J Kendel Johnson

When I heard Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana were working on a film version of Annie Proulx’s short story, Brokeback Mountain, I couldn’t help being fascinated. Memories of a boyfriend I had lost mysteriously and tragically on the plains of southwest Oklahoma in 1976 came flooding back – along with a song, “Passing Day”, that I wrote soon after.

A few days after seeing the film, I asked Crystal Clear Studios in Dallas to dub my original reel-to-reel demo of the song to CD, and for the first time in years, I heard the voice of the young man I had been, singing that song again – fresh from the experience, alone with a painful loss.

Suddenly, I was inspired with the idea for a compilation album that would be a sort of musical version of the flood of stories being posted at the Brokeback Mountain website and elsewhere following the debut of the movie.

On the heels of that inspiration, my friend Sara Hickman offered to contribute “Juliet & Juliet”, a previously unreleased song about being arrested for kissing a girl in high school. Then, during a serendipitous meeting with Ben Taylor, he enthusiastically agreed to contribute his forthcoming recording of David Saw’s “Boyfriend” about a guy who discovers he’s not disappointed to meet an attractive girl’s boyfriend – for unanticipated reasons.

Dallas singer-songwriter Kerri Arista is also contributing an original song, “The Secret Life of You”, and the project will include both the original recording of “Passing Day” and a new recording with very special guests. More artists will be announced in the coming weeks, and the project will be released by Cache Road Records and licensed for national and international distribution.

In the meantime, work continues on my sophomore solo CD – a follow up to 2002’s And So You Go – which will include a refreshingly rockin’ cover of Willis Alan Ramsey’s “Angel Eyes”.