Drew Johnston
Credit: Steve Sergent Photography
Guitarist
Kaleido / The Stowaways
CHANGEOVER: Tell us about who you are and what it is that you do in the industry.
Drew Johnston: Right now I'm just a musician in the industry. However, I come from the guitar tech world as well. It's been kind of a weird and crazy ride. I went from playing in local clubs to playing on cruise ships to tech’ing with some of the biggest bands in the world to playing with my own bands. I’ve done a lot of different roles. I'm also in the photo and video production side of things too and I’m getting the ball rolling with that.
How did you get into the industry originally?
After playing with a local cover band in South Florida for about 10 years, I was recruited into a live band karaoke act, which is basically the same thing but you have other people come up and sing on stage. After a few months of doing that locally, the guy who owned the company decided to take us on a cruise that he usually does, which was Motörhead's MotörBoat. We weren't even supposed to play at first as it was more of a thank you. I guess he asked if we could perform on the cruise and they gave us a night to play. I think it was the first or second night on the boat that we played and, true story, it was terrible. I think we left the stage after our first three songs because we didn't really learn the entire setlist. It was a catastrophe. The next day, because karaoke continued on without us until three or four in the morning and everybody had such a great time, that's all they heard back at the production office. They let us do another night so we went through the setlist and made sure it was only songs that we knew and it went great. Before that cruise was over, we ended up getting booked for ShipRocked that next January.
Credit: Steve Sergent Photography
January of 2016 came around and we got to perform on ShipRocked. I was kind of under the impression that it would be a very unique opportunity to meet other people in the industry and to network. One of the people I ended up meeting, and making friends with, was Oli Herbert from All That Remains. I remember the day that it all clicked. We were hanging out on the beach and he was there just hanging out with the karaoke band dudes. We were sitting there shooting the shit, just hanging out. I realized that he was really cool so I invited him to come hang out with us at karaoke that night. Oli came out and watched the entire thing, and even came up and sang with us. I think he did “Highway to the Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins. That was priceless. Afterwards he came up to me and said, “how do you know all the songs? How many do you know?” I told him around three or four hundred. His response was, “what? That’s crazy! I can't even learn like 12 of my own songs to play on stage for tour and I wrote them.”
The next day we met for lunch and came up with a game plan of ideas on how we could start making some money together. He basically recruited me in to being his pseudo personal manager in a way where I was going to be assisting him with making some money outside of guitar playing. When it comes down to it, I didn't really know what I was doing. I was just very determined to help him out. We were going to help each other become successful no matter what. Over the course of the next couple of months, that grew into something that was a lot less business and much more personal. We realized our personalities really meshed well together and he became one of my best friends. I got to learn a lot more about who he was as a person. We were like brothers. All I did was work my ass off every day to try and help him get more endorsement deals, and to help set up master classes at local music shops all over the place.
In response to that, I ended up getting tagged in a Facebook post one day and ended up getting a phone call later that same day. I remember I was at Carolina Rebellion Festival sick with the flu and was sitting in the back of my friend's pickup truck. I got the call to fly out to L.A. the next morning to go guitar tech for Thirty Seconds to Mars and I had never even been a guitar tech before. It was kind of like being thrown into the deep end with all the sharks. The only reason I really got the gig was because I was very, very familiar with the specific equipment that their guitarist Tomo Miličević was using. I got there and realized that it was a lot more than just his guitar gear that I was responsible for and reality kind of hit me in the face. I thought I was way out of my league but I survived.
Credit: Drew Johnston
That opened the door for more gigs and I got to do some really cool things and got to see the world. I've tech’ed for a few different bands. As much as I enjoy being on the road and touring, I'm probably not very good at being a guitar tech. I can do things at a high level, but there are some people that are more suited for that kind of gig. I don't think that I'm one of those people. I think that my passion comes more from performing and playing, which is OK. It took me a little while to recognize that. Now I focus more on the playing and performing aspect of things. That's how I got into the production side of doing video and photo, because that's something that I was watching some guys do on the road at a higher level. That looked really fun. When I tech’ed for Sevendust, they would have me go out with my cell phone and gimbal and film during shows so it’s something I was introduced to a few years ago. Because of COVID, I bought a bunch of camera gear and dove right in and it’s something I very much enjoy. Hopefully I'll get to do that on the road eventually too.
Where were you when COVID hit and how has that affected your career?
I was in South Florida at home when everything happened and was in the midst of a new relationship. It felt like there was a lockdown coming. I sensed that the whole country was about to get shut down so I decided to invite my girlfriend to my family's condo in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We went and were there for about a month and a half. I didn't know what to expect. I didn't realize that this entire COVID lockdown thing was going to be something that was going to take all year. I didn’t know what was going to happen next or how it was going to affect things. That’s when it really set in that there was a big industry shut down. There was nothing to do. The longer and longer it got drawn out, I started to question touring and when it was going to come back. Was it going to be years down the road? Needless to say, it was a little intense to process all that. It's only been just over a year and now we're starting to get things back in motion again so it's a pretty exciting time.
What were you doing to keep busy while the industry was shut down?
The reason I ended up coming home from Myrtle Beach is because I had a pretty crazy accident occur. It's not the most interesting, or fun, story but I was sweeping with an old metal broom and didn't realize how old the thing was. It was all rusted out on the inside and it kind of folded over in my hand. I kept sweeping and, after a couple of sweeps, it snapped off the other way and took the entire tip of my middle finger with it. So that was horribly awesome. My girlfriend thought I was being a little dramatic because I was jumping up and down but didn’t realize what happened to my hand. The good thing is that she does orthopedic surgeries regularly. She's a nurse who works in the O.R. We were able to get home and deal with one of the best hand surgeons in all of Florida right away. She was able to operate on me with her surgeon within that week. They weren't able to save the piece of my finger that came off but they were able to reconstruct it in a way that made it completely usable again, which was great. I was really scared that I was never going to play guitar again. That was one of the things I was freaking out about when I was in the car on my way to the E.R. that night. I was really, really sad because it was my left middle finger. It took about five or six months before I could really start playing again for real. It's taken me some time to get back to normal but, for the most part, I can play again. I had this horrible traumatic experience as it was but I can still play guitar and that's all that matters at the end of the day.
Now that the industry is starting to come back, do you have any plans coming up that you can talk about?
Credit: Drew Johnston
We have some exciting things going on with Kaleido. A couple of us are going to be on ShipRocked this year as The Stowaways, which just got announced, and is very exciting. We have a bunch of new music coming out. We have some really cool video stuff that we filmed up in Detroit that's going to be coming out. It's nice to see the wheels turning again and that we're going full steam ahead with everything that we kind of left off with. It was over a year since being able to really to go at it but now that we're green lit to start doing things, we have exciting things in the works. Some things I can mention, some things I can't. Some things haven't been announced yet. Things are looking really good right now. I'm very happy about it.
What is it that you're looking forward to the most once you get back on the road?
Playing shows again. Everybody has their own thing, their own high that they get out of the live music experience, from the people on stage to the people watching. The high I get is from performing for people. The energy that's on stage is what I’m looking forward to the most. I am just super ecstatic about getting back out there and doing it for people again. It's something that we haven't been able to do in a while. The last performance we got to play for anybody was at the Beats and Eats festival in Detroit last September. We played to a bunch of cars. As cool as it was to get out there and play on a stage again after a bunch of months, it was definitely not the same experience as having the live energy of a crowd screaming back to you. That's definitely what I'm looking forward to the most and just getting back out there and playing some shows.
For more information, along with upcoming tour dates, please visit the Kaleido and The Stowaways official websites.