Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph Johnson.
Joseph, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
From as early as I can remember into my childhood, music had always had a significant part in my life.
My dad would play his Metal CDs when I was just five years old over our giant living room sound system. I would bring stuffed animals
and dance around.
I took piano lessons in fifth grade to join percussion in school because my father pushed me to have an interest in playing drum set.
I stayed in the school band until my freshman year of high school, but I had left behind my interest in being taught how to play music in early 2017.
From 2017 onwards, I decided to teach myself how to do everything I know.
I play all of the instruments for Stoney Point, every time I go in to record, I have different instrumental ideas so sometimes I learn something for a song.
Recently, I had to better familiarize myself with how to play harmonica for some tracks as well as banjo.
I never recorded because I really had no method other than Audacity, until July 2017 when my friend (no longer in contact) gifted me my first version of FL Studios 12.
Stoney Point was first formed as Headwires on July 31st, 2017, then renamed Villains promptly after joining streaming services (August 2017).
I first had the privilege of taking a small road trip to Stoney Point on December 31st, 2018. Stoney Point was not our destination, my aunt
decided to take my mother and I up north to take pictures.
I had recently acquired a nicer camera and my aunt is a photographer so she saw it as a great time to have me learn how to use my new camera.
We stopped at many places, and for much greater time but what stuck out to me was my maybe 15 minutes at Stoney Point on Lake Superior.
We were rushing home for New Year’s Eve when my aunt remembered that many people liked to come to a spot along the shore of Lake Superior
to surf during the winter.
I asked if we had time to check it out and we barely made it for any time, to the point where as we were leaving, I was poked out the window taking pictures as we rolled away.
My band Villains became Stoney Point on January 1st, 2019.
Awe-struck from what I had saw, stellar colors in tidal waves, hitting smooth stones cast into wintry oblivion. I recorded some of my earliest works.
Most of the music from this era spans all forms of genres you could imagine; mostly sticking to a stubborn plan to fuse hip-hop and rock. Although, I doubt you can find any of this stuff because I cleaned it from the internet one night. I do regret it funny enough even though I truly think that music was mediocre and not true to who I am.
In Fall of 2019, I put together the first live roster for Stoney Point, which consisted of a bassist and drummer no longer involved in Stoney Point.
January 24th saw mine and Stoney Point’s first show which was headlining the Winterfest at The Garage, Burnsville 2020.
I had done my first merch run fully independent; glossy posters, and sold out the night of the show. This definitely created an instant love of making quality merchandise.
I would say the popularity and success of early 2020 Stoney Point was not only killed dead by personal irresponsibility of band members and bad choices but the looming pandemic cancelling all shows we already had planned.
By the time of the Pandemic shutdown, Stoney Point was just myself again but I entered into one of the darkest time spans of my life. Without the feeling of progressing forward Stoney Point stagnated on the sound I had been working on while trying to move on into more indie-rock music.
The result is an era that has also been wiped clean, music that is stuck behind a facade of hope that I could go back to pleasing people, and being popular. The very thing that almost intensely destroyed Stoney Point.
But it wasn’t people-pleaser music, not many people liked it. I focused on trying to have a “high-school” experience instead of taking the music so
seriously more gradually over this time. This was the beginning of a chain of awful life decisions that would unknowingly “ruin” my conventional life as I knew it.
I drove around with people I thought liked me doing whatever they were doing partying and with no real outside support into this deepening pit of time as I felt as though the people around me were there for something.
I backslid into depending on a girl who became my best friend.
By the time of a couple of months of manipulation, social isolation and forgetting my own boundaries she had convinced me I liked her. What I had seen of her so far though, I really did like, so it almost felt like a why not. The pandemic instills this urgency to experience life, as if an apocalypse was guaranteed.
Into the first month of this awful abusive relationship she impaired my music creation, my family relationship to keep me at her house, controlled who I was friends with and was awful in every way emotionally. I just never would have expected it to escalate I always said we could talk about things and work stuff out.
I assumed I was doing something wrong when I should have seen clearly she was doing something wrong. Into the second and final month of what you could lazily call a relationship she chose to begin routinely sexually assaulting me. Something that was not an accident, discussed many
times and asked to stop. It took me leaving for it all to stop.
Some people wonder why a big person like me would let a small women do that to me and I instill the awful sinking hole I was in, the manipulation and to consider the inherent sexism in that question.
Many men are victims or rape, abuse and domestic violence and this is a really under talked issue. Many women use false allegations to get innocent men in trouble. I worry about the direction of this world for these reasons.
In leaving my toxic ex decided to implore the false allegation strategy against me anytime, I brought up what she had done to me. The most sick thing imaginable, assault someone and tell them you assaulted them when you begged for anything sexual to stop happening routinely. I lost everyone and everything naturally, because no one wanted to believe a man.
The result of the spiraling loss of everyone and everything, I dug deeper into the pit making more and more insufferable tunes until I got to a tipping point. I didn’t learn the lifestyle was also the issue so I continued seeking relief from the trauma in a “high-school” experience. Dealing with another issue with a partner but this time them being troubled. Watching them overdose on a face-time and getting the police for them.
Their death I think was the wake-up call, but not the start of anything getting better. I finally decided to stop pretending nothing happened to me and wrote down what had happened to me.
I wrote my biggest single “I’ll Never Be Normal Again” as a result of the sexual abuse from the first relationship and the experiences I had during this awful lull in my musical career. I see it as a sign to keep going and that stopping is a bad omen.
In 2022, I released my new age debut (promise it won’t go anywhere) to continue my career and finally move on with my life in a sense. Through fan interaction, I noticed people missed my old independent label so I created Morningrise Records this winter to assist smaller independent artists like myself get releases made into physical copies, do merch and get on streaming platforms.
I put my most popular singles, “INBNA” and “Fossils” on 7″ Vinyl all by myself with the help of American Vinyl Co. A super cool pressing plant in North Carolina. The color of these records is made to imitate the color of Stoney Point’s waves and it’s exclusive to band-camp.
I signed a couple of artists to Morningrise Records all around the globe to start supporting artists I believe in. My label and I released multiple projects and merchandise items under Stoney Point in 2022 to make the return as unavoidable as possible, but this time my sound is not compromised by facades, or hopes to return but faith that I can continue ahead instead.
My next full-length album is out January 20th, 2023 via Morningrise Records. It will debut with a movie (music video for each song) as my most ambitious project yet.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The biggest obstacles in my life have certainly been those big traumatizing events that almost made me drop the ball. I mean as far back as early middle school I faced a lot of social anxiety and depression because I was routinely bullied. I remember one of my best friends at the time making fun of me in front of everyone during health class when the teacher was talking about depression. As a victim of harassment, It makes you wanna ball up and not do anything at all. It makes you feel like you did something awful even if you haven’t. Most things while being harassed feel like punishments but the question is always a punishment for what? The human mind can be unforgiving with this and overcoming that suspicion that you deserve what is happening to you.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I do everything from playing the instruments, to taking pictures, to the front covers of albums. The graphic designing, the advertising, talking to the business involved in Stoney Point and Morningrise. I’m an audio engineer, trained for room treatment and recording. I am proficient in FL Studios, and a couple of DAWs. I even enter the lyrics into music-match. I am most proud of how hands-on I am, my level of commitment and doing everything myself. I have never depended on anybody or needed anybody to be successful, no matter how hard it gets. For all Morningrise Record’s releases I hand stamp every letter onto our records. The personal touch, extra goodies and homemade feel set me apart.
What are your plans for the future?
I plan to continue to grow Stoney Point as big as possible. It’s my dream to do this for a living. Even more than it being my dream to do this for a living I want to make it possible for more and more small artists with an interest in a music career to feel like it’s attainable for them too. Music as a lifetime career is often treated like making the big leagues for a sport, unrealistic and something to dream about. I don’t think anyone should waste their life dreaming and creating Morningrise will hopefully provide some support and create a difference in the world.
Pricing:
- INBNA / Fossils 7″ (Stoney Point Splatter) $28.99
- Calling it Back CD $8.99
- Frontier was Still Picturebook $14.99
Contact Info:
- Website: https://stoneypointband.bandcamp.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stoneypointband/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/stoneypointband
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/StoneyPoint
- Other: https://linktr.ee/stoneypointband
Image Credits
Joseph Johnson
