“Those are cherry tomatoes from my garden,” Andi Zack-Johnson beams as she serves up a colorful plate of vegetables on the back porch of her home overlooking Eastern Lake. Slight and blonde, melodies emanate from the Canadian-born songwriter as her subtle movements interpret their rhythm. Hues of teal, orange and yellow reflect her aura to imbibe the vintage furniture tucked inside the fish camp-style house that she shares with her husband, Ken Johnson.
Their expansive back porch view reveals the lucky boat that is moored to their picture perfect dock. For this star couple, the southern summers that were once synonymous with weekend trips to Seaside scrunched in between songwriting sessions and shows, are now a full-time reality.
Ken and Andi met in Nashville in 2006 both staff writers for different music row publishing houses and began cowriting. Both spent 15-years writing professionally before moving to 30A in 2016, but not before starring as cast members seasons of CMT’s hit show “I Love Kellie Pickler” produced by Ryan Seacrest, for three seasons. As writers, their songs have been recorded or produced by Harry Connick Jr., Brothers Osborne, Vince Gill and his daughter Jenny, Uncle Kracker, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, Wayne Newton, Joey and Rory, Craig Morgan, Tyler Farr, Josh Thompson, Chris Janson, Buddy Miller, Butch Walker, and Claire Bowen (as Scarlett on the TV show Nashville), to name a few.
For Ken, being a father to his children and husband to Andi took precedence over his songwriting career. His 14-year old son will be starting high school this fall, while his 18-year old daughter will attend Rollins with an academic and volleyball scholarship. “Andi left a tiny little town in another country and has sacrificed seeing her family often,” says Ken of his wife, “never dreaming that she’d be married to a father and former stockbroker from Birmingham, Alabama, and now living at the beach.”
In 2014, the couple invented the characters Huck and Lilly as caricatures of themselves for a young audience. Inspiration hit the songwriters on the steps of the Coleman Pavilion in Seaside. They were dining on a margarita pizza from Pizza Bar and two plastic wine glasses of rose when a fiddler crab ran through their picnic. “I thought it was a spider!” said Andi. “One of its claws was bigger than the other. I said to Ken, “What is that?”
He responded, “It’s just a fiddler crab!”
“Why do they call it that?” Chimed Andi.
To which Ken said, “I don’t know, he don’t play the fiddle.”
The couple wrote a song that day called Fiddler Crab (he don’t play the fiddle). They went on to record the song in Nashville with multi Grammy-winner and multi Dove award-winning producer, Skidd Mills. “The three of us worked on it together and that lead more with the idea of making music for kids that adults would like too.”
Huck and Lilly’s first album “There’s A Tree Growing in My Room” was released in 2015 and produced 3 singles on Sirius XM radio “Kids Place Live”. Their second album, “Sunshine,” was released on May 1, 2018 and has already had four songs added to daily rotation on Sirius XM Radio. Ken and Andi now invite their talented Nashville friends to the beach to write and perform. As owners of “Hit Songwriter House Concerts on 30A,” Ken and Andi feature major hit songwriters from Nashville who will perform private shows with them in the homes of locals and vacationers.
“People can sign up at hitsongwriterhouseconcerts.com much like they would book a deep sea fishing trip or something. It’s like bringing Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe into your living room.” People often ask us, “You live here?” says Ken, explaining that it’s hard to believe.
“Yes, we live at the beach.”
So, the couple lived one big dream and are now on to another. “It’s like we went to a great college and could have just stayed at the school but it was time to go on out in the world and use what we have learned to start a business. It’s been fun because it’s something we do together and we’ve learned how to harmonize together in life and music.”
You can catch Huck and Lilly live on Tuesday evenings throughout the summer at the Seaside Amphitheater in Seaside, FL on 30A.
Featured in the July/August Issue of Thirty-A Review. For more information: Visit www.hitsongwriterhouseconcerts.com, www.huckandlilly.com, and www.hillbillysupperclub.com
Photo Credit: Dawn Chapman Whitty
