Alexz Johnson Island

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Alexz Johnson takes the long road home
By Glen Schaefer, The Province

It’s hard to believe, but Alexz Johnson has never before played a club date in her hometown.

The 25-year-old singer-songwriter-actor grew up in Coquitlam and Port Moody, the sixth sibling in a musical-artsy family of 10 brothers and sisters. She’s certainly sung in front of a good-sized hometown crowd – winning a contest at 11 years old and going on to sing the anthem at Vancouver Canucks and Grizzlies games.

Over the years her music has taken her to Toronto, L.A. and most recently Brooklyn, N.Y. Monday’s Media Club gig marks her Vancouver debut with her own band and her own songs, as she tours to promote her indie EP Skip-ping Stone.

“Yeah, I’m totally looking forward to it, my family is there, every sibling going, ‘can you get me on the guest list?'” John-son says over the phone from the road. “It’s nerve-racking but new in ways as well. I’ve never really been on the radio there. I want to be playing the Commodore next tour.”

Johnson’s long road there and back started with her teenage success as an actor, with TV roles in Vancouver at 13, that led her at 16 to the lead role in the Toronto-filmed CTV series Instant Star, in which she played a fictional overnight teen singing sensation.

The show lasted four years until 2008, airing in countries around the world and earning Johnson a Gemini award for her acting. She was able to contribute some of her own songs to the show, but she wanted to escape teen pop to write in the more adult vein of her own musical idols, such as Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and Annie Lennox.

And while that show was called Instant Star, real life has seen Johnson working to build a singing career for four years since the show ended, with two major-label contracts come and gone, and the current tour taking her and her Brooklyn-based band across North America in a van.

“Baby steps,” she says, calling from the van as it rolls towards a gig in Nashville. “We’re almost halfway through the tour, we started in Toronto. It’s awesome – we load and unload at every show.”

Earlier steps on the music path included recording sessions at the fabled Capitol Records studio in Hollywood for a record that got lost in the major-label shuffle, then another deal with Sony Epic.

“The head of the label ended up not having a job anymore,” she says.

She moved back to Toronto, put a band together and went the indie-label route. “I spent more time hitting my head against the wall, thinking all I wanted to do was go on tour, but the funding wasn’t there at the indie label. So I put everything in storage, moved to New York with nothing.”

That was 11 months ago. Johnson soaked up the vital New York club scene, went to Nashville to record an eclectic mix of sparsely arranged songs that showcased her smoky voice and that would play well on club stages.

She recruited her current band, launched an online fundraising campaign through kickstarter.com and raised $67,000 for her EP and tour.

“This whole last couple of months has been completely unexpected for me,” she says. “Fans want to connect online. I had no management, I’ve done this all by myself. The venues have been awe-some, we’ve been packing.”

The day she calls, she and the band are heading toward their ninth tour stop. After Nashville will be a gig in Chicago that has already sold close to 200 tickets. She says the do-it-yourself approach is giving them confidence.

“I think if you’re an authentic artist and you want to make music, your expectations can’t be crazy. You have to know what you’re doing it for.”

Playing up close to a couple of hundred people a night gives a good feel for how the new songs are working, she adds. “You really get a feel. It is getting better and better as the nights go on. I get more confident the more shows we play. It’s all just building.”

As well, they’re putting together more material that they plan to record after the tour ends in Los Angeles.

And for now, Johnson’s acting career is on hold as she focuses on her music.

“It’s always been tough balancing both – acting has taken away a lot of time that I could be spending doing this, I don’t think it helped,” she says, adding she turned away from talks about a new TV series.

“I thought, gosh, I don’t want to sign my life away for six years.”

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IN CONCERT: Alexz Johnson
Where: Media Club, 695 Cambie St.
When: Tuesday night at 9 p.m.
Tickets: $15 at the door or brownpapertickets.com
© Copyright (c) The Province

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