Johnny Garcia has been playing guitar with Trisha Yearwood since 1991 and is also her music director. Add Garth Brooks to his resume in 2000, and he’s been on some of the biggest stages in Country music for the last 20 plus years. Johnny is also a songwriter, studio owner, producer and publisher. 

 

Johnny comes from a family of guitar players.  His dad and 2 older brothers taught him to play guitar starting at the young age of 3 years old.  His oldest brother, Simon, took him under his wing and seeing Johnny’s talent said, “You better run with this stuff from here and grow.”  And run he did, straight to Nashville, TN on a Sunday in 1991.  Trisha Yearwood’s bass player knew Johnny in Texas where Johnny was living at the time.  He convinced Johnny to audition, landing Johnny in a 30 minute audition slot the following Monday morning.  Trisha’s first #1 had just come out, “She’s in Love with the Boy”.  Johnny learned the song last minute and played it during his audition.   Johnny got the gig.

 

Johnny has played on many of Trisha’s records and has toured with her live show since that day.  They’ve made countless tv appearances on shows like Good Morning America, The Tonight Show, David Letterman, you name it.  And they always play it live.  As Trisha’s music director, it is important both to Johnny and Trisha to play for real and sing for real.  Laughing, Johnny says, “About 20 or 30 seconds before we hit, I go ‘Why do we do this to ourselves?  But it’s great because there’s millions of people watching, and boy, you better do this right’”.  

 

Johnny got snatched up by Garth Brooks in 2000 and has toured extensively with him when he’s not obligated to Trisha.  We’ll let him tell the stories of days on the road with Garth Brooks at The Collective.  From what he’s told me, Garth’s energy is borderline superhuman.  The stories are wild.  

 

Come join us on April 25th to hear more and to ask Johnny your own questions about what it’s REALLY like inside the music industry.