We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jeremy Johnson . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jeremy below.

Jeremy , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Growing up in rural Manitoba on the family farm, our radio was always turned on. In the kitchen, on the tractor, in the truck and shop, country music blasted through the fuzzy speakers around our life. When it came time to go to town, the same music played across the small town stages at dances, the town fair, rodeos, and school concerts alike. The history of country, rock, pop and folk music, from the time of our grandparents, and their parents, to our own generation of country and pop heroes, music coloured every experience of our young lives. The family bond with each other, intertwined with the country music in our DNA, created the seed that grew into a career in the the country music industry.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Five years ago, my sister and I founded a talent management and music PR company, ‘Johnson Talent Management’ (JTM). Over the course of a few years, we followed our hearts into country music. Being one of the few female and LGBTQ* lead artist management companies operating in Canadian Country Music, supporting original artists has always felt like a personal mission. Our roster of artists tend to fall outside the margins of mainstream sounds, and the music they make is not often a slam dunk for mainstream country radio. We embrace this difference as our core strength, and co-create a vision to develop and execute commercial and creative milestones in their careers. We love this challenge, and embrace artists, creatives, fans and professionals who march to the beat of their own drum. In many ways we see ourselves in them, and know that with a little luck, a lot of hard work and really great music, our artists have a bright future and will continue to find a broad fan base.

Our overall strategy is to raise the profile and revenue streams of our artists, foster a healthy creative environment, build a long term fan base, genuine industry relationships and a strong overall team. Using this philosophy, our company itself continues to grow, recently adding new artists we’re incredible excited about, along with a new distribution deal with Symphonic Music Distribution (Nashville) and our artists gaining major media attention including ET Canada and CTV’s etalk.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

It’s hard to know what your industry reputation is on any given day. We try to stay focused on supporting artists who are making music we love, who have similar values and want to strategically work together to put their music and live performances in front of as many people as possible. As brother and sister with a long history of working together, we always take a family approach and do our best to conduct ourselves with honesty and integrity. Our roster of artists, and extended team of professionals such as grant writers, radio trackers, agents, tour managers, radio, streaming services, writers, musicians and fans become our music family, and we are always dreaming up ways together to amplify our artists career and improve fan discoverability together. In every interaction, whether business or personal, we try our best to make a positive and sincere contribution to the country music industry, and align ourselves with folks who do the same.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Music is a team sport, and sometimes you get the wrong person on the team. We’ve learned that who you work with in any capacity, will shift and change your energy, and impact the overall success of an entire project. We’ve seen immensely talented artists drift and falter, because they don’t understand how to build a team, with personality and creative differences. Parting ways with an artist you’ve supported can be painful, but it is a necessary and difficult choice if your reputation, mental health, business or creative integrity is at risk. However, when you are working with an aligned artist and team, every great experience and moment is amplified and celebrated, because their career is your career and you experience all of the highs and lows together with them. It is an incredible rush to be to have that sense of partnership with an artist, and it helps you stay excited about important goals, achievements and team members. Our guiding light when working with artists is to try to create long lasting, creatively satisfying relationships and careers. We are always inspired by the love and respect for people that we learned from our parents, and from neighbours and friends in our small town community, while growing up together on the farm.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.johnsontalentmanagement.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnsontalentmanagement/

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Photo credits (where known) are listed in the file name.