THE SAINT JOHNS
Genre: Americana, Singer-Songwriter
Band Members: Louis Johnson & Jordan Meredith
Location: Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Discography: Open Waters EP (2015), Dead of Night (2016)
Record Label: Kemosabe Records
Website: http://www.thesaintjohns.com
For our next showcase artists we travel to Nashville the home of Floridian duo The Saint Johns. Louis Johnson & Jordan Meredith have just released their debut album in March 2016 entitled 'Dead Of Night, which is well worth exploring further. Our song above 'Your Head and Your Heart' is taken from their 2015 'Open Waters' EP.
Jordan Meredith and Louis Johnson of The Saint Johns have the ingredient every special duo needs: chemistry. Theirs is the kind of relationship where neither finishes a sentence because the other already gets it in just a few words. It’s the kind of relationship that starts at a friend’s Taco Tuesday party in St. Augustine, Florida, in 2008. And it’s a relationship everyone assumes is romantic. But this meet-cute has an unusual ending – it doesn’t end in marriage, but a beautiful partnership nevertheless that has yielded The Saint Johns’ debut album Dead of Night.
“I met Jordan at a party and she happened to have a guitar,” Johnson said. “All of our friends were either hooking up or drunk or sleeping and we just stayed up playing shitty covers of Jack Johnson songs until our ears were bleeding. We were definitely impressed by each other.” Not long after, Meredith landed a gig at a local bar and invited Johnson to help fill a few long sets. Seven years later as they prepare to release their major-label debut, Meredith and Johnson believe they’ve put in their 10,000 hours and have arrived at something pretty special.
They moved to New York to make it big – “We ended up just being broke.” Johnson said – but nevertheless used the time to write and play together every day. They moved to Nashville to regroup and 'The Saint Johns' – named for the river that flows through the heart of their native Florida – began to truly come into focus. They played shows anywhere and everywhere relentlessly – “some good, some bad, some empty” – and released a well-received EP, Open Water, that got the duo immediate support from the critics and the industry and helped land its first television appearance, “Late Show with David Letterman.”
That EP captured the sweet Americana soul of the band’s early sound. Recorded with a full band, Dead of Night is something more – more mature, more confident, more ambitious. The album, which comes out March 4th, 2016 on Kemosabe Records, began with demo recordings Johnson made. The two took them to David Kahne, a Grammy Award- winning producer and record label executive who’s worked with Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, The Strokes, Lana Del Rey, Fishbone and many others.