Charley Johnson’s voice is still familiar. There’s no mistaking that mellow, authoritative sound – now at the helm of the F-M Convention and Visitors Bureau, but for nearly 40 years a staple on Fargo-Moorhead’s nightly news.
But when Charley left the TV cameras behind, he didn’t exactly step out of the spotlight. Now you can see him take the stage at the Sons of Norway, pursuing his lifelong love: music.
Charley and his wife Mary, who’ve lived on the south side of Moorhead for 30 years, perform with the acoustic folk group Moving Parts. Since 2011, when Charley talked Mary into taking a chance singing at The Winery (“because it just sounded like fun”), they’ve spent the second Thursday of every month on stage with long-time pal Michael J. Olsen. Other “parts” have come and gone over the years – thus the “moving” part of their name. Today Mike’s daughter Randi Kay Olsen Heinold and Kate Henne, who plays fiddle and mandolin, fill out the roster.
How to describe their music? Charley ponders. “Acoustic is the first thing – guitars, Kate’s fiddle, Michael’s six-string banjo. Second, I guess you’d call it folk, or maybe Americana. We do old folk, new folk, some traditional and alt country … whatever catches our attention.” At a recent night at the Troll Bar, a decidedly low-key venue tucked away in the Sons of Norway lodge in downtown Fargo, their playlist ranged from “Ring of Fire” and “City of New Orleans” to “Wagon Wheel” and “Tom Dooley.”
At a time many of his peers in Fergus Falls and Hastings were cutting their teeth on rock ‘n’ roll, Charley’s idols were of a different tribe. “My father loved the Kingston Trio, and I fell in love with them, too,” he recalls.
His musical baptism began in grade school with piano. That didn’t last long. “I was sitting inside practicing for the recital on a beautiful spring day, when my 17-year-old brother and a friend passed by on their way out to play baseball. He leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘Hello, sissy.’” Charley smiles: “That’s when I told Mom that three years of this was going to be enough.”
A few years later, inspired by his folk-music heroes, Charley persuaded his father to let him buy a banjo at the old music store in downtown Fergus Falls. His band instructor told the young saxophone player that he knew just enough to get him started on the five-string.
A little later, he scraped up the money to buy his first guitar. “Remember, I wanted to be the Kingston Trio,” he says, smiling. Yet when he and that guitar made their seventh-grade stage debut at Washington Junior High, he played not “Tom Dooley,” but Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”
Charley teamed up with high school friends – two, of course — to play hootenannies in the Hastings area, where he attended high school, as well as the nearby Welsh Village ski chalet. “I think they paid me $20 for the whole afternoon – maybe $10,” he recalls. “It didn’t matter. I was getting paid!”
He came to Moorhead to attend Concordia College, where he met his wife Mary, another music lover from Walcott, N.D. From the beginning, the Johnsons – who married in 1973 – made sweet harmony together. Charley majored in speech and theatre, but stayed in contact with the music scene, managing concerts and events for Student Productions.
Their careers drew them in other directions. Mary went into nursing, a career from which she plans to retire this summer. Charley was drawn to broadcasting – first on the air at KNOX Radio in Grand Forks, then in 1974 to Channel 4 in Fargo. That’s where he met Michael, who worked in continuity at KXJB before heading off for a stellar career in government and public relations.
Charley switched to KVLY in 1988, where he not only anchored nightly broadcasts for almost 20 years but also served as news director and, beginning in 1997, general manager. After leaving the station five years ago, he took the reins at the convention bureau, becoming one of the most prominent public faces of the community.
It was about the same time when Charley began to feel the itch to perform live. He caught it indirectly from several TV friends who were original members of Tucker’d Out, the acoustic folk trio. He and Mary often came to hear them play laid-back sets at The Winery. It looked like fun, he remembers. Soon enough, he talked Mary into booking a few dates there, along with his old friend Michael. (“It wasn’t too hard to get her to agree,” he says reassuringly.)
The friends continued with a shifting roster that has also included both Anna Mitchell and James Larson at times. When the manager of the Winery complained about keeping up with their ever-changing line-up on his programs, Charley conceded they did indeed resemble a bunch of moving parts. Thus, the name. They took it along when they shifted to the Troll Bar several years ago.
Charley professes to love listening to a long list of mostly acoustic musicians whom he admires, starting with the most thrilling concert he can remember: the Kingston Trio (of course), who played in the Twin Cities when he was still a teen. Asked to name his favorites today, he starts with James Taylor, John Denver, Simon and Garfunkel. Then he adds an enthusiastic litany of singers who aren’t exactly household names – the Milk Carton Kids, Sarah Jarosz, the Avett Brothers, Nickel Creek, Steve Earle. He’s heard many at the Fargo Theatre.
“Music is a release for me,” he muses. “I’ve always thought I should write songs, too. Michael does, and so does Randi. I love playing, but I just don’t have that genius.
“There are so many great but obscure songs by people you’ve never heard of. If we can play some of those, I feel like we’re spreading the gospel of great music … and that’s all right.”
