Crow Johnson will begin the second year of performances for the Communiversity Series at Arkansas State University on Thursday, Aug. 30, 7:30 p.m., in the Fine Arts Center auditorium on Caraway Road.

While at ASU, she also will lead an educational song writing workshop at 4 p.m. that day, also in the Fine Arts auditorium, for anyone interested in composing lyrics and music.

The workshop and the performance are free and open to the public. The Communiversity Series is sponsored by the Student Union and the Office of Student Involvement and Leadership.

An only child, Crow Johnson was born into the Greenwich Village and Woodstock, New York, art communities, but grew up in Texas. Her parents also are musicians; her father is a classical composer and jazz pianist, her mother a flutist, and stepmother a viola/violinist. Her unusual name, Crow, was bestowed on her from a favorite grandfather who helped raise her.

After beginning her professional career in Houston in 1962, Johnson continued to play throughout her college years in Austin, Texas, performing coffeehouses, folk clubs, TV, radio, and concert appearances.

As she describes it, those were "split nights and wild times. . . Guy Clark, Townes VanZandt, Janis Joplin, Jerry Jeff Walker, KT Oslin, Don Sanders, Marcia Ball, the whole amazing early Texas song-writing enchilada."

She earned a degree in zoology and managed to play San Francisco, Vancouver and Toronto in the summer of 1967 . . . barefoot, flowers, and all.

As part of the duo Avalon, Johnson moved to London, England, in 1968, landing a major recording and publishing contract with EMI. She worked with an amazing line up from Denny Laine, Trevor Burton, Gary Farr, the Rolling Stones, Gary Wright and Doris Troy.

"It was a great time to be an American musician working out of London and living in a cowman’s cottage 10 kilometers from Stonehenge," she recalls.

When she returned to America, the artist found a patch of Ozark forest in which to build a cabin, live simply, work on her music and tour. Since 1978 she has performed solo, zigzagging the USA. Between 1978 and 1994, she published the Zassafras Music News and began a management/booking consortium at the urging of Still on the Hill, the turbo-charged folkgrass quartet. With her associate, Carol Florida, she continues this work with other artists.

A wilderness fanatic, she found the "perfect man" (naturalist-gourmet cook, dentist, river runner, lily hybridizer) in Arthur Evans II. They married in 1984 and have lived happily ever since deep in the northwest Arkansas hills. As a cancer survivor since 1991, she reflects in her work an awareness and appreciation for our brief time here.

For more information, contact the Student Union at Arkansas State University, (870) 972-2056.

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