them.

Soon enough, he began performing “Earth Concerts” at colleges, schools and fairs. He performed two thousand Earth Concerts, plus benefits for the homeless, farm families, and shelters helping battered women and children. In all, he sang to over two million people in one four-year stretch. Billboard Magazine headlined him as an “Un-Sung Hero.” He has been featured on CNN, TNN, CMT, AP, Headline News, NPR, Bravo and the BBC.

When the “WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour” began in 1999, it was broadcast from a small Lexington, Ky., recording studio with room enough for a band and around 18 listeners, most of whom were hand-picked so the show wouldn’t be light on applause. Exactly one college radio station carried it.

With nearly 500 radio affiliates, public television, the Internet, podcasts and a new deal with XM Satellite Radio, plus the brand new BlueHighways Television Network the number of potential listeners for “WoodSongs” is in the high tens of millions. The television version of the show is available to more than 300 PBS television stations nationwide. Not bad for a show that’s produced by a volunteer staff and features artists who perform for free. That much, at least, hasn’t changed since Johnathon started “WoodSongs” as a showcase for grass-roots musicians who, like him, make their living on a scale much smaller than that of bands filling stadiums.

Sights & Sounds

Recent Music: (click here listen to music on Rhapsody)

For more infomation, visit www.woodsongs.com