Music
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The Great Demo Review Session of 2005 "The thrill of discovery and the agony we excrete for San Diego Music"
By the opinionated bastards at San DiegoCityBeat
We opened our doors, and local music flooded in as if we were SriLankaBeat. Two weeks ago, I sat with 10 writers and a few boxes of CDs – some wrapped in college ruled-paper, some in thin CDR plastic cases, some full-artwork CDs, vinyl, even a tape (remember those?). CityBeat’s writers, all music scene junkies who’ve chosen computer keyboards over Stratocasters, dug in. Aside from a handful of submissions we’d heard or seen over the years, most of the names were foreign. Writers chose their albums like your girlfriend chooses ponies at the track. “Oooh, kitty cat lollipop!” on writer proclaimed. “I have to review that one on name alone.”
Associate editor Kelly Davis would later regret that decision, admitting the music frightened her … like we said in our ad for GDR, we don’t promise to be nice. There are perfectly good publicity firms around town who will speak nicely of you. We promise real opinions from people who listen to a shitload of music and like to think they know a good or bad thing when they hear it. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. But my experience is that CityBeat’s writers have pretty well tuned ears. They’re like the friend you have who turned you on to Modest Mouse when Isaac Brock was just a mild psychotic with a funny voice and a new band.
Admittedly, the GDR is not a perfect process- when the mailman assaults you with a hailstorm of manila envelopes, you get woozy. Some get buried beneath a copy of SD Music Matters. Some got lost in the seat crack of my truck, I’m sure… The positive result is that we’ve uncovered 14 new, or relatively new, artists that knocked our socks off. We have identified them throughout this issue as EXTRASPECIALGOOD. We encourage you to at least Google them and take a listen.
Of the 14 EXTRASPECIALGOODERS, I had personally heard the music of three before this issue. As for another four of them, I had heard the names, not the music. Seven others, however- I had no clue they existed. And that’s the beauty of the GDR….
Troy – Editor SD CityBeat
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EXTRASPECIALGOOD – Tracy Johnson
She just flew in from the land of Big American Pop Music, and hot damn if Tracy Johnson doesn’t sound all purdy and hopped up on pop-punk orchestration and tweener/20-something angst. With Parker Theory’s Jesse Pruett and Jeff Forrest helping with production, instrumentation and harmonies, this threesome sounds like a company of dozens when put to tape. Johnson’s vocal sound is thick, polished and girly without being overbearingly cute, forsaking surface pop for melancholy catchiness. She’s a songbird with the power to project, a rocker who took the leather off. She postures, she struts – as when she blasts “You don’t really know me at all” on “Does it Really Matter.” It’s all done with a careful tiptoe on the line between pop and pap, a batch of potential Dawson’s Creek soundtrack material that has just enough emotional depth to avoid being written off. It’s AAA material, so alternative-only types beware. But it’s an arresting comment on pop and well worth an iPod upload or a soundtrack for summer cruising with the top down. -Caley Cook
- San Diego City Beat Magazine
Tracy Johnson sings love songs in a way that makes you believe that she’s a girl who falls in love, hard and fast and with her whole heart. That’s the hallmark of a good love song because it lets you as the listener believe in the message of the music. Add to the fact that Johnson supports her vocals with strong instrumentals and a variety of musical influences and you’ve got a singer who makes you want to believe in her.
Johnson’s first EP, “Oceans Under Jupiter,” is a collection of six songs, which offer you insight in to the realm of the emotional world. Whether singing about the stage of relationships just before break-up (“Don’t pretend you care, your eyes betray the words you say, I don’t want to hear because it’s all about you anyway” – “Does It Really Matter”) or expressing aching over an old flame (“I can’t help but see that you don’t love her the way you used to love me – “She Isn’t Like Me”), Johnson conveys with every ounce of her musical ability the intensity felt in each moment. Her lyrics are general enough to make you feel like you know exactly what she is talking about and yet personal enough that it seems as though you’ve gotten to know her just by hearing her songs.
The lyrics of her songs are not all about Johnson’s music, which impresses the immediacy of emotion upon her listener’s ears. Johnson alternates between the frustrated angst of alternative pop a la Avril Lavigne and the warmth of contemporary adult vocals to create a sound, which lets you hear the variation in feelings experienced in real life. By capturing the essence of complex emotional spheres with her music, Johnson lets listeners express their own feelings through her art.
By: Kathryn Vercillo
http://www.northeastintune.com/index.php?bd=reg&sb=land&article=100642
- In Tune Magazine
Discography
EP - Oceans Under Jupiter
Radio Airplay on 91X, 94.9FM, XM Satellite Radio
Full Length Album "Dreams in Cold Weather"
Photos
Bio
Tracy says: “I'll always be a Minnesota girl at heart, I grew up Minnetonka, in a small town in the land of 10,000 lakes, where the mosquito was almost the state bird” With stars in her eyes from an early age, she spent her childhood singing songs she’d made up to get her little sister to stop crying. The first song was called “Waltzing with the Turtles and Dancing with the Ducks” it was a hit with her target audience at the time, her 2 year old little sister. She’s been hooked on writing ever since. The lyrics have changed and she’s far from home, but her sister is still her biggest fan. She’s just got competition now from the rest of the world.
Tracy’s first 6 song EP "Oceans Under Jupiter" was produced by Jesse Pruett (Singer for Parker Theory myspace.com/parkertheory) and engineered by Jeff Forrest (Doubletime Studio). The EP ended up getting a great reaction when it was released. A couple of the songs were featured on MTV’s “The Real World Denver”. XM Satellite Radio’s “Radio Unsigned” program featured Tracy as one of the *Futures* defined by them as “Artists to look for in the future as they are gaining momentum every day”. XM also featured her music on “The Radar Report” a special weekly radio program highlighting the “12 most notable artists in the United States” In addition she’s been getting airplay on 91X & 94.9FM.
Having shared the stage with national touring acts such as; Ben Lee, New Buffalo, The Beautiful South, Carbon Leaf, Ryan Ferguson, Sean O’Donnell (Reeve Oliver) and many more, Tracy’s music seems to transcend genre and age barriers.
In a crowded coffee house or on the main-stage at a rock show, Tracy has a way of making you feel like she's singing just for you. Her sound has been compared to Sarah Mclachlan, Kelly Clarkson, Fionna Apple and Avril Lavigne, but make no mistake - she has a style all her own. Tracy is the girl next door with the guts to sing everything you've ever wanted to say out loud but couldn't find the words for. A self proclaimed "lover of love" she tends to end up in situations that make for heart wrenching lyrics. You'll hear her sing once and enjoy it but there is something right below the surface that grabs a hold of your senses and won't let go, until you find yourself listening to the songs over and over and over again, singing along at the top of your lungs, out the car window, with your heart on your sleeve.
After many months of hard work the full length album "Dreams In Cold Weather" is set for release in May 2007. The full length album has been creating a buzz prior to its official release. “The Good Life” a single off the unreleased “Dreams in Cold Weather” was featured on a compilation CD sent out to radio stations all over Europe, The single spent 9 weeks on the Top 40 Charts on Capital Radio in Turkey (one of the two largest radio stations in Turkey) debuting at #32 and climbing up to as high as #23. Also featured in the charts on Radio ODTU (one of the largest University Radio Stations in Turkey) the single charted as high as #4 on their charts… in both of the charts Tracy was the only Independent Unsigned Artist … up against Rhianna, Natasha Bedingfield, James Blunt, Coldplay, Gnarls Barkley. “I was so excited about it and it was such a bizarre thing, I was getting fan mail from Turkey and wondering how they had heard of me. From then on I was announcing to everyone “I’m huge on the Turkey charts” which always seemed to make people laugh, so I finally said “let me rephrase that, I’m charting in Turkey”
“If you want to know more about me you should listen to my songs … they tell my story, from heartbreak to love, sadness to anger, living and dying, and everything between. Sometimes I laugh too loud, I splash through puddles when it rains, and I don’t take myself too seriously…. A few of my friends call me angel, (but that’s because I’ve got them all fooled ;-) I’m a sucker for words on a whisper and photographs of places I might never see. I think music is my boyfriend and I’m madly in love, that’s me.” Tracy
“Oceans Under Jupiter” EP is "an arresting comment on pop and well worth an ipod upload or a soundtrack for summer cruising with the top down … Forsaking surface pop for melancholy catchiness" San Diego Citybeat Magazine
“Tracy Johnson sings love songs in a way that makes you believe that she’s a girl who falls in love, hard and fast and with her whole heart. That’s the hallmark of a good love song because it lets you as the listener believe in the message of the music. Add to the fact that Johnson supports her vocals with strong instrumentals and a variety of musical influences and you’ve got a singer who makes you want to believe in her” Indie In-Tune Magazine.
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