Jamie Johnson
Returns Home to The Grascals
Former Grascals lead singer Jamie Johnson is back with the group after leaving the band in 2015. Johnson was a founding member when The Grascals started as Dolly Parton’s road band. After ten years of touring, he decided to step down for help with his depression and alcohol addiction and entered a drug and alcohol abuse treatment center. As he started living a sober life again, the band would call him to fill in on singing duties when a member was absent, and eventually they invited him to return. “I just in conversation, mentioned it to my wife Susanne and my son Cole,” Johnson recalls, “and they both said, ‘Go do it. Go finish what you started’.”
With their blessing, Johnson was willing to make the move. “Oh yeah, it had everything to do with it. If they hadn’t said anything that night, that wouldn’t have happened. I would have been completely content staying right here. I love my day job. I sell processing steel for a great company in Morgan Steel in Memphis. I’m so grateful to work for the Morgan family where we can have an open line of communication and our health and mental health is valued and with them showing this kind of love, it makes it easy to work hard for them. I live a really good quiet life. And then I get to work these treatment centers all across the country, sharing my story of recovery, and writing songs with those patients.”
“I always knew deep down he was not done with playing music,” Susanne Johnson told Bluegrass Unlimited. “I knew an opportunity would come back around, with or without The Grascals. I was thrilled for him to go back into the band. He was ready and everything felt right. He has a super strong hold on his sobriety and is helping so many others. If for any reason he ever did step sideways, I would be right there with all the tools and faith I needed to help him.”
Fortunately, for bluegrass fans, Johnson has resumed his weekend warrior role as The Grascals including Danny Roberts (mandolin), Terry Smith (upright bass/vocals), Kristin Scott Benson (banjo), Jamie Harper (fiddle), and John Bryan (guitar/vocals) celebrate their 20th anniversary as a band. “I get to work my recovery program on a daily basis, and I still will. It’s not like The Grascals tour is going to take me to Europe for three months at a time or anything like that. We’re a little older than we were, and family is much more important. We’re doing a few days a week, like we always did, and having some fun with it.”
“Jamie is a better human now than he has ever been,” his wife says. “That whole seeing clearly thing in sobriety is crystal clear. His work he is doing at rehab centers helping others and telling his story has deep meaning because he has lived it. The patients know that and feel it. I have heard him tell his story a hand full of times, but every time I still hear something different. He is doing God’s work now, the best kind. Jamie is singing better than he ever has, he is grateful and enjoying the bond of the band.”
“Nobody Could Have Saved Me”
Johnson’s life began to spiral out of control the last two years of his first tenure with The Grascals. “Susanne was pulling away, and she needed to be because I was continuing the drinking. [My son, Cole] was four and five when I was coming home, and I wouldn’t stop. I never was abusive, but that’s not what tears you apart. It’s just seeing somebody suffer so bad, and she had to take Cole out of the situation, even though I couldn’t see that at the time. That was another thing where it was everybody’s fault but mine.
“Nobody could have saved me. My wife tried until she got so tired of it. She had to separate herself for Cole and filed for divorce at the end of 2013. She still loved me. She still wanted it to work. She was just having to set some boundaries and make some consequences here. They were trying everything to get me to straighten my rear end up, and it just was a path that I was going to take.”
“I truly thought I was done with trying to save someone,” Susanne Johnson adds. “It’s beats you up pretty badly.”
“I was alone,” Jamie adds. “It was just down to me. There’s only so many times your buddies can come check on you. They try to come in shifts because my wife’s beat out. The blinds would be drawn. I couldn’t get out of bed for days on end. Sometimes I might not even be drinking. I was that depressed. I was incredibly sick physically at the time regurgitating. It got down to where it was blood. I’m not proud to say that, but that’s what happened. That is the truth, and if you can’t admit the truth, you can’t get past it.”
For a while he tried to hold his career together. “I was hiding with a bottle at all times. I’d get off that bus and put that smile on my face and act like I was on top of the world, because I felt like that’s what I had to do. I’d come home broken not because of anything on the road, not because of the guys. They were a great family. It was because I didn’t know how to get out of what I was in, and I was confused. 2014 was by far my worst year, and The Grascals had to be a part of that. I was missing shows, parking in the wrong parking lots. It was some crazy stuff. I know they smelled me coming off that bus. There was just no doubt. There were places I would be that I’ve been to a million times and I wouldn’t know where I was at on stage, I’d say the wrong city. The band knew. I can’t imagine what they went through. I hate that, and I’m so grateful that I get to do this amends, and this isn’t me making anything up to them. This is just me finishing what I started. This is what we were meant to do, and God has a plan for everybody.”
As he sings in “Ready to Love Me Again,” a recovery song he wrote with Brice Long one day when he was in despair, Johnson discovered behind the darkness, an inner light shining through. “I looked up in the mirror for the first time because I knew I was on the verge of having to be admitted to the hospital again. I had been in there several times the last year. I looked at myself and for the first time I saw that jaundiced look-the empty look, the red in the eyes, the red/yellow look. I talked as if I was looking at God. I was looking at myself. I know you’re a good person, I know you mean well, and I know you want to love again. I think if I can learn to like myself again, I can learn to love myself again. And If I can learn to do that in a positive way and a non-selfish way, I think I might be able to get through all this. Little did I know that everything was going to come back to me tenfold. I asked God to help me love me again.”
He made the decision to enter rehab and began to work the 12-step recovery program. “You make a choice: do you want to live or do you not. Then you ask for help and that’s key.” Johnson tried his own ways to stay sober three or four times, but each time he failed.
“This go around I sat my ego down and became willing to listen to suggestions from folks who had experienced what I was experiencing. Once I accepted that, I took my chair in my meeting, and I would fight a bear for my seat. It helped save my life and more importantly lead me to a better life where I can live the life we all deserve.” Johnson stopped drinking on March 23, 2015 and now has more than 8 years sober. “As soon as I got sober, as soon as I left the treatment center, she [my wife] was waiting on me at the airport.”
“It all came down to a very powerful conversation with Billie Cannon, a lady we both love dearly as a person,” Johnson’s wife remembers. “She asked me just a few loaded questions that rocked me in a different way. Secondly, it all came down to love, realizing what is still strongly there but buried down with being lost, helpless and desperate. I missed my family and needed them together. I picked up Jamie from the airport from his last rehab facility and off we went to heal.”
“I got my family back,” Jamie said. “Not many people can say that. God let me live through all the damage I had done to myself and my body and my mind and my heart. I lived through all that. I got help, and I got my family back. Man, I’m a country song in reverse.”
Not only did Johnson regain his family and his friendships, his sobriety led him to a cleaner, better and more honest life. “There’s the key. Can you be honest? How are you acting when nobody’s looking? Anybody can walk into the meeting and tell them how awesome you’re doing, and how you work this amazing program. But it’s when you’re in the car, driving down the road and you’re alone and somebody cuts you off. Things like that. I’m not saying be a doormat, but I’m also saying respect others, the way you want to be respected and that’s including yourself. There’s the key. I had never done that. Not that I was a bad person. I just wasn’t geared that way and I think it’s made my friendships and my marriage a million times stronger. My relationship with my son is wide open.”
“Me falling from my high horse—and it was just a little horse, but I thought it was the biggest horse in town on the ranch—but me falling from that and not dying and coming back to this life that I have now, even though I’ve got 50-year-old eyes that has the biggest font you can get on a phone, I’ve never seen better in my life because I’m actually looking. I’m paying attention. When Cole tells me, he loves me—that’s an odd thing for a 14-year-old, I get to remember that every time. The three chairs that we wore out watching cartoons, as I left The Grascals and got my life back—nobody can ever take that away from me. I’m truly a blessing and a walking miracle. Not that I’m any more special than anyone else. I’m not saying that. I just truly got lucky, but I was willing to accept luck.”
Giving Back
After Johnson began to love himself again, he wanted to spread that love to others who are dealing with alcohol and drug addictions. He now works at a variety of treatment centers in the U.S. using his story and music to assist those wanting to recover.
“The most courageous move you’ll ever make is admitting to yourself that you need help and then ask for it and accept that help. It’s got to start with you. You’re not going to pray it away. You’ve got to do it, and you’ve got to make that effort. Forgive yourself first and keep an open line of communication. The open line of communication is recognizing that we’re breathing today, and we’re walking. These are all gifts. I promise you, I know firsthand because I was scooting down my steps to get to my car, to get to the liquor store because my muscle control was gone. Be thankful for those good days because they are truly a gift.”
Johnson found that not everyone understands that alcoholism is a disease and not about poor self-discipline. “There’s those on the flip side that say that’s what you deserve. That’s a fair shake. I decided to take those drinks. That’s how it works, but not everybody on this planet takes that first drink thinking, “Boy, I’d like to get addicted to this and ruin everybody’s life around me including mine!” That wasn’t my plan. I associated it to Cheers and Norm sitting there at the bar having a brew and going to the house. It wasn’t for me. It took everything away from me, my sanity, everything.
“I talk about this three or four times a week at treatment centers, and it still makes me cry the loneliness that I felt. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. I don’t blame anybody for that. It’s just where I was, and I was one of the lucky ones to survive that storm, and in the end my God was always there with me walking with me.”
His wife offers this advice for the loved ones of those addicted. “Stay close to God, never stop praying but knowing too that if they are not ready to truly surrender then you got to just lay down the rules to protect yourself and anyone else in the path, even if it means leaving. The other thing is get yourself educated in the disease. It took me a long time to know the science of the disease, and accept it. Find support groups, but find the right one. Get your loved one to their own meeting.”
Jamie is grateful to be back home with The Grascals touring in support of their new album. Though he left with some bad memories, Johnson is enjoying a new fresh chapter with the band. “With the early Grascals, I was spot on. If I messed up, then it was just because I messed up. It wasn’t because of the alcohol and the depression. This go around I’m looking at this band and The Grascals, my brothers and my sister, in a grateful way and a clear way and realize that some things don’t last forever. But the music that we leave here, the stamp that we leave, and the reputation that we leave, hopefully is a good one and that people remember in years to come, when they hear The Grascals say, ‘Boy, I like that. Man, they were some good people. They put on a great show. They loved what they did, and they recorded some music that we listened to for forever.’”
