Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Chadwick Johnson steers his passion from rodeo to supper-club singing

Chadwick Johnson

Brenda West

Chadwick Johnson is shown during a team-roping session in Sandy Valley. Johnson headlines the Italian American Club on Wednesday, March 18, 2015.

Updated Tuesday, March 17, 2015 | 12:33 p.m.

Click to enlarge photo

Chadwick Johnson performs with cellist Zoe Kohen Ley at Vinyl in the Hard Rock Hotel during "Mondays Dark." Johnson is at the Italian American Club on Wednesday, March 18, 2015.

A singer of great merit, Chadwick Johnson has long dreamed of performing in Las Vegas — in the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.

As a contestant. A team roper, specifically. To toss a lasso around the horns of this story, as it were, in October 2013, Johnson moved to Las Vegas from L.A.

He quickly became well-known as a vocalist blessed with a nearly flawless voice, appearing early on at Kelly Clinton’s Open-Mic Cabaret at Bootlegger Bistro and moving around the city to gigs at the Italian American Club, Suncoast Showroom and Cabaret Jazz in the Smith Center.

Johnson sings from The Great American Songbook and also the songbook from last month, blending the legends of The Rat Pack with such contemporary stars as John Legend.

On Wednesday night at 8, Johnson is back at the Italian American Club for a show titled “Golden” in that venue’s restaurant/showroom. His guest is Naomi Mauro, the singer in David Perrico’s Pop Evolution and Pop Strings bands. (Tickets are $20; call 702-630-6111 or the Italian American Club at 702-457-3866.)

Johnson is an up-and-comer on the Las Vegas entertainment scene, a young guy with an old soul whose act becomes sharper with each performance. “Golden” indicates his affinity for classic material in what he performs and the threads he wears.

But his golden jacket and black slacks are tossed when Johnson is not onstage, when he’s on a ranch in Sandy Valley.

Evidence of Johnson’s hobby, and passion other than singing, began surfacing several months ago in video clips posted on YouTube and Facebook of him racing after a steer while flinging a rope at the beast’s heels.

“I grew up in Wisconsin, and every kid who grows up in Wisconsin wants a horse or a dog. I asked for a horse,” Johnson recalls. “I came to a place where I was 9 or 10 years old, and I got a horse that cost $360. She was not much to look at, but I loved her, and that’s how it all started. It just snowballed from there.”

Johnson grew to be one of the best young rodeo cowboys in the state, winning championships at the Little Britches level (that’s for kids who would wear little britches), up through the state’s high school rodeo association. For two consecutive years, he was a team-roping and calf-roping state champion.

“It was a family thing, and my dad and stepmom all got into team roping,” he says. “It got to where I was home-schooled so we could travel to rodeos and compete.”

Around that time, Johnson found that he was about as good a singer as heeler. His grandfather was a Baptist minister, so as a kid Johnson was singing regularly in church. By age 16, he was taking vocal lessons and being asked to sing the national anthem at rodeos in which he was competing.

“It kind of clicked. I sang the national anthem at a rodeo and found I could reach people, and it felt powerful to move people with my voice,” he said. “I thought, ‘This might not be the end of this singing thing.’ ”

Offered a scholarship to compete in sanctioned rodeos at the collegiate level, Johnson instead moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in entertainment. His friends who had visited Las Vegas had told him of the myriad small venues — supper clubs, restaurants, lounges, showrooms and the like — where he could chase his dream of becoming a working entertainer.

Apart from his busy schedule, in which he appears at Suncoast, Italian American Club, Lift Bar at Aria and Label lounge at Palazzo, Johnson is working on his first CD. The album is being produced and arranged by studio wiz Yves Frulla, who is based in Las Vegas after developing a strong reputation for his work with such Canadian artists as Sass Jordan, Julie Masse, Sylvain Cossette, Laurence Jalbert and Claude Dubois.

When he’s not behind a mic and in front of a band, Johnson is atop a horse.

“They are inspirational and so good for your soul,” Johnson says. “There is nothing as simple as working with animals.” And as he speaks, the young singer seems about to slip into a song.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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