10 years of tunes: Racine native Zachary Scot Johnson has recorded a song every day for over 3,600 days and has no plans of stopping

A lot has happened to Zachary Scot Johnson in the past decade.

He's moved across the country multiple times. He became a father. He's sang with famous musicians like Roseanne Cash, "The Office" star Creed Bratton, and Noel Paul Stookey of the '60s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary.

But one part of Johnson's routine has remained the same for the last 10 years: Every day, he posts a video of himself performing a song to his YouTube channel, aptly named thesongadayproject.

Sometimes, it's an original song. Other times, it's something from one of his favorite albums or a suggestion from one of his 10,000-plus subscribers.

Since posting his first video on Sept. 6, 2012, Johnson hasn't missed a day. For the last 3,600-plus days, he's uploaded a new video — and shared another song with the world — on each one.

Johnson, a Racine native who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, is a singer-songwriter whose musical influences include folk, jazz and rock. In addition to his YouTube channel, he plays 75 to 100 concerts a year.

Next month, Johnson will celebrate the 10-year anniversary of thesongadayproject. But when he started, recording a decade's worth of songs and videos wasn't what he had planned.

"I honestly thought it would last a month or so," he admitted. "But a couple of things converged that made me continue."

One was moving to Tempe, Arizona, where his wife was completing a graduate program.

"I had essentially nothing else going on, because I had just moved across the country where I was unfamiliar with everything," Johnson recalled.

The second was having his talent recognized by one of his musical heroes.

Expecting few if any replies, Johnson, in his channel's first year, began reaching out to musicians he admired, asking if they'd like to play a song with him.

"And right off the bat, some people that I just couldn't believe said 'yes' to sing songs with me said 'yes,'" Johnson said. "(Noel Paul Stookey) was among the first guests I ever had."

On Day 431, Johnson and Stookey recorded a duet of Stookey's "One and Many," which now has over 108,000 views.

"That was like getting anointed by the generation above me," Johnson recalled. "It's like they said, 'There's something worthy about what you're doing here. Follow through.'"

Has Zachary Scot Johnson really never missed a day in his YouTube project?

Johnson said this is by far the most common question he receives about thesongadayproject.

While he really has posted one song every day for the past 10 years, he hasn't recorded one every day.

"There are a few instances in which — if I know it's going to be a really busy travel day the next day — I may record two on one day and post one the next day," he said.

Another time, he recorded over 100 songs in one weekend.

"Three or four years ago, I went to a folk music conference ... called Folk Alliance, where it's like 3,000 folk singers in one hotel for a weekend," he said. "Over three or four days, I recorded 104 collaborations with people."

For more than a year after that, Johnson said he posted one of the collaborations every five days while recording new videos the other four days.

"It was nice to have a regular break that year," he said.

Johnson had a lifelong love of music

Johnson first fell in love with music when he began classical violin lessons at 6 years old.

However, he didn't consider himself a singer-songwriter until he was a student at Lawrence University. There, he wrote and performed his own music at least monthly at the university's coffeehouse.

"I always had this secret ambition to be a singer-songwriter, but when you're younger than 18, that's tough in Racine," he said. "There weren't a whole lot of opportunities for me to perform at that age because it's mostly bars."

In 2006, Johnson graduated from Lawrence with degrees in violin performance, theater arts and psychology. While he wouldn't pursue a triple major if he were to go back to college today, he said theater was "fantastic training" for a career as a musician.

As a theater student, he participated in a comedy improv troupe, which he said made him a much better performer.

"The skill set gained from being in an improv troupe (is) the ability not just to think fast, but to be really open to everything," he said. "The rule of improv comedy is to 'say yes to everything.' The ability to do that is important for every performer of any craft."

He started a YouTube channel as people shifted toward that platform

Although thesongadayproject is about to turn 10, the idea came to Johnson more than a year before he posted his first video. You can fact-check this, Johnson joked.

It's true, his channel was created on March 1, 2011.

"Around 2010, I noticed at gigs that CDs had stopped selling, and I was talking to so many other singer-songwriters, and we were all experiencing it," he recalled.

Johnson and his colleagues observed that many people were now discovering new music on YouTube and iTunes.

But while Johnson had already created a YouTube channel, he said he had to work up the courage to post his first video.

"I was nervous to start. That's why it took me so long," he confessed. "'American Idol' and 'The Voice' were big, and there was so much going on in the discussion of what's 'good' and 'bad' in music. I don't think music is that easily classifiable ... but I felt like I'd be opening myself up for some negativity, and I'm a sensitive person."

Then, Johnson remembered the advice he'd learned in improv: "Say yes to everything."

"If I want to have (a YouTube presence), I want to do something unique," he realized. "So I thought, 'Maybe there's something to the idea of recording every single song that I know,' because I was playing a lot of four-hour bar gigs, and I thought it would be cool — if someone requested a song — to be able to say yes to anything."

For his channel's first 100 days or so, Johnson said, each video received between 100 and 130 views. Then, on Day 128, his cover of Elliott Smith's "Waltz #2" quickly racked up over 50,000 views.

This came as quite a surprise to Johnson, who said, to this day he still doesn't know how to predict which songs will be popular with viewers. In fact, he said, it's often the songs he feels aren't his best work that accumulate the most views.

Johnson's wildest experience saw him play on stage in Ireland to mark five years

Without a doubt Johnson's most memorable — and surprising — experience came around thesongadayproject's five-year anniversary.

One day, he received an email claiming to be from Donovan — the mononymous, U.K.-based '60s and '70s folk singer whose hit single, "Catch the Wind," Johnson covered in his very first YouTube video.

Donovan wrote that he'd seen Johnson's cover and was intrigued by thesongadayproject. He invited Johnson to record with him if Johnson was ever in Dublin.

"I almost deleted the email because I didn't think it was real," Johnson said. "I ignored it because I thought, even if it was the real guy, 'I don't have plans to go to Ireland anytime soon.'"

But a few days later, Johnson got a call from Donovan's manager who told him Donovan would send him a plane ticket so they could record a duet of "Catch the Wind" on stage to mark five years of thesongadayproject.

On Day 1,851, that's exactly what they did.

Johnson said he still can't believe that moment was real.

He'll celebrate 10 years with a concert in his hometown of Racine

Johnson doesn't plan to stop thesongadayproject anytime soon. In fact, he thinks it'd be "really cool" to reach 10,000 days — over 27 years of songs.

But before he sets his sights on the next milestone, Johnson will celebrate 10 years of thesongadayproject with a 7 p.m. concert Saturday, Sept. 10, at First Presbyterian Church of Racine.

In addition to playing original songs and covers, he plans to tell his best stories from the past decade, including the Donovan story and the time he played a gala for Tony Bennett in New York City.

"I've also invited a bunch of friends to sing with me and people who have joined me for songs along the way, including a 60-piece choir," Johnson said. "Anytime you get to sing with a choir backing you up, it's amazing. I'm so excited."

Concert tickets are available for purchase at the door or by calling First Presbyterian Church of Racine at (262) 632-1686.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Zachary Scot Johnson has recorded a song a day to YouTube for 10 years