He’s So Country
Arnie Johnson has been playing music across the Midwest for more than thirty years. He’s never had a hit record, but on any given Saturday night his devotees are traversing a hardwood floor somewhere, two-stepping to the twangy sound of Arnie Johnson and the Midnight Special.
“I’ve had some people follow me everywhere for 25 years,” says Arnie, a 62-year-old Lawrence resident who has drawn area faithfuls to gigs as far away as western Kansas, Oklahoma and the Ozarks.
Arnie’s son, Rich, a frequent guitar player for the band (which is booked through 2004), says fans respond to his dad’s desire to please those who keep old country music swinging. “We never know what songs we’re gonna do. He scans the crowd and sees that those folks over there like Johnny Cash, or those over there like to waltz.” The band spends much of its stage time obliging random requests shouted from dark, smoky corners. A walking honky-tonk jukebox, Johnson can play forty hours straight without repeating a song. And if someone stumps the band?
“People will bring in a tape of a song, and by golly, by practice time we’ve got that sucker down,” Rich says. The requests don’t always come from fiftysomethings in fringed suede and boots. At the Knights of Columbus Hall in Lawrence, where the band plays this Saturday, a pack of University of Kansas students regularly wanders in, hunkers down with a few pitchers and starts shouting for George Jones or “D.A.C.” (That’s Arnie’s cue to play a David Allan Coe cover.)
“We’ll have a 75-year-old couple over here dancing, and over here a 20-year-old couple,” Rich says. “When there are younger people in the crowd, he pays extra attention to them. He really wants to keep them happy.”
Arnie certainly isn’t in it for the money; old country doesn’t bring in enough to feed a pony, and he often spends his cut on equipment for his maintenance job at a KU residence hall. A room full of leg shakers is the ultimate reward for Arnie, who once was an avid dancer with his wife and manager, Karen.
“When I hear a song, I’m feeling myself on a dance floor,” Arnie says. “I don’t listen to the story of a song if I don’t like the tempo and the melody.” It’s no surprise that he doesn’t like the tempo and the melodies of most music on country radio today. Sometimes he writes his own tunes, including “Here to Stay,” which heralds the three-chord virtue of Nashville’s glory days, but he still wonders how to get his music into the right hands.
“I’m dumb as a bird when it comes to the music business,” he says. “But I’m good enough to do Alan Jackson’s songs. Why can’t he play a few of mine?”
He dreams of smuggling a demo past the corporate 10-gallon hats, straight into the lap of Loretta Lynn or Charley Pride. He’d settle for playing at Country Stampede in Manhattan, Kansas.
“I’m stuck in this league and can’t seem to get out,” Arnie says. “I say, ‘After all these years, I’ve never made it big.’ But the folks who follow me around, they say, ‘Yes, you have.'”
