Uncomplicating Carolyn Dawn Johnson

Carolyn Dawn Johnson is listed last in the lineup for tonight's country music concert headlined by Kenny Chesney at the Show Me Center, behind Sara Evans and Phil Vassar. But stuck to her armoire at home, you know the compulsive goal-setter has a note that reads "Headline own tour within two years."

After hits with "Complicated," "Georgia" and the current "I Don't Want You To Go," now No. 17 on the Billboard chart, Johnson actually can headline her own concerts in smaller venues. One CD into her career, she already is known for the honesty in her songs.

"I'm so scared that the way that I feel,/Is written all over my face,/When you walk into the room I wanna find a hiding place ...," "Complicated" begins.

Matraca Berg, known primarily to Nashville insiders but writer of such hits as Deana Carter's "Strawberry Wine," Patty Loveless' "That Kind of Girl" and Trisha Yearwood's "Everybody Knows," is one of Johnson's heroes.

"She writes real stuff. Some of her songs are humorous, some are sarcasm. Some are also very painful. Some are very sad songs, bittersweet sad songs about heartbreaks," Johnson says.

Johnson's is the story of a million other people who want to be Nashville stars, but they don't figure it out. Born on a farm in Deadwood, Alberta, population 150, Johnson attended a school that had only five or six people per grade and a homemade ice arena. Her first public singing experiences were at gatherings of neighbors. "We called them sing-songs," she said in an interview from Nashville.

All the children in her family played the piano. In high school, she was always the student picked to sing, but in college Johnson took science courses. It felt like she was going nowhere.

Friends didn't understand why she wasn't pursuing music. "To them it was obvious, but singing was something I have always done all my life," Johnson said. "... I didn't realize I actually had a gift for it."

Once she decided to be a singer and writer of songs at 20, the goal-setting part of Johnson's mind took over. "The main thing was to do something every day that would get me closer to the big goal," she said. Acknowledging country singers' instrument of choice, she taught herself how to play the guitar.

Like anyone, she knows how to procrastinate, but Johnson didn't do it as much with the dream of becoming a songwriter. "It was something always hanging over my head," she said. "I knew what my goal was, and I never felt like I was standing still."

Like thousands and thousands of others who want to be country music stars, she sent off for a songwriting video offered on one of the country music stations. This one sponsored by the Nashville Songwriters Association featured stars like Clint Black talking about life in Nashville and about the experience of hearing their first song on the radio. The video was inspirational.

She started making trips to Nashville and was accepted into a "song camp" where songwriters performed creative writing exercises and heard feedback about their work.

"It puts you in a place of get hot or go home," Johnson said. "I said, I'm going to be in the small percentage that breaks through."

Johnson is still a member of the Nashville Songwriters Association.

In Canada, she studied recording engineering, then finally decided to move to Nashville.

"I said, 'Hey, I have to start at the bottom in Canada. I might as well start at the bottom in Nashville.'"

She supported herself by singing demos for other people's songs and bartending, including a stint at Phil Vassar's Hard Day's Nightclub. Vassar is on tonight's bill, too, and has the current No. 5 hit, "That's When I Love You."

"I say to newcomers, 'Don't think you have to make friends with big songwriters. Most of us, weren't where we are right now, five to seven years ago we were the nobodies, and we were friends. It's like this cyclical thing,'" Johnson says.

There are no nobodies, she said.

"You can make it as long as you stick around and have talent."

Her break came when Chely Wright recorded her song "Single White Female," co-written with Shaye Smith. Writing with someone else has advantages, Johnson says.

"You learn by osmosis, things you can't really tell somebody to learn. And it's easier to get the song done when you have two heads."

She co-wrote every song on her first CD, "Room with a View."

The goals she puts on the armoire in her bedroom are different now. To make herself a better songwriter, she tries to read at least 15 minutes a day and do creative thinking exercises.

But all of her goals aren't tied to her career. One is maintaining great relationships with my family and not letting friendships die back home," she said.

She wants to call somebody she cares about every two weeks "and spend a lot of time with them."

Some of her goals are spiritual. "Some are about me becoming a better person," she said.

She knows she doesn't know all the answers. She is trying to figure them out.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182