Julie Johnson, Flutist

Julie Johnson & The No-Accounts is my new folk/roots trio with Doug Otto (of Doug Otto & The Getaways) on vocals and guitar and Drew Druckrey (of The Jason Dixon Line) on guitar, resonator guitar, vocals, and mandolin. Drew and Doug have also played together in bands such as Matt Pudas & Friends and The North Country Bandits. We each bring the influence of jazz, classical, and even hymns to our original songs and to our unusual stylizations of old country, blues, and folk tunes.

Come see us play at the Black Dog Café & Wine Bar in Lowertown St. Paul, MN on Friday, March 5 from 8-11 pm. Along with originals, our set list will include a version of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” in which a classical form, the theme and variations, is applied to Leadbelly’s stark treatment of potent love, tragedy, and despair; an arrangement for vocals, flute, mandolin, and bass clarinet of Bob Dylan’s little-known—and surprisingly light and sweet— “Winterlude”; a version of a very old North Woods shanty boy (logging camp) song, the hopelessly sad and beautiful “The Little Auplaine,” about a young woman whose logger sweetheart is drowned; and a newly-arranged shanty boy song that includes the bass flute.

“The Little Auplaine” and “Winterlude” are part of my current recording project. Spurred by the question of why most Minnesota roots bands, even when they sing about Minnesota, 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, I’m researching historic Minnesota music—songs from the Iron Range mines, French Canadian voyageurs, Scandinavian churches, and Minnesota folk legends—in order to find my own region’s melodic, rhythmic, and thematic folk tradition and history.

Read more about us and listen to some of our music at Julie Johnson & The No-Accounts