Carly Johnson has become a mainstay in the Louisville music scene. She has grown her base large enough to be able to play with Jacob Duncan and his folk-fusion band Liberation Prophecy, My Morning Jacket, Houndmouth, and Norah Jones, but this self-titled album reflects the actualization of her own vision—and the fulfillment of a dream.
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Naturally, it’s an old-school soul album, bringing to mind classic soul, R&B and early jazz greats who have inspired and influenced Johnson (think: Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Nina Simone). Rousing backup singers and blistering horns underline the arrangements, but the spotlight never strays too far from Johnson’s mesmerizing wail.
Johnson’s songs are suffused with a deep well of reverence for family and friends and others who’ve left an impression along the way. Nowhere is this quality clearer than on the record’s emotional climax, “Burn Your Fears.” It’s a swelling ballad that Johnson wrote for a dear friend, Marisa Wittebort, after she was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer at 30.
1. TAKE CARE
This is the very first song Charlotte Littlehales and I wrote together, which is why it felt right to list it as the first track. The opening intro of just voices and organ is something I wrote at the start of college and hung onto for years; I just always really liked the melody and imagined it was something I’d come back to eventually. The first time Charlotte and I sat down to write together in San Diego, we went to the beach with her guitar and I presented the intro as the only thing I had for us to get started. The song isn’t autobiographical, but it’s a story about a strong woman realizing the fairytale romance that she always envisioned for her life doesn’t have to mean getting rescued by someone.
2. DEMONS
This is about the demons that we all face from our past and how they affect our future and our lives on a daily basis. I wrote it for a family member that I felt needed to hear that their trauma doesn’t define them and that focusing on the plethora of good currently all around them is so very important. Moving forward is possible and it’s a triumph that should be celebrated.
3. THE BELIEVER
A song about someone who has spun so many lies for so long that they slip into the dark and stubborn tunnel vision of believing they are, in fact, true. Someone that projects their own deepests flaws, insecurities and faults onto their own partner and clings to the idea and feeling of being a victim, when they in fact are the abuser. About a real person? Unfortunately, yes. I loved when the string arrangement started to take shape in production and how it gave this song a James Bond kinda vibe…a fitting tone for a female villain. While this song is a strong case for something good coming out of something terrible, I can’t say it was worth it for the people that endured.
4. FOR YOU (featuring Bonnie “Prince” Billy):
This song is a true and personal tale of someone (in this case my husband) badly burned from past relationships. It’s about him hesitantly and unexpectedly leaning into the idea of a new relationship, even after vowing to himself that he’d rather continue to be alone than get hurt again. Asking Will (BPB) to sing on this was exciting because of the way he values the lyrics in music like I do. He always soaks in the story of a song and makes it his mission to emote what the writer intended…and he does it with his unique voice in any genre. [I learned this after dueting with him several times live, on Ann Wilson & Mike Reno’s 80s classic “Almost Paradise” (an audience favorite/bonus to the setlist of my charity-raising Heart tribute band “I Heart Heart”)…which he slays and means every word, by the way.] Hearing him on something more old school soul/r&B/motown inspired was such a goosebump-filled treat.
5. I DON’T CARE (FT. ZIROPHUX)
This song (in addition to Burn Your Fears) I wrote on my own. Charlotte had to work that day, so I was alone at her house when this bass line crept into my head. I somehow managed to figure out how to use the recording software on her computer and recorded some loops of the bass and piano I was hearing in my head. Then I laid down some of the main vocals, enough to present her with the main gist of the song by the time she got home. (Fun side note, listeners might notice that I threw in a quick lyrical nod to the amazing ladies of En Vogue.) This song is purely about telling anxiety…to fuck off.
6. GET ALONE WITH YOU
This song is about one of those aching crushes that we all get for someone at some point in our lives. Those swooning, can’t-live-without, intense, idealizing feelings that take over when we can’t get our mind off of someone that we don’t even know yet.
7. HIT THE GROUND RUNNING
Not a personal story here, but was written in response to all the songs out there about men begging women to stay or come back to them. We wanted to write something from the woman’s perspective, showing why she is just DONE and needs to get out of this mess. It’s a fun, upbeat and decisive bop about realizing NOW is the time to get out.
8. THIS HOME
This is a straight up love song that I wrote for my husband. Just a sweet reflection of where we are in life together, where we’re going and how lucky we are to have each other. A reminder that having is each other is more than enough and really (as Aretha would put it) we’re all we need to get by.
9. I USED TO CRY
A story of addiction, in classic blues form, about two different people that Charlotte and I know, melded together to make one narrative. It focuses on the struggle and experience of a person enduring the complicated relationship with an addict, and on the patterns and aftermath from that experience that those addict behaviors create. The haunting “Twin Peaks” vibe that the song ended up taking on is totally credited to the intrinsic sound of guitarist Craig Wagner…and I’m so glad that’s where it ended up.
10. ETERNALLY HOPEFUL
This is a song that Charlotte really had a hold on before I arrived, and though it’s not based on any specific experience or relationship, I think many people can relate to the feeling of letting oneself be defined by how a partner may see or or treat us. I added some lyrics in and most importantly I wrote the bridge at the end where things start to go off the wire a bit. In my mind, I initially felt like the song was about someone in a shitty relationship, who kept clinging to the idea that it would work out and that they didn’t want to give up on their partner…but when you add in the bridge at the end, it creates a twist. It makes the listener start to think it was possibly less of a mutual relationship and more of a delusional obsession from the person singing the story. Charlotte always thought of this song as the ultimate heartbreak song from the perspective of someone who has been deeply hurt and heartbroken and will do anything to make the relationship work, even if the writing’s on the wall that it’s over.
11. TAKE MY HAND
This song is a classic and relatable love ballad. It was written by Charlotte and her husband Phil as a wedding gift for her husband’s brother and his wife. This was also the song that Charlotte brought to me when we first discussed writing music together. With that in mind, we thought it would be appropriate and special to include it on the record.
12. BURN YOUR FEARS
I wrote “Burn Your Fears” for my dear friend, Marisa Wittebort, shortly after she was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of lung cancer (ROS-1), as a 30 year old non-smoker. She really beat the odds and was able to live 4 full years after being diagnosed, but she passed away in November of last year, just a month after being honored by the American Lung Association as a Lung Force Hero. A few months after her diagnosis, Marisa told me the story of how she decided to embrace life going forward into the new year. She, her sister and her family watched as Marisa wrote down her greatest fears on tiny pieces of paper and threw them into a fire in their backyard. I was so inspired by her courage to face the possibility of these stark truths and by her choice to move forward and be wide open to the new path in front of her. This compelled me to write the song, “Burn Your Fears.” I wrote the song as an anthem for her. It’s about facing something incredibly difficult in your life, allowing yourself to completely embrace and feel every emotion it brings your way and deciding to choose to find beauty and live your life fully in a different way than you had planned. It’s always had a universal theme to it that anyone living with trauma has been able to relate to, but now more than ever, it feels immensely poignant and more relatable than ever before.
