Today we’d like to introduce you to Arthur Johnson.
Hi Arthur, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I am that rare bird, a native Atlantan—born at Piedmont Hospital in the mid-sixties and grew up in Garden Hills at a time when I could ride my bike to Lenox Square with my dog running alongside and leave them both outside a side door while I went inside for a short spell (probably to hit the video arcade). In short, it was an ideal time to grow up here, when Atlanta still felt like a big small town. After high school I was drawn to attend college at UGA in Athens by the lure of the music scene, which R.E.M. was just emerging from (though Pylon was just as much of a draw). Though I originally had no ambition to play music myself, I ended up forming a band with three of my best friends, which we called Bar-B-Q Killers, and after appearing in a 1987 documentary about the Athens music and arts scene, we recorded an album and toured the US and Canada a few times before breaking up in 1989. Meanwhile, I’d met my future wife in Athens, and post-band-breakup we moved to Boston so she could start grad school, and then while working at Newbury Comics I ended up playing drums in another band called Come, and we put out two albums on Matador Records and toured North America and Europe extensively over the course of four years. After I decided to leave that band, I fell into the textbook publishing world and worked in the production department of Bedford/St. Martin’s, a great Boston publisher, for almost a decade, while also playing in a country-and-western (“skronky-tonk”) band and occasionally recording and/or touring with other Boston-area musicians like Tanya Donelly, Evan Dando, Bill Janovitz, and Clint Conley. My wife and I decided to move back to Georgia at the end of 2005 so we could be closer to our families; we bought a house in the Kirkwood neighborhood the first year we were back and live here still (and love it). Since returning to Atlanta I’ve worked as a freelance copyeditor, proofreader, permissions editor, production manager, and developmental editor for a number of different East Coast publishers, while also reuniting surprisingly often with my old Boston band to play shows around the US, Europe, and Australia in support of the rerelease of our catalog. I feel very lucky that I found two careers that I greatly enjoy and have enabled me to meet a lot of great people, and that, though not particularly remunerative in either case, have accommodated each other for so long (since I can take a break from editorial projects to tour, and I can also work on my editorial projects _while_ on tour).
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I’ve never made a particularly good living as a musician or as a freelance editor, so that has sometimes been stressful for me and for my wife, who feels that much more pressure to be the primary earner in our marriage. Because I’m self-taught as a drummer, I don’t always have a lot of confidence about my ability to tackle new musical projects, or even to continue with existing ones, so I’m constantly battling my neuroses and insecurities, which makes being in a band and making decisions with my bandmates (who often have their own neuroses and insecurities) that much more challenging. I definitely have some hearing loss and tinnitus due to all the years of playing very loud drums in very loud bands (and without wearing earplugs until fairly recently), which creates challenges and annoyances for my wife as well as for me. As far as my editorial work, working from home and often having tight and strict deadlines for turning around projects means that it is very easy (and often necessary) for me to work long and irregular hours, to the point that it encroaches on my personal time, on time I might otherwise share with my wife or friends, and even on our vacation time on occasion.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have been working as a freelance copyeditor for two decades now and feel that I have a very good eye for how to clean up other people’s text. I started out working mostly on writing guides and history textbooks but have since branched out to copyediting all types of nonfiction books for different university presses—trail, river, and waterfall guides, and architectural, corporate, and other types of histories—and various music-related content (books, liner notes, essays) for an Atlanta writer and publisher, while continuing to copyedit writing handbooks as well as textbooks on law, programming, and other technical content. (I’ve also worked as a production manager on French, Spanish, and German language textbooks.) I am a quick study, which helps me get a handle on books whose topics I start out knowing next to nothing about. I’m also pretty detail oriented—sometimes to my detriment. as I can get into the weeds on things; but I’ve gotten a lot of very positive feedback from my authors, some of whom were even a bit skeptical at first about all my queries, but most of whom seemed to be won over by my work in the end. I may be most proud of a book on Athens music flyers that I copyedited a few years back, because I contributed an essay that I was really happy with.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
As far as playing music goes, find people you like to hang out with and who have time to play with you without too many time restrictions, and then just bang away together. Try lots of different instruments to see what you like—not that you have to limit yourself to one instrument! Think of a song you love and learn how to play it, and then think of another song you love and learn how to play that, and so on; there’s nothing better than figuring out how to play a part that you weren’t sure you understood or could tackle. And never say no to any opportunity to play with other people and to play out, no matter how intimidating that might be (advice I wish I still followed). But also: never be afraid to ask someone (or pay) for lessons.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealcome/(Come the Band)
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ComeElevenEleven/ and https://www.facebook.com/p/Bar-B-Q-Killers-100063705724252/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-johnson-7683a84/
- Other: https://come.bandcamp.com
