In His Own Words.....

Hi, my name is Johnny Proctor and I have a dream of creating music that makes the listener feel loved.

Although I am a professional soldier by trade, it is music that has always motivated me to create art and communicate the things inside me. Since hearing the Beatles as a small child, I have always dreamed of making people happy with song.

When I was a boy, it was the music on AM radio that captivated me. This was during the golden era of bombastic disc jockeys and an absolutely unbelievable mixture of types, styles and genres- soul, pop, rock, country, Gospel – it was all there back-to-back along with a healthy helping of classics and oldies.

During the late 70s and early 80s, pop music grew predictably bland with shrinking play lists and nationally formatted categories for airplay. It was during this time that I joined my first garage band, and I felt at last I knew what I was supposed to do with my life.

I assembled many variations of pop/rock groups and played the local club scene in Richmond, VA for about 5 years. With lots of setbacks and many disappointments along the way, I finally got some record business people interested in me for a possible managerial deal and subsequent recording contract. I was fronting a trio called the Jammin’ Joe Realm, loosely based on a hybrid of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and James Brown. We played 90% original music and had a small following.

I was growing increasingly depressed over my spiritual life and knew that the message I was sending in my music was not right with God. This troubled me very deeply because I had fought so hard to make it to the precipice of success and now I was literally dying of guilt over what my life as a self-centered rock performer had become.

My personal life in shambles, I cried out to God for salvation. He intervened in my life in a way I could not mistake, and I began to follow the Lord and go back to Church. I found great joy in my new life as a Christian, learned to love others and obey the Lord, but I didn’t know what to do with my music.

At Bible college I met a beautiful young Christian woman named Amy and married her on June 18th, 1988. She was and is the delight of my life, and the obvious inspiration for many of my songs. I was working in construction and attending Bible College at night, but spinning my wheels vocationally.

I played in and led worship teams, and wrote and performed original Christian pop music whenever I could. Our church sang many of my original songs as worship choruses. I performed on a local Christian television program, and even opened for the great Phil Keaggy during one of his concerts. Still, I didn’t feel fulfilled musically because my creative ideas were driving me crazy. See, I hear the whole song in my head – words, music, vocals, production, arrangement – everything. But I was only one guy with no group and my frustration at not being able to produce these sounds eroded my hope that I would ever be able to get my music “out.”

We decided to join the Army in 1993 and I entered Basic Combat Training on my 32nd birthday. The Army is a demanding life, and I didn’t write a single song between 1992 and 1999. By then we had four beautiful children, a ton of expenses, and music just didn’t seem very practical as a vocation. Still, I sang in chapel, at prayer breakfasts and other religious events, and performed my originals frequently as a soloist.

While deployed to Korea in 1999-2000, I was separated from my loving family and forced to be alone more than I wanted. In my loneliness, I turned to music and began writing songs again. Some of the songs on my first CD, Sweet Release were written at this time. I also taught myself to do vocal arrangements with a pair of boom boxes simulating multi-tracking.

At Fort Bragg with the 82nd Airborne, I was asked by my pastor to make a CD of a song I wrote based on a biblical passage from Ezekiel 36. I explained that I had no way of recording digitally and he promptly wrote me a check to go out and buy the digital 4-track recorder that I still use. From that sign of “heavenly approval” I decided to go ahead with a few experiments and see what sounds I could coax from pawn shop guitars and the little 4-track machine. I developed a method for multi-tracking myself by dubbing all the instruments and layers of vocals to achieve a full sound. With time running out, I rushed about a dozen hastily produced songs together and then I was deployed to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The intensity of emotion I felt from missing my wife and children during the war was the inspiration for Your Soldier’s Coming Home, which was literally written during a combat patrol in Baghdad. I got to go home for two weeks in October 2003 and recorded that song and Gotta Stick Together.

A local newspaper carried a story about me and the song (Your Soldier’s Coming Home) and the response has been favorable. This is why Amy and I have decided to build this website and seek wider exposure. I hope you’ll sample some of my music and like it enough to want to hear more.

My dream is still to make music that makes the listener feel loved, but especially by God. My musical hero Brian Wilson says that music is the voice of God, and it’s hard to argue with good music that helps and heals, that inspires the soul and lifts the heart, or that just makes one feel happy for a few minutes.

Sincerely,

Johnny Proctor