Russell Johnson
Russell Johnson is a bluegrass mandolinist, singer, songwriter and bandleader. He grew up on a farm in Four Oaks, North Carolina, and first heard bluegrass through an older brother. He got his first mandolin in 1982 as a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He formed New Vintage in Cary, North Carolina, in 1989 with guitarist Earl Llewellyn. The band won both the Pizza Hut International Bluegrass Showdown and SPBGMA's national band contest in 1993. Its banjo players in the mid-1990s included Gena Britt and her successor, Julie Elkins. New Vintage played its last show in October 2000. He started the Grass Cats in 1997 as a local pick-up band and made it his main group after New Vintage ended. He became director of UNC's Carolina Bluegrass Band when the university created the ensemble in 2016.
In the newsletter
- No. 18 Winter 1999