Word is out: How a Canberra journalist and a teacher are making such sweet music together

By day, journalist Chris Johnson writes about politics and the Australian Public Service.

By night, you’ll probably find him singing about other things he’s written – but these are more stories of faraway lands, romance, the Wild West, or social commentary.

With his mate, guitarist Artem Grigoriev, an English as a second language teacher (currently working at the University of Canberra’s Graduate Research School), the two make up Capo Creek. This singer-songwriting duo has just released its first album, Running Out.

Not a fan of categorising their music, Chris reckons it crosses a number of genres, with the description “outlaw country” being a good fit. There’s plenty of folk, blues and acoustic rock in there, too.

For Chris, it’s always been about the music. Singing and songwriting, in particular. He prefers to describe his musical partner as more of the Eric Clapton of the duo with his lead and rhythm guitar skills while Chris is on lead vocals, rhythm and fingerpicking guitar.

Chris also wrote all the songs on the new album.

“I’ve been a journalist for 25 years or more,” Chris said.

“Before that, I was actually writing about music for the street press in Perth. That’s when I realised how much I loved writing – and I’ve always loved music.”

From country newspaper roots, he moved up through the ranks to edit regional newspapers before moving down to Tasmania to cover politics there – and then coming to Canberra in 2005 to cover federal politics, where he was later to run the Fairfax bureau at Parliament House.

Today, he writes mainly about the Public Service for Region.

But music has always been his first love.

“When I moved to Canberra in 2005, I started to pick up the guitar to play more publicly again, and found lots of muso friends – there’s a really great music community in Canberra.

“After covering politics for a long time, it was good to get back to music. It was like a total release.”

The idea of producing an album had always been on the cards, it just had to be the right time, he said.

“We had about 10 songs I thought were our best, as well as a couple more hanging around, so it seemed like it was time. Some of the songs were a decade old, others were more recent, but we thought we had something to offer.”

Encouraged by his life partner, who suggested, “You should get them recorded”, Chris approached producer David Pendragon, who runs Pendragon Studio. A few months later, Capo Creek’s first album was out.

Describing himself as a huge and tragic fan of Bob Dylan and The Beatles, tracks on Running Out have the scent of the 60s and 70s, combining the “outlaw country” feel with the blues and folk music. Some of the songs pay tribute to his musical heroes like Dylan, Paul Kelly and Nick Cave.

“We didn’t want to pigeonhole our music,” Chris said, “it’s more about telling stories than staying in a specific genre.

“They’re not really autobiographical,” he added, a good thing considering one of the songs, Covenant, is about murder. But there are a couple of references to Canberra on the album, including iconic watering holes like Smith’s Alternative.

“There are a bunch of love songs, too,” he said, “all totally made up,” he added with a laugh.

Chris and Artem are supported on the album by other local musicians, including Matt Nightingale (bass), Jonathan Jones (drums and percussion), Marji Curran (backing vocals), DJ Gosper (harmonica) and Jacqueline Bradley (fiddle).

Running Out, the debut album from Capo Creek, will be launched at The Bunker in Queanbeyan on Sunday, 11 August, from 2 pm. Entry $20 for an afternoon of music and food. CDs are available at the gig and are in Canberra’s record shops. The album is also available to download at capocreek.bandcamp.com.