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Jude Johnstone's 'Coming of Age'
After Writing Songs for Others, Artist Makes Recording Debut
 Listen to Renée Montagne's report.
Listen to an extended version of the report.
 Hear a selection of Jude Johnstone's songs.
Aug. 13, 2002 -- Jude Johnstone has written songs for some of the biggest stars in the music business, including Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, Trisha Yearwood and Johnny Cash. Now the songwriter has stepped up to the microphone to perform her own songs on her first album, Coming of Age.
"I think I was born with the idea of songwriting," Johnstone tells Morning Edition guest host Renée Montagne. Encouraged by her parents, Johnstone took piano lessons as a child and remembers writing songs "even when I barely played, because I heard music in my head all the time..."
Johnstone grew up near her grandfather's blueberry farm in rural Maine. But as a teenager in the late 1970s, she decided that if she was going to write songs for a living, Hollywood was the place to be, Montagne reports. On a flight, Johnstone found herself sitting next to Clarence Clemons, saxophonist with Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Clemons asked for a tape of her work, liked it and invited her to a recording session in New York with Springsteen.
"I'd never seen a fancy recording studio like that in my life and suddenly there I was..." Johnstone says. "They just sort of let me sit and watch. I didn't say a word. I just watched them do takes of their songs and I listened."
Though she has just released her first album, Johnstone says she's always wanted to be a recording artist. "I do love to perform the songs myself and I also love to hear other people perform them. I like both things."
She was especially floored by Johnny Cash's rendition of one of her songs, "Unchained," which was also the title to his 1996 album. The country legend took her up-tempo spiritual and rendered it as a hymn. "When I heard it, I went, 'I can't believe it. This is beautiful,'" she says.
Johnstone wrote "Wounded Heart," for Bonnie Raitt, who called it the saddest song she ever sang. It appeared on Raitt's Silver Lining CD earlier this year.
Asked about the origins of her songs, Johnstone explains: "All my songs are mysteries to me. I don't know where they come from. They come from my real-life experiences... but all I do is shape them. I don't like it to sound as if it's a religious experience... but music is a mystery and it's a miracle to me and still is."
In Depth
Hear Bonnie Raitt discuss "Wounded Heart," a song Johnstone wrote for her. (Excerpted from a May 2002 interview with Weekend Edition Saturday's Scott Simon.)
Other Resources
• Learn more about Jude Johnstone.
• Read lyrics to Johnstone's songs.
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