Jamey Johnson Knocking Them Out

Mercury recording artist Jamey Johnson celebrated the gold status of his latest album, That Lonesome Song, on the rooftop terrace at BMI in Nashville, Tenn. on Tuesday, May 20, 2009. Jamey's guests included Little Big Town's Kimberly Schlapman. Photo by Peyton Hoge, courtesy of UMG Nashville.

June 8, 2009 — Jamey Johnson’s album That Lonesome Song has made him one of the strongest developing artists in country music, and it made him a very popular man in Nashville last month when his gold album party attracted such fellow artists as Keith Anderson, Bill Anderson, the Oak Ridge Boys and two members of Little Big Town.

If there’ve been any concerns about his ability to follow up the CD, he’s certainly creating a volume of material to choose from. He started working on the next album last fall, and to date, he’s knocked out about 40 tracks that are, he told Billboard, "almost finished."

"The past several times we’ve been in the studio," he added, "it’s just...fresh. It stays new. It’s been really fun for me."

The sessions for That Lonesome Song had an informal attitude about them. Jamey enlisted a bunch of musician friends, shared some alcohol and kicked around some stories, then set about cutting the album without many overdubs. He financed it himself, so he was careful not to book studio time he didn’t need. But in the wake of the album’s success, he’s not putting a lot of pressure on the new stuff.

"Our days of going in and knocking an album out in one day are probably done," he said. "From now on we’re probably going to keep going in and recording and keep material available. We’ll go in, and if we end up doing something special with that session, then great. If not, then, well, we did it. When we’ve got some culled stuff we can use, we’ll take those and place them somewhere along the way."

Jamey’s performance Friday at Nashville’s LP Field is likely to be one of the highlights of this year’s CMA Music Festival, which is being shot for a three-hour ABC special that will air in August. Other acts sharing the stage the same night include Trace Adkins, Martina McBride, Josh Turner, Lee Ann Womack, and the Judds.