Johnny has appeared on NBC's TODAY SHOW PEOPLE MAGAZINE did a full page article on Johnny Johnny appeared on the CBS EVENING NEWS (with Dan Rather) Johnny has performed on the GRAND OLE OPRY Stage five times CNN aired a taping of Johnny in March 2000 Staats continues to head out every day in his big brown UPS truck, and no matter how busy he gets with his music, folks around Sandyville, West Virginia area can still count on Johnny to deliver right on time. Click here for Johnny's NEW YORK TIMES Review! JOHNNY HITS THE SPOT '[Producer] John Van Meter plugged the album to me,' says Debbie Zavitson, A&R Director at Giant Records Nashville, of mandolin virtuoso Johnny Staats' new Wires & Wood release. 'I told him I was looking for some kind of special project to put on the label. He said, 'Well, I might just happen to have that for you.' I took the package with me over the weekend and listened to it, and fell in love with Johnny Staats. I love the album, of course, but I felt like the guy who is playing this, and wrote these songs, must just be so real. His emotion and playing just killed me. I called John back and said, 'Let's do the project.'' THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE-- UPS driver by day and coon-hunter by night, Johnny Staat's virtuosity on the mandolin has swooned a millionaire into volunteering to be his roadie and a pet-store owner into dropping his business to be his manager. It seems that everyone from common strangers to country hat acts are drawn to work with this West Virginian. Five seconds into opener 'Mandolin Meltdown,' this pied picker will draw you in too -- and from there, it'll be all your wee brain can do to keep up with the notes as they flip and fly like the most nimble of gymnasts. As if providing a stroke of mercy for the easily winded, rest stops in the form of ballads ('Coal Tattoo,' the title track, 'Timbuktu') are interspersed throughout the Staats-penned compositions. Staats' nasally tenor doesn't approach the soul-tearing quality of the trad bluegrass greats, but it's sturdy and affecting nonetheless -- it's got the lonesome, if not the high. The instrumentals ('Legend of the Ghost Coon,' 'Escape from Taiwan,' 'Catch Me If You Can'), at once jazz, bluegrass, classical and none of the above, don't cut up anything that David Grisman and the like have not cut up before, but with breakneck, breathless talent like this, whether or not Staats is an innovator is hardly relevant. While many musicians express themselves through their instrument of choice, it's as if the very soul of the mandolin is expressed through Johnny Staats. 4 Stars**** JOHNNY STAATS KEEPS THE (UPS) DAY JOB By Jon Weisberger At this point, two months after the release of his debut, 'Wires And Wood,' it's tempting to make the media attention Johnny Staats has gotten, rather than he and his music, the center of a story. After all, it's unusual (to say the least) for a young bluegrass picker to not only release his first album on a major Nashville label, Giant, but to be the subject of national press and television coverage before the album's even been released. Evidently, CBS and the New York Times have only recently become aware that many of even bluegrass' most talented and best-known musicians have day jobs. Staats, though, knows it all too well. Born, raised and still living in West Virginia, he's spent plenty of time around the bluegrass scene in his native area. 'I started listening to Bill Monroe and playing the mandolin when I was real young, probably around eight or nine,' he recalls. 'I think I bought everything Bill Monroe put out. I listened to him, and then as I was getting older, I wanted to explore different kinds of music. I started hearing Sam Bush and the Newgrass Revival, and I liked the way he was playing - it wasn't exactly bluegrass - but I wanted to get my own style, too.' That the young Staats did and not only on the mandolin. 'A guitar player here in West Virginia, whose name is Robert Schaefer, won an international guitar competition. Well, Robert lives just down the road from me, and I loved how he played the g
