Orville Johnson was born in 1953 in Edwardsville, Illinois and came up on the St. Louis, Missouri music scene, where he was exposed to and participated in a variety of blues, bluegrass and American roots music. He began singing in his Pentecostal church as a young boy, in rock bands in middle school, then took up the guitar at 17,with early influences from Doc Watson, Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, and Chuck Berry. In the early 1970's, Orville spent several seasons playing bluegrass and old-time folk music on the SS Julia Belle Swain, a period-piece Mississippi river steamboat plying the inland waterways, with his group and with his friend John Hartford who was studying to get his riverboat pilot license during that time.
Orville Johnson moved to Seattle, Washington in 1978, where he was a founding member of the much-loved and well-remembered folk/rock group, the Dynamic Logs. Other musical associates include Mark Graham (The Kings of Mongrel Folk), Laura Love, Ranch Romance, File' Gumbo Zydeco Band, Scott Law, Woody Mann, John Cephas, John Miller, Grant Dermody, Danny Barnes, and the Twirling Mickeys. Johnson, known for his dobro and slide guitar stylings and vocal acrobatics, has played on over 250 albums. He has appeared on Garrison Keilor's Prairie Home Companion, Jay Leno's Tonight Show and was featured in the 1997 film Georgia with Mare Winningham. His musical expertise can also be heard on the Microsoft CD-ROMs, Musical Instruments of the World and the Complete Encyclopedia of Baseball and a host of video games. He teaches as well at the International Guitar Seminar, Pt. Townsend Country Blues Week and Puget Sound Guitar Workshop and many other prestigious workshops and is currently the Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Slide and Steel Workshop for the Centrum Arts Foundation.
Johnson released 4 recordings in the 1990's: The World According to Orville (1990) Blueprint for the Blues (1998) Slide & Joy (1999) an all-instrumental dobro tour de force and Kings of Mongrel Folk (1997) with Mark Graham. He also appeared on 4 discs with the File' Gumbo Zydeco Band and produced Whose World Is This (1997) for Jim Page and Inner Life (1999) for Mark Graham. In the 21st century, he has released Freehand, a new Kings of Mongrel Folk disc, Still Goin' Strong, a country blues tour-de-force with John Miller and Grant Dermody called Deceiving Blues, and been featured in the soundtracks of PBS' Frontier House, the Peter Fonda flick The Wooly Boys, the Lindsey Lohan flick Georgia Rule, as well as the compilation cd Legends of the Incredible Lap Steel Guitar.
He's also produced CDs for Hot Club Sandwich (gypsy jazz), Grant Dermody (folk-blues),Lost in the Fog (bluegrass), Happy Socks (grunge-rock) and Ricardo (alternative) among others. He's a master of many musical styles and, above all, a sensitive and intuitive musician.
