Duquette Johnston - Etowah
SL036
Originally released August 8, 2006
Re-issued by Single Lock on November 29, 2019

“I was once an inmate of the Etowah County Correctional Facility. Inside its walls, I wrote my first solo record, Etowah. Etowah is the journey from the lost to the found and the journey is the most important aspect of the album. While I never wanted to nor saw myself getting wrapped up and caught up in America's war on drugs, my abrupt run in with it sent me on the wildest ride of my life. A ride I would never suggest or want to put upon any human. Etowah's first song, "Don't Go Back to Etowah" was written out in a letter to the woman I now call ma wife, written inside the walls of the Etowah County Correctional Facility. I had lost everything. I had known since I was a tiny child would make music and had done it. I took the wrong fucking turn though. I got lost. Terrified and confused as to how I wound up in the Etowah County Detention Center with murderers, kingpins, rapist, you freaking name it. I wrote out to my wife in a letter that if I made it through this I never wanted to return. I knew the chords even without an instrument to play. I heard the song clearly and the lyrics to the chorus flowed without process, "Don't go back to Etowah there's too many bricks on too many walls."

That's where it began, in a small jail cell and from there months and months in a men's home where at a certain point I was allowed a guitar and time to work on songs. The songs pouring out as I sang out loud searching for my life. I would pace around an old chapel and get lost just searching for the right sound in the room and singing every word that channeled through me. I wanted to be a conduit for what ever was happening between myself and the songs. My eyes never open, repeating verses over and over. The album is insanely personal. Etowah is my search for my home. I wanted hope, I wanted to share hope, and I wrote about all these wild moments and people around me. I had been lost for years and the album captures my journey to being found. The sounds of random weekends while on 24 hour leave from the men's home as a state inmate. Hours and hours spent in my friend Jody Nelson's parents garage with a very bare bones set up and us making the absolute most of it. This album is pure to me. There was no time to think or analyze anything, we were just recording everything and always moving forward. The album found me in the most frightening and beautiful place in my life. The music brought me back to center. The music brought me home.”