Some of the Johnson Carpenter Band and Kane Brown Band members from left are keyboardist Casey Carpenter, singer Kane Brown and guitarist Josh Johnson.More Info
Back in October, Kane Brown was an Internet sensation, known to nearly 800,000 fans on social media, but unknown to the suits at the record labels. Man, have things changed.” … I kept posting videos and ended up meeting with every label in Nashville and New York, and they all wanted to sign me,” Brown said last week. “I was introduced to Sony and I had a good feeling about Sony, so I signed with them.”Sony put him right into the studio to record a five-song EP after signing him. “Chapter 1” came out on March 17 — and went to No. 1 on the iTunes Country Album Chart and Overall Album Chart in 30 minutes.
Wanting a way to debut the songs they’d written, Chickamauga’s Casey Carpenter and Rossville’s Josh Johnson started the Johnson Carpenter Band more than a decade ago.
These days, they are appearing on bigger and bigger stages, and writing music for rising stars including Kane Brown, the Rossville native who’s taking Nashville by storm.
“Being new songwriters in town, we formed a band,” said Carpenter, who plays the keyboard in the Johnson Carpenter Band. “We had to make a band so people would hear our music. We formed a band out of necessity and met Kane Brown and wrote his first original song, ‘Don’t Go City On Me.’ We also wrote ‘Turns Me On.’ ‘Don’t Go City On Me’ got over a million hits on YouTube and past 10 million on Facebook.”
Carpenter said they now co-write songs with Brown, and Johnson is the acoustic player for the Kane Brown Band. Splitting his time between Chickamauga and Nashville, Carpenter is a staff writer for Banner Music Publishing where he works with well-known musicians Jerry Salley and Chris Stapleton. Carpenter said he writes songs for other rising stars like Shelby Lee Lowe and Annie Morgan.