Mallory Johnson calls Nashville home now, but she’s spending the quarantine period with her family in Newfoundland, Canada, where she got her start in music. Growing up, she was steeped in country music. Canada, she points out, has a vibrant country scene. Her mother Loretta is a country artist as well, touring and playing. Johnson remembers her mother playing “Coat of Many Colors” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Her dad is also a big country music fan of such icons as Waylon Jennings, John Prine, and Merle Haggard,
“I definitely grew up around that genre, very deeply rooted, not only learning country music but Celtic music as well. Newfoundland and Labrador is very rich with Celtic music because of the large number of Irish and Scottish people there,” Johnson explained. She has Scottish roots herself, with a grandmother from the MacArthur clan who spoke only Gaelic until she was fifteen.
“All my aunts and uncles played accordions and bagpipes. We had bagpipes at every funeral, and to this day if there’s a wedding on the West Coast you’re going to have bagpipes piping in the wedding party,” says Johnson, “so Celtic music is also dear to my heart.” When she was eleven, she formed a Celtic band with her mom, uncle, and cousin called the Cormiers. From the time she was eleven until fourteen or fifteen, they toured Canada and Scotland and played shows in the US, recording four albums.
She says, “That was my first taste of the industry, and I fell in love with it, but of course, country music was still so dear to me, something I wanted to pursue.”
In her later teens, she decided to make her move to country solo artist, an easy move, she notes, “because Celtic music and country music are very similar: a lot of similar instrumentation, and the backbone of the music is the story. That was an easy transition in terms of my songwriting and musicality.“
In her teens, Mallory took every opportunity she could to play country music in town or at the local pubs. A turning point came when she entered and won a contest called Newfoundland’s Next County Star. Beyond earning her bragging rights in town for a little bit, her big break came through one of the judges.
He reached out to Sammy Kershaw and told him, “We have this girl who just won this contest with us. We really believe in her.” He asked for advice and suggested Kershaw might be interested in producing something for Johnson.
“He told him to listen and let us know what he thought, says Johnson. “Kershaw looked at my Youtube channel, watched some videos, checked up on me a little bit and got back to them pretty quickly.” He set up a phone call with Johnson and her parents and told them he wanted to bring her to Nashville and produce an entire record.
“That was my door to Nashville.” She ended up working with The Holland Group, the same management team that managed Sammy Kershaw, which has become what she calls “this beautiful team of cheerleaders.”
Johnson recognizes the significance of a social media presence to aspiring musicians today as they start a career. “I don’t think I realized how important it was until I started to apply for showcases or tried to pitch my music to outlets. The first thing people look at is social media numbers. Do you have engagements, a fan base dedicated to you? And it’s so important as an artist, especially as a new artist. It’s a free marketing tool. There’s so many ways to get out there, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money. It’s an amazing way to reach people worldwide right at your fingertips.”
She says another key to success has been song choice and development, since she believes story is the backbone to good music. “I’m a firm believer that a good song is a good song regardless of who wrote it,” she says, “and I think if it’s a really wonderful song that will be relatable to me, it should be out there.”
She recorded vocals on Mallory Johnson, her self-titled first EP, produced by Kershaw, in Muscle Shoals at Billy Lawson’s new Wishbone Recording Studio, the first artist to record there. On that recording, she was a writer on only one of the six songs. The other songs were written by Gordie Sampson, Hillary Lindsey, and other big hit makers. “I was so fortunate to have my hands on them,” she said. “I recorded them because I related to the stories, and they suited my style, my voice, my brand, and what I was trying to represent.
“But co-writing—being a songwriter—“ says Johnson, “is just as important as being an artist to me. I’m very passionate about both.” She believes that when she’s the one writing the song, it’s obviously more personal. She says, “The funny things is I find the more personal a song is, the more people relate to it—if that makes sense. Even putting specific details somehow connects to people in a way that they might normally had if it were more vague or sugar-coated. I think definitely the more personal, the more relatable.”
Johnson says she had co-written only a couple of songs before arriving in Nashville, but, she points out, Nashville is a songwriting town as much or more than a music town. “It’s songwriting capital, so it was cool to collaborate in a way that I wasn’t really familiar with, and co-writing pulls out the strengths of everybody in the room and creates this piece of art that you wouldn’t be able to on your own. I’ve definitely grown as a writer and an artist since moving there and having those experiences,” says Mallory.
While her management team schedules opportunities to collaborate with a lot of writers, she sometimes reaches out on her own because, she says, “the worst they could say is no. Sometimes I’ll go to a show and if somebody is playing what I really enjoy, I’ll try to strike up a conversation aftewards. Sometime I’ll just blindly DM them on Instagram or FB.
She says when she co-writes with someone for the first time, it can be nerve-wracking, “kind of like a first date. Letting them get to know you, you’re being a little bit vulnerable. You may be spilling some secrets that you wouldn’t normally because you can’t write a good song unless you’re open and vulnerable and willing to access all corners of that story, but it’s been exciting to get to know people and get to share that experience.”
In 2020, she found herself in a dilemma, trying to decide which single to release as a follow-up to her debut EP. She wanted to go a different direction in terms of sound and to give a good introduction to her new music. She had the single “Hungover,” which she considered “radio friendly,” co-written with Krystan Bellows and Christine Huff, and “Drunk Mind, Sober Heart,” which she co-wrote with Bellows and Tenille Arts, a more stripped-down, heartbreaking ballad that showcases her voice. One of the members of her team suggested, “Why don’t we release both of them at the same time?” So they released Double Shot, what they call a digital 45—with an A side and a B side.
Also on the horizon for Mallory Johnson is Into the Wilderness, a movie originally slated for release in 2020. Her manager sent her to the audition, where she did a cold read for what turned out to be a role as the wife of a Southern soldier. She had her guitar with her for the audition, so when she was asked if she knew any old war songs, she played “Missing in Action,” a heartbreaking ballad her mother used to sing for her at bedtime.
“I guess I didn’t pay attention to the lyrics back then,” she admitted, “since it’s a super sad song.”
As she played and sang, she said she could almost see the wheels turning. They ended up creatinga part for her into the film and asking her to write some original music for the film, filmed in Knoxville.
“I had to play music live on the set, a grave scene where the women were writing letters to their husbands at war, a heartbreaking but beautiful scene,” she says.
In the meantime, as she is waiting for live music and touring to resume, she’s looking for alternatives to get her music to an audience. “I borrowed some fancy gear off my musician friends because all the streaming gear is sold out everywhere. I’ve been trying to rig up all this fancy equipment to up my live stream game.” She has also being doing more writing, including some writing by herself, something she says she hasn’t done for a couple of years. She is also doing a lot of Zoom writes and collaboration, along with creating more content for social media.
“I want to make sure I have all my ducks in a row when I can get back to Nashville and back into the studio to record some new music because that’s the game plan,” says Johnson. She is making decisions about what this next recording project will be as well.
“My last EP had a kind of 90s country flair, which makes sense because Sammy [Kershaw] was the producer and that’s what he’s brilliant at. That was perfect at the time. I’m really proud of that project, but this new material is more a hint of singer-songwriter Americana in some of the stylings.” She says in traditional country, steel guitar is her favorite instrument, and she loves strings and slide guitar. A fan of Kacey Musgraves, Jason Isbell, and Brandi Carlile, she wants to focus on instrumentation that leaves “lots of space to hear the vocals and hear the stories, so I think the next recording will gravitate toward the lyrics and the story as the star of the song—a more traditional Americana vibe.”
She admits, though, “My mind might change tomorrow. It’s a fine line between trying to grow and better yourself and at the same time being true to yourself as an artist and being true to your fan base.”
Until then, she’s listening to her favorite artists, planning for her next single and for her next album. She does look forward to getting back into the studio, to following up on the 45 and to playing live on stage again. And, she says, “I am never going to say no to a plan ever again. I’ve never going to bail ever again.”
