JOHNNY HILAND BIO

Johnny Hiland grew up in the small town of Baileyville, Maine. He was born legally blind with an eye disease known as nystagmus, which did not allow him to grow up like most children. He could not do the things that sighted children could do like playing baseball, kickball, and so on. Therefore, he started playing guitar at age 2 and loved it. He played for family and friends, won local talent contests, and went on to perform his first TV show at age 7. His career took off when Johnny won the "Talent America Contest” at age 10 in New York City. He had a band with sister, Jodi, and brother, Jerry, called, “The 3 J's." They performed all over New England as a part of the Downeast Country Music Association. They had fun, playing for people in the northeast, and Johnny grew as an artist playing guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and other instruments as well. His father had taken him to see Ricky Skaggs perform in Bangor, Maine, and Johnny immediately went from pickin' bluegrass to wanting a telecaster. As a teen, Johnny spent countless hours learning and developing his own blend of chicken pickin', rock, blues, and swing, while pickin' in a number of different bands around the state of Maine. After finishing high school, and 3 years of college at the University of Southern Maine, he moved to Nashville in 1996. Since then, he has performed countless shows in the honky-tonks on lower Broadway, and started at, “The World-Famous Turf.” After a few years, Johnny landed the gig with The Don Kelley Band at Robert's Western World, which led him to perform on TNN's "Prime Time Country," and then as an artist at the legendary Grand Ole Opry. Johnny has played on a number of records for artists like Toby Keith, Trick Pony, Randy Travis, Ricky Skaggs, Janie Fricke, Lynn Anderson, Rodney Dillard, Rebecca Lynn Howard, Nokie Edwards, Hank 3, and many others. In 2004, Johnny signed his first record deal, as a guitar artist, with Steve Vai and his guitar-based record company, Favored Nations. They released Johnny’s debut self-titled album later that same year. Since then, he has been touring the globe with his band, "The Johnny Hiland Band". He was blessed with a number of great endorsers and ended up with his own guitar model with PRS Guitars in 2005. In 2007, he released a 2nd guitar album, independently, called, "Loud and Proud". Throughout his career, Johnny has toured with his own band yet has also performed on stage with super artists like Sammy Hagar, Ted Nugent, George Clinton and P-Funk, Les Paul, Steve Vai, Albert Lee, Joe Bonamassa, G3, Ricky Skaggs, Hank 3, and many others. He loves to teach and has his own line of guitar instructional material as well; 2 Hot Licks videos, a number of books/CDs with Mel Bay, 5 TrueFire courses, and a 20 licks course with Jam Track Central in the UK. He also has a new book available on Amazon called “Authentic Country Guitar Soloing” by Guitar Vivo! After facing the loss of both parents from 2005-2008, Johnny spent time with his longtime friend, Ronnie Lutrick, working on a blues project called “The Blues Connection”. He went on, and in 2010, Johnny teamed up with Ernie Ball Music Man Guitars for more of the country spank that he needed for his tone. Excited with this new move, he went on tour with Grand Ole Opry star, Hal Ketchum. The JHB opened for Hal and played his show as well. That all ended, and Johnny went on to get signed with Mike Varney and Shrapnel Records near the end of that year. Johnny landed in the studio with Mike in early 2011, and they released, “All Fired Up,” in July of that year! Johnny and his band toured as much as they could while staying busy in Nashville doing sessions and playing gigs. Johnny teamed up with his buddy Tim McDonald and they played duo shows all around Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. Johnny signed on with new management in 2016 hoping that the road would open up for him. They re-released “Loud and Proud” that same year. He ended up parting ways with Music Man later in 2016 and found his true guitar home with Kiesel Guitars. His Johnny Hiland model, the JH6, was released in 2017 and Johnny has been with them ever since! Johnny continued playing with his band in and around Nashville, but Johnny started noticing tightness and cramping in his hands and arms. He started slowing down from performing rigorously, but the love of the instrument kept him playing! He released “Standing Strong” in 2017 and continued pushing forward. Nashville, as a city, grew exponentially and the crime rate escalated. Plus, country music was making some serious changes and the music Johnny loved started becoming more pop/rock. Traditional country music was not at the forefront anymore. So, in 2018, Johnny and his lovely wife Kimmie left Nashville and moved to Chatham, Virginia. Before the move, Johnny worked on his album called “Pickin’ For The Lord,” where he had a number of his Nashville guitar picking buddies/heroes on there with him and his band. That album was released in 2019 after Johnny and Kimmie had made their move. On top of that, Johnny had always wanted to do a record similar to Danny Gatton and Joey DeFrancesco's album called “Relentless.” Johnny told his longtime buddy Blake Padilla, who had just engineered, mixed, and mastered the gospel album for him, all of this and Blake was hip! Johnny was extremely excited as he knew Blake as a master at B3/keyboards, so they teamed up for a Christmas record called “Jammin’ On Christmas,” which came out in 2019 as well! Johnny and Blake knew that they could never hit the level of Danny and Joey, but they had a blast, gave it their best, and this record rips! Now in Virginia, Johnny knew how important it was to stay busy with his career. He had always wanted his own studio where he could engineer by himself and open up his creativity while playing all of the other instruments he knew how to play. He had a beautiful studio in Nashville but was never able to use it due to his eye problem. He was blessed to find that his longtime friend, Kenny Thurman, had left Nashville and moved back to Danville, Virginia a few years before their move. Kenny has always been known as one of the best soundmen in Music City! He had worked with many artists throughout the years and also worked with Johnny and his band on several different shows. He is the man who designed the studio that Johnny had always dreamed of, and Camp Hiland Studio was started in 2019. Since then, Johnny worked on his next album called “The Chatham Sessions,” where he played all of the instruments himself while learning how to engineer by doing it. Kenny was always there for him as he learned how to properly navigate everything he needed to do. From all of that, Johnny and Kenny worked all through Covid and made a living providing full band tracking, mixing, and mastering for people all over the world! Then in 2023, Johnny was honored to be inducted into the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame! He is truly proud to be from the state of Maine, and he is truly honored and proud to be a member! He was working on a new record at that time as well. It became known as “Chatham Sessions-Volume 2” and that record was released in 2024! Today, Johnny is a very happy man living in Chatham and running his studio full-time with Kenny! He tracks full songs for people. He provides product demo videos for guitar pedal companies around the world. He teaches guitar on Zoom and in person. Plus, he does a live Facebook Q&A on his fan-page, Johnnyhilandofficial every other Saturday at 2 PM EST! He also gets out every once in a while, and does clinics and master classes when opportunities come up. Johnny is still working on his autobiography that will hopefully be ghost written by Eric Dahl. Johnny has found this writing process to be one of the biggest endeavors of his life. He feels he has grown both as a person, and as a Christian, in this process. Johnny is open about sharing his love for God and believes his entire career has been a blessing! It’s not over yet folks, so stay tuned for all updates right here on johnnyhiland.net.