At the age of five Carolyn Dawn Johnson first took up the piano, later expanding her instrumental range in high school to include the clarinet, flute, and saxophone before adding the mandolin and guitar. Her vocal practice took place in church, where she performed hymns alongside family members. During her teenage years she started composing songs while envisioning a career in professional music. Johnson relocated to Nashville, TN, in 1995 to chase those ambitions, sustaining herself through jobs as a bartender and waitress and seizing every available performance opportunity while continuing to write country material. Within twelve months she secured a publishing deal with Patrick Joseph Music. In 1999 she joined Martina McBride’s touring band, an experience that solidified her reputation as a songwriter throughout Nashville even as she maintained her own aspirations to record. Arista Records eventually signed her, leading to work on the debut solo release “Georgia,” which promptly appeared on both the R&R and Billboard charts. Throughout her career Johnson has penned or co-written material for SHeDAISY, Pam Tillis, Linda Davis, Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless, and Suzy Bogguss, as well as the 1999 chart-topping single “Single White Female” for Chely Wright; that song earned her the Breakthrough Songwriter of the Year honor at the 2000 Music Row Awards. She was already preparing her first full-length project, the 2001 album Room with a View, and followed it three years afterward with the sophomore release Dress Rehearsal.
