Jay Johnson, left, with daughter Shannan, in front of the family’s new Internet cafe, Union Station at Bowling Green. (CP Photo by Greg Glassner)
Caroline County gets its share of residents who move here from somewhere else.
Some move here for a tranquil rural lifestyle and privacy and are never heard from again.
Others get involved in their adopted community and make a significant positive impact on the quality of life we all can enjoy.
Jay Johnson and his family are in the latter category.
A musician and recording studio owner, Johnson has become heavily involved in the local arts scene, working with the Bowling Green Arts Commission on the Arts Walk, and helping create and arrange the music for the highly annual Music on the Green Series and June’s John Cephas Piedmont Blues Festival.
“We built our house here in 2006 and moved down here in 2009,” said Johnson, who lived in the nation’s capital before that.
“I was living in D.C. in 2001 and I got married and my wife got a horse,” Johnson remembered. “I said, ‘You can‘t have a horse in D.C.’ Well, you can, but it’s pretty expensive.
“We said, when we retired, we’d get some land and build a house. In 2002 we bought a piece of property with room for a horse,” Johnson said.
After they built their house and moved to Caroline, Johnson opened a recording studio on the second floor of the Pitts & Manns building (the town’s old movie theater). For a while he operated two studios, but the rat race of commuting on I-95 finally got to him and he consolidated everything in Bowling Green. “This is actually my fifth studio,” he noted.
Johnson continues as a professional musician, mainly percussion and keyboard, and plays with a band almost every week, flying to gigs in Atlantic City and Las Vegas.
Groups he has played with include the Flamingoes and the Phil Flowers Band. He also plays with gospel groups.
“I played with the Metropolitan Police Band at the White House under Bush I,” he said, referring to President George H.W. Bush.”
Having 40 years worth of contacts in the music business comes in handy when rounding up musicians for new, untested events.
“They had a meeting to talk about Music on the Green and everybody said, maybe next year. I said I can do it in 30 days,” Johnson said.
That was in 2013. The dedication of the John Cephas highway marker came about in 2014 and this year’s Cephas Festival grew out of that.
This summer also saw the debut of another Johnson venture, Union Station at Bowling Green, a smoke-free, alcohol-free internet café and music venue that opened up less than two months ago at 114 N. Main Street.
Union Station is already hosting live performances on Saturday nights and is also a place teens can gather on Friday nights to hear music. It is also available for rent for private and corporate gatherings.
“There was just a void here,” Johnson said. “If you go five or 10 miles from Bowling Green you can’t get wi-fi. And there are a lot of local musicians in the area that don’t have a place to play. They have to go to Fredericksburg, Richmond or D.C.”
He also has plans to bring in groups from outside Virginia from time to time.
“We will have bluegrass, rock, blues, jazz, hip hop, Celtic and gospel. A country group, the Dixie Belles, is coming here from North Carolina in August,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s wife, Joanna Carter, is also a successful entrepreneur. She runs Mary Cloud Bethune Cooperative Educating Consulting.
The Johnsons home-school their children, Shannan, Gil, Enoch, Daniel and Elisha. An older daughter, Delania, lives in Washington, D.C. Shannan, 15, an aspiring writer, has already had a story published in the Caroline Progress in June. Brothers Enoch and Gil are involved with the Caroline 4-H Technology Club.
For more information on Union Station’s performances, go to www.unionstationbg.com. More information on Jay Johnson’s Music & Art Studio can be found at www.jayjohnsononline.org.