By Tim Carr
Minneapolis Tribune
November 27, 1977

Folk Singer-guitarist Michael Johnson, a huge Twin Cities success and everybody's favorite to strike record gold, is finishing negotiations for a recording contract with Columbia Records.

(section omitted - mentions about Jericho Harp, Daisy Dillman Band, The Suicide Commandos, Dave Ray, Mark Gaddis, Dick Pinney,St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Milo Fine)

Judging from such recent activity on the local music scene, the Twin Cities seem ready to make a dent in the national music market. Record company A&R (artist and repertoire) men, the new breed of talent scouts, are moving into the area. Local bookers and managers are knocking on doors and peddling the taped wares of other local musicians to the coast. It would seem to be a time for optimism, hats in the air, pats on the back and a round for the house.

Not quite. "It's either a long career or a very short one with a big company," the voice of reason intercedes. The voice belongs to Michael Johnson, who's been there before, twice.

"I was actually signed with Columbia Records before and the thing with Atlantic fell through," Johnson said. (Johnson's first album, "There is a Breeze," was released on Atlantic Records.) "But I won't say I'm taking this recent interest in stride. I'm excited about it, but the truth is that it's not solid.

"There are a lot of things that make it to this level and never go anywhere from there. They fall apart. I'm getting ready for it and will give it my best shot, but I know what might happen."

Johnson, 33, came to this area in 1970 from his native Colorado by way of Chicago, where he had won a talent contest. Keith Christianson, a Twin Cities booking agent and manager who coaxed Johnson to check out the good life in Minnesota and still manages the singer-guitarist.

He had previously sung with three best-forgotten Colorado rock bands (The Saints, The Blue Jays and the King's Men), joined The New Mitchell Trio (with John Denver, who had take over for Chad Mitchell) and acted in the New York production of "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris."

Since his relocation here, he has moved rapidly from coffeehouse to concert halls. (Friday he played two sold-out concerts at O'Shaughnessy Auditorium.) He has recorded three albums, the first for Atlantic, the second and third for the locally based Sanskrit label.

He is preparing to record his fourth. Peter Yarrow (formerly of Peter, Paul and Mary and the producer of Mary MacGregor's "Torn Between Two Lovers") and Phil Ramone (a top New York producer who has produced records for Barbra Streisand, Paul Simon, Phoebe Snow and Judy Collins) have both agreed to produce the record. Whether it will appear on the Columbia label is still being decided.

While Christianson is in California working out the contract's fine print, Johnson is playing with his two dogs and rehearsing in his home, a converted barn in Minnetonka. "The songs that seem the most successful for me are many times the ones that people assume I have written," the silky-voiced Johnson said, "which in my mind makes it a success. If it's a song that I can believe in and make an audience believe in, then that means that that song works. That's a hit for me."

Johnson doesn't feel that his material will change drastically, if at all, when he goes with Columbia. That doesn't mean he won't try a hit single shot or that his material isn't already the stuff of hits. For example he recorded "Muskrat Love" more than a year before it became a hit for the Captain and Tennille, and some of his material is really far-out or introspectively personal. Perhaps it is a bit more poetic than the average radio fare, but if his local popularity is any indication, it does indeed speak to a large sector of the public. (The first issue of his latest album, "Ain't Dis Da Life," sold out in six days.

Now it's down to a waiting game—waiting for results, waiting to record again and waiting to see if Michael Johnson can spread his Minneapolis sound to the rest of the nation.

And even if he can't, the Twin Cities still has a few tricks up its sleeve, like the Daisy Dillman Band, the Suicide Commandos, Lamont Cranston or Milo Fine. So don't pull your hat out of the air yet.