I write and edit publicity and promotional materials (press releases, artist statements, website copy, liner notes, pitch & query letters, and press kits) for artists in all disciplines.

My greatest strength, when it comes to writing about the arts, is my ability to identify and describe, with thoughtful and considered enthusiasm, what makes an artist’s work distinctive and valuable. I study an artist’s work carefully and ask a lot of questions, in order to help both me and the artist come to a better understanding of the nature of the work, as well as the places to which it might go.

Please see below for a copy of a press release I wrote for a band, Julie Johnson & The No-Accounts. Click the link on their name to see the press kit I wrote for them as well. For a sample of website copy I edited for a visual artist, click here. See a sample of an artist statement and grant application I wrote for another band on my Grant Writing for Individual Artists page.

Artists I’ve written publicity materials for have received coverage in Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine, The St. Paul Pioneer Press, 3-Minute Egg, Rift Magazine, Vita.MN and other publications.  Artists I have worked with on grant applications have won grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board , the American Composers Forum, and the Archibald Bush Foundation.

Prices for writing promotional materials vary. Please contact me at cherijohnson33@gmail.com for a quote.

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JULIE JOHNSON & THE NO-ACCOUNTS

Contact Information:

Julie Johnson

flutemonster@hotmail.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 24, 2010

OUT OF 11, 000 APPLICATIONS, LOCAL TRIO MAKES THE SXSW SHORT LIST

MINNEAPOLIS, MN—Members of award-winning flutist and composer Julie Johnson’s new folk/roots group, Julie Johnson & The No-Accounts, have received word that out of 11,000 bands who applied, they’re on the “very small list” of bands still being considered for a showcase at the prestigious Austin, TX music festival South by Southwest, which takes place in late March. Julie Johnson & The No-Accounts will play the songs that got them there in a set at the Black Dog Café on Friday, March 5, 2010 at 8 p.m., on the corner of 4th & Broadway in Lowertown St. Paul, MN.

Johnson on flute, Doug Otto on vocals and guitar, and Drew Druckrey on guitar, resonator guitar, vocals, and mandolin each bring the influence of jazz, classical, and hymns to sophisticated stylizations of old country, blues, and folk tunes. Currently they’re adding to their standard repertoire with arrangements of old North Woods logging and voyageur songs, looking for the Upper Midwest’s equivalent to the South’s rich roots tradition. Along with originals, their set list will include a version of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” influenced by music from Carmen; an arrangement for vocals, flute, mandolin, and bass clarinet of Bob Dylan’s little-known—and surprisingly light and sweet— “Winterlude”; and an old North Woods shanty boy (logging camp) song, “The Little Auplaine,” about a young woman whose logger sweetheart is drowned.

No cover charge. Get a preview at http://www.sonicbids.com/JulieJohnsonTheNoAccounts

ABOUT JULIE JOHNSON & THE NO-ACCOUNTS

Long-time collaborators Johnson, Druckrey, and Otto share a connection to Augsburg College’s music program, with its musically diverse faculty. Playing originals and old Southern standards, they’ve performed together at St. Paul’s History Theatre, The Terminal Bar, and at a featured performance for MacPhail Center for Music’s Bach’s Lunch Series, a spot called “Blues of the Mississippi Delta” that drew over 250 people. Otto (of Doug Otto & The Getaways) and Druckrey (of The Jason Dixon Line), have also played together in bands such as The North Country Bandits and Matt Pudas & Friends. The band played their inaugural show in January, at the Fine Line Music Café in Minneapolis.

Johnson featured Otto and Druckrey on Arrest, her 2008 album of art music based on folk music, which received praise from Rift Magazine, 3-Minute Egg, The St. Paul Pioneer Press, and the “Take Note” feature at Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine, which called Arrest “a fascinating experiment in using the flute to play such nonflute-like music as blues, jazz, flamenco, and folk.” Said Tammy Reese at Rift, “Johnson mixes contemporary and classical styles into a fine frenzy of idiosyncratic masterpieces ….  a talent that is sure to become a greater artist than she already has become.”

“The Little Auplaine” and “Winterlude” are part of Johnson’s current recording project. Spurred by the question of why most Minnesota roots bands play music that is based on the sounds of Kentucky bluegrass and Delta blues, and with help from a grant from The American Composers Forum, she is researching historic Minnesota music—songs from the Iron Range mines, French Canadian voyageurs, Scandinavian churches, and Minnesota folk legends—in order to find her own region’s melodic, rhythmic, and thematic folk tradition and history.

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