Walden: The Earth Song Collection by Michael Johnathon

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Over 3,992 venues from far away as South Korea, Egypt, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Belgium, Australia, Ireland, England, Germany, Israel, Canada and the across the USA are presenting the play as an Earth Day 2007 event.

Henry David Thoreau is considered America’s original “tree hugger” and forefather of our environmental movement. He was a gentle naturalist, earth lover, author, pencil-maker ... and is the most quoted American writer in history. Yet, when he passed, he was better known for having helped market the pencil than for a single word he wrote with it.

The play has also been produced as a drama in the style of the 1940's and 50's radio plays and will be broadcast on over 500 radio stations, internet broadcasters and XM Satellite Radio. The radio drama features actor Ryan Case as Thoreau, Edmund Desiato as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ross Carter portrays the common man character of Joshua Barnett and Tara Adkins plays Rachel Stuers.

The Walden play is provided free to schools, theaters and public radio by Dixon-Ticonderoga and supported by Earth Day Network, American Forests, Kentucky Earth Day and EarthCARE Canada. Information about the Walden project is online at waldenplay.com

Bio

Michael Johnathon is a folksinger, songwriter, concert performer, author ... and now playwright ... who has a worldwide radio audience approaching a million listeners each week. He also created the world’s first multi-camera weekly series broadcast on the Internet.

This ‘Woody Guthrie in a Cyber World” grew up in upstate New York along the shores of the Hudson River. At 19 years old, he moved to the Mexican border town of Laredo, Texas and found a job working as a late night DJ on KLAR-FM. One night, he played Turn, Turn, Turn by the 60’s folkrock group The Byrds. As the song played, he recalled seeing Pete Seeger and Harry Chapin performing in his Dutchess County hometown in New York. By the time the song ended, he decided to pursue a career as a folksinger.

“While folksinging, delightful guitar picking, and environmental concerns have defined his professional life, this popular songwriter has embraced the modern age in a very unique way. His new Homestead album creates a warm James Taylor-like, homestyled musical storytelling."

Jonathan Widran - All Music Guide

Two months later, he bought a guitar and a banjo and settled into the isolated mountain hamlet of Mousie, Kentucky. For the next three years, he traveled up and down the hollers of the Appalachian mountains knocking on doors and learning the music of the mountain people. Michael experienced hundreds of front porch hootenannies throughout Appalachia where folks would pull out their banjos and fiddles, sit on their front porches with him and play the old songs that their grandparents taught them.

Soon enough, he began performing concerts at hundreds of colleges, schools and fairs. He performed two thousand Earth Concerts, plus benefits for the homeless, farm families, and shelters helping battered women and children. In all, he sang to over two million people in one four-year stretch. Billboard Magazine headlined him as an “UnSung Hero.” He has been featured on CNN, TNN, CMT, AP, Headline News, NPR, Bravo and the BBC.

Aside from touring, writing and recording he continues work on create new projects. A few years ago, Michael released his first book and CD gift set called WoodSongs. The book included the 16-song, all-acoustic WoodSongs compact disc. The musical highlight of the album is a duet of a mountain song titled New Wood that he performs with the legendary Odetta and an eight piece cello section. Other featured musicians on the CD include Grammy winning banjo master JD Crowe, Appalachian icon Jean Ritchie and others.

The success of the WoodSongs book and CD resulted in the creation of radio’s only syndicated live-audience program dedicated to brilliant but unknown artists. The show, called the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour, is recorded each week before a theatre audience and broadcast on over 460 stations from Australia to Boston to Ireland with well over one million listeners tuning in each week. The multi-media folk program is completely run by volunteers and available as a syndicated radio show plus online streaming, archiving, podcasting and now as a national TV series airing on PBS stations in 2006.

Michael's seventh album, HomeStead was released in 2004 with Sam Bush, Rob Ickes, Ronnie McCoury, Mike Cleveland, John Cowan and banjo master JD Crowe helping out. His live CD was released in 2005, recorded with friends like Sweet Honey In The Rock and others.

The Evening Song album is an Americana, folk and bluegrass project filled with acoustic guitars, banjos, dobros and mandolins. Some songs are complimented by the rich classical texture of a real 22 piece orchestra section of violins, violas, cellos, and French horns. He calls the musical style Folkestral.

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