The country star will play with symphonies throughout the country
Jamey Johnson will join the Nashville Symphony on October 17-18 for its first collaboration as part of the Nashville Symphony’s 2025-2026 Pops Series at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.
“The Schermerhorn shows are really a full circle moment for me,” Johnson says. “I started my journey in music with both a guitar and a French horn, so I have always played country music, gospel and classical. The Schermerhorn shows are my reconnection with the symphony, and it’s going to be special. It’s going to show a different side of the songs I do every night.”
Johnson selected the theme Symphony in the South, so the set list will include some of his most-loved songs, such as “In Color,” “Lead Me Home,” and “Even the Skies Are Blue,” as well as some of his favorite country classics and other standards.
“There will be a really good mix of songs, just like most of my shows,” he says. “I am doing songs that match the theme of Symphony in the South. There is a definite Southern theme to the songs. It’s kind of like a photo album with music: This is what the South sounds like. These are the songs of the South done with symphonic instruments.”
The Schermerhorn shows mark the national debut of Johnson’s Symphony in the South shows that he will perform with various symphonies. “This will be a way of bringing a little bit of the South to everywhere else in the country,” he says.
The Grand Ole Opry member is also widely regarded as one of the greatest country songwriters of his generation. He is one of only two people in the history of country music (along with Kris Kristofferson) to win two Song of the Year awards in the same year – for “Give It Away” and “In Color” – from the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association.
But perhaps less well known are his classical musicianship and love of symphony music, especially Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Johann Sebastian Bach and Richard Wagner.
Johnson began playing the French horn around age 11 and performed in his high school band and the Southwind Drum and Bugle Corp in Alabama. In 1993, he received a full scholarship from Jacksonville State University, where he studied music education, to play French horn and mellophone in the Marching Southerners. He also plays cornet. He left JSU to join the Marines, where he served for eight years before moving to Nashville to launch his career in country music. He has played the horn parts on his and others’ recordings.
In another full-circle moment, Johnson invited trumpet player Shane Porter to arrange the music for the shows with the Nashville Symphony. Porter is a member of the Tuscaloosa Horns, which is in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, and was in the Southwind Drum and Bugle Corp.
Johnson has previously performed his songs with the National Symphony Orchestra at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2019 and the U.S. Capitol during the National Memorial Day Concert in 2024.
“What draws me to symphonic music is the same thing that drew me to it when I was a child: It is the technical format of it,” he says. “Sometimes it’s the key, sometimes it’s the rhythm. It’s unique. Sometimes it follows a formula, sometimes it doesn’t follow any formula at all but sounds beautiful. Sometimes it’s symmetrical and sometimes it’s not. It’s never ‘always the same thing.’
“To me, it is always beautiful. It has a calming tone that lures me in. It’s what I listen to when I’m home and need to get focused on something. I can put on classical music and study for an aviation test or get my taxes sorted. It feeds my brain in a way that even country music doesn’t.”
Johnson, who is on his 2025 headlining tour called The Last Honky Tonk Tour, will continue to offer his fans a variety of different shows, from full band and symphony shows to smaller road-band shows and solo acoustic performances. “I’m doing some shows with my studio band because we don’t get them out of Nashville enough, so I am taking them on the road in November with me to do some shows with Riley Green.
“I hope next year we get back to doing shows with other artists that I love,” he says. “We don’t get to see enough of each other. It’s because we don’t book the same nights, so we need to start doing that. That is what it is all about.”
