Musician posts song a day to YouTube for 12+ years straight

    ST. PAUL, Minnesota (WCCO) -- Zachary Scot Johnson has always been a musician.

"I grew up in a house where it was singer-songwriters that my parents played. It was Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and James Taylor," he said. "I think there's something about the storytelling element of singer-songwriters — you're sharing your life, you are sharing who you are through song."

Johnson started singing stories on the road in the early 2000s as a professional artist. His passion never changed, but technology did.

"I had been playing years and years of these three-, four-hour gigs, and I had all these songs and at the time, CD sales had really started plummeting. Nobody was buying CDs anymore," he said.

He kept playing, thinking he should turn to YouTube, but it was 2010 and he was scared.

"It took me a year-and-a-half to build up to this idea of, 'I'm going to put myself out there, online, and people can say whatever they want.'" Johnson said.

In 2012, he started the Song A Day Project, committing to performing and posting an original or cover every day.

"I figured I would last about a month or so. To me, it felt like starting a blog or journal. We've all started one and given up 30 days later," Johnson said.

Twelve-and-a-half years and 4,500 songs later, he's still on a roll.

Peter, Paul and Mary were the first big names to collaborate.

Since then, he's teamed up on songs with Donovan, Shawn Colvin, Rosanne Cash and actors Kevin Costner and Jeff Daniels, who also have bands.

"I didn't think it would last this long, but at a certain time, it became what I was known for. I got these opportunities to play with people I hugely admire," Johnson said.

He has never skipped a beat, including the day he and his wife became parents.

"We were in the hospital and she was like, 'We gotta do something, have you done your song yet? Let's do a song.' I couldn't believe it, but that's was what she wanted to do in that moment was sing a song," Johnson said.

The proud dad says the project has reminded him that just like music, life has highs and lows.

"There was a woman who wrote me one time and she was dying of some sort of cancer. There was a specific song I had done — it was a Patty Griffin song — and it was her song with her dad. She just thanked me for it and said, 'We are going to play that at my funeral if that's O.K. with you.'" Johnson said. "It's really whenever anybody finds something that really speaks to them — that is deeply meaningful."

Now the project means so very much to him and to tens of millions of others as he continues to play to his own beat.

Johnson says he hopes people who hear his story will not wait to start that project they are dreaming of. He says he waited 18 months to launch his idea and it has truly turned into a dream.