A Chat with Johnny Schaefer (08.10.25)

Interview with Karen Beishuizen (Guest contributor)

Johnny Schaefer is an award-winning singer-songwriter who worked with Melissa Manchester, Gerald Albright, Sarah Brightman, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Idol. We talk about his career, his music, his husband, his new song, ‘Find A Place’, and more.

For people who don’t know you: Who is Johnny Schaefer?

Schaefer: I am an award-winning singer-songwriter currently living in Pasadena, CA. I have a BA in Music (Composition and Voice) from California State University, Fullerton. I’m a voting member of the Recording Academy (Grammys) and am part of the Society of Composers and Lyricists. I have recorded with Grammy Winners Melissa Manchester, Kimaya Seward, and several Grammy® nominees, including Gerald Albright and jazz harpist Carol Robbins. I’ve sung backup live onstage for Josh Groban, Sarah Brightman, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Idol, Pete Townshend and others. I have been married to my husband, Paco Silva, for 11 wonderful years after we had first been in each other’s lives for more than 15 years. I have sung in Lutheran and Catholic churches since I was four years old, and, like my music, my spirituality is an eclectic mix of a lifetime of conversations with people of different spiritual traditions and readings. My spirituality informs my music, my relationships, and my approach to life. I try to live lovingly and thoughtfully and genuinely care about the well-being of others.

Describe your music and why people should give it a try?

Schaefer: I have said for many years that if just one out of 300 people connected with my music, I would have over a million fans just in the US. No music is for everyone, and my eclectic approach means that any one individual might connect with some of my songs more than others. I have noticed that I confuse the algorithms, which like to compartmentalize artists into neatly organized categories. While I very much love and appreciate the work of purists who settle into a genre and express themselves fully in very structured musical landscapes, that is not me. Because I love almost every type of music, I am very free-form. I like to blend different elements together because I love the results of juxtaposition. Many of my songs are layered vocally and include counter melodies where two different lyrics that complement one another are meshed together, like you would hear in opera or a Bach Fugue. Other songs of mine are quite simple. It varies greatly, as I let each song tell me where it wants to live.

When I was a kid, I had one of those boxes of 64 crayons, and I loved using as many colors as possible. My husband and I chuckle because he and I are polar opposites in that he likes to wear black and solid colors, and I’m all over the place. There’s room in the musical landscape for all of it, and it’s part of being authentic as an artist. I’m here to offer my unique perspective based on my lifetime of experiences and what I gained from them. I have musician friends who are really embracing aspects of AI in music production. I have no interest in that. For me, every aspect of creating music is a series of choices, one after another. Each word, each note and how it’s sung or played, each choice of instruments, each dynamic, each combination affects everything else. If you look at a Van Gogh painting up close, the layers of paint are astonishing. The paintings are thick, and the surface is uneven. You can see the intensity of the choices he made.

My lyrics range from light-hearted to socially conscious to spiritual. There is a significant amount of specifically LGBTQ+ content. I’m a deep thinker (My dad often told me to lighten up, which is part of why I go by “Johnny” instead of John), and my songs spring from that. Many of them come to me about 3:30 am. I sneak out of the bedroom, so I don’t wake up my husband and get the ideas down, so I don’t forget. I have won numerous songwriting contests, so I must be doing something right.

I am a Winter Solstice baby and love Christmas. I am very proud of my album, From Here to Nativity, which is a musical journey from Advent through Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and on to Epiphany. It perfectly demonstrates the eclectic approach I mentioned. You’ll hear chant, classical music, dance music, and a Banda-flavored song about the Rosca de Reyes.

I know this was a lot of information, but my music is why I am here. The bottom line is that if you like EDM, I have been remixed by Bimbo Jones, Lugo, and Botton Hill. If you like well-crafted songs with long melodic arcs (I rarely write songs with short, repetitive riffs), thoughtful lyrics (some of my songs have been compared to Sting and Paul Simon), and appreciate variety, I think you will enjoy exploring my catalog of songs. I hope you will. Oh, and I’m a baritone.

You worked with Melissa Manchester on ‘You Can’t Hide the Light’. How did you meet, and what’s the song about?

Schaefer: Melissa was a beacon of light for me growing up as the closeted gay son of a Lutheran minister in a small, conservative town in Central California. I’m not alone. Her songs are deeply personal, and many of my fellow “Fanchesters”, as her loyal fans are called, are LGBTQ folks with similar stories. I began recording songs I had written on cassettes and mailing them to her manager’s office in the 70s and 80s when I was still a kid, hoping she would record one. Years later, I studied with her voice teacher, Wendy MacKenzie, and connected with her. Then we crossed paths, and I became friends with her manager, Susan Holder. Melissa held a cover contest, and I mashed up two of her songs, ‘Midnight Blue’ and ‘Lights of Dawn’. My husband made a music video, and it was the one most-viewed, allowing me to sing a duet with Melissa live on stage. Paco started making music videos for her. I sent her ‘You Can’t Hide the Light’ because I thought it would work perfectly as a duet. Melissa called me and said, “I don’t think this needs to be a duet. It sounds very complete to me, but I’m happy to come to the party.” I’m so glad she did! It fulfilled a lifelong dream.

I wrote ‘You Can’t Hide the Light’ right after my mom and stepdad died four months apart. Paco and I were their caregivers in Olympia, Washington, for several months before they passed. I had just unexpectedly been laid off in a corporate restructure, and, in retrospect, I can see God’s timing because the sacred honor of being there for my parents was one of the key experiences of my life.

When the landlord learned that my mom had died and a gay couple was in her apartment, she was horrible to us. Even though we had paid rent through the end of the month, she did not allow us to stay there, shower, or cook, so we had to get separate accommodations at the height of the COVID epidemic as we packed up decades of stuff. My spiritual path teaches me to see the light in others, even if they forget, and that is what ‘You Can’t Hide the Light’ is all about. The song features a sort of Greek Chorus commenting on the main melody. I used the analogy of barbed wire as a barrier in relationships because of the way it is dangerous and intimidating, yet in the end, you can see right through it to the other side and snip right through it with the right tools.

For the music video, we worked with choreographer Hilary Thomas at the Lineage Performing Arts Center in Pasadena, CA. Melissa and I each had a dancer who represented the light in us. The first two minutes of the video is a continuous pan back and forth where the four of us are in and out of the shot, so that sometimes it is just Melissa and I, sometimes just the dancers, and sometimes all four of us. The video won several film festivals, and I won Best Original Song in the prestigious UK Songwriting Contest out of 6,500 entries from 82 countries.

Are there any artists you would love to collaborate with, or wish you had?

Schaefer: Eek! I don’t want to seem pretentious. I fantasize about writing with people whose writing has influenced mine. I learn the most about songwriting by listening intently to songs I love and letting them seep into my psyche. Some of those people (In no particular order) are Sting, Joni Mitchell, Alanis Morissette, Jane Siberry, Rickie Lee Jones, Teresa Tudury, Paul Simon, Keb’ Mo’, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tears for Fears, Terry Wollman, Rufus Wainwright, Tracy Chapman, Steve Tannen and Deb Talan (formerly of The Weepies), and Don Henley. It would have been cool to work with people no longer with us: Dan Fogelberg, Nina Simone, Etta James, Rogers and Hammerstein, Leonard Cohen, and Cole Porter come to mind. I would love to sing with K.D. Lang, and while I had the amazing privilege of singing with Melissa Manchester, I haven’t written with her, which would be amazing. Like I said, I’m eclectic.

I let you make an album with 7 of your most favorite songs (not your own): What would you pick and why?

Schaefer: This would probably be very different tomorrow, but as of today, these are songs I might choose: There are many songs I wouldn’t touch because I feel that the way they have been done is definitive, or I wouldn’t have anything better to contribute. I’ll also say that there are a couple of songs I amplanning to cover, and they are overdue. I don’t want to give anyone any ideas, so I will not mention those.

‘Love Grows’- originally recorded by Edison Lighthouse with lead singer Tony Burrows is the first 45 I ever bought as a kid. I listened to it over and over and used a jump rope as a pretend microphone. It’s a great song. Infectious melody, cool and happy. It would be fun to come full circle and start with that.

‘Come In From The Rain’ by Melissa Manchester and Carol Bayer Sager is a perfect song which has been covered many times. Melissa, herself, has released three studio recordings of it. It’s deeply personal and made me feel like I wasn’t alone as a kid. The day after we filmed ‘You can’t Hide the Light’, Paco directed the music video for Melissa’s latest version of the song with bassoonist Bill Wood. It was surreal for me.

‘Bonfires’ by Rickie Lee Jones. Some of the most beautiful lyrics I’ve ever heard, and a heartbreaking melody. While no one can sing it like her, I think a gay man singing it would add something new. I’m actually taken back to my first serious relationship, which was with a guy who was bisexual and left me to marry a woman. I would bring that to the song.

‘You Can’t Go Back Now’ by The Weepies. It’s hard to choose just one of their songs, but I have some ideas for this one. Life moves on, and we can’t stay stuck.

‘Love is Everything’ by Jane Siberry. Beautifully conveys a moment when, despite intense love for someone else, the importance of self-love overrides the desire to hang in there patiently. At some point, enough is enough. Jane’s version is wonderful, and KD Lang did a fabulous job on it as well. I think it would be cool to sing it from a gay man’s perspective.

‘Not As We’ by Alanis Morissette. There’s no better song about picking up the pieces after a devastating personal loss. The music video is one of my favorites because of a scene where she is sitting on a beach holding and consoling herself.

‘Hold On’ by Nicola Gordon. A mesmerizing song of hope and encouragement. Seek it out. It’s marvelous, and I hope it gets into a great movie someday.

Tell me about your new song ‘Find A Place’.

Schaefer: Meditation has been invaluable to me in keeping my sanity in an unstable world. If I don’t go to the gym for a couple of days, I really start to feel it. Likewise, if I don’t meditate for at least five minutes in the morning, it’s a very different day. I think we have a mental and spiritual musculature that needs to be maintained, and I believe that a strong connection to the divine, however we perceive it, is essential. So, I wrote a song about it called ‘Find a Place’

In the verses of “Find a Place,” I sing about lives spinning out of control. In the choruses, I invite the listener to find a place of peace in their mind. In the bridge, nine-time Grammy nominee Gerald Albright takes us to that place with a soaring sax solo. It’s my attempt to bring a little bit of peace into a frenetic world.

You are married to your husband, Paco. How did you meet, and what is the current situation for being gay in a Trump America?

Schaefer: Paco and I met on an AOL Chat Board more than 26 years ago, and it was the singular defining event of my lifetime. We fell in love quickly, and our love for each other grows every day. We were finally “allowed” to make it official with a beautiful ceremony in a Lutheran church in Olympia, WA, 11 years ago, surrounded by family and friends holding candles as we pledged our love before God, who brought us together. Several loved ones sang, and I sang to Paco a bilingual song I wrote for the occasion.

In these frightening times, what I will say is that our 26 years together have blessed many (we are often told this) and have hurt absolutely no one. We, and those around us, have learned about love in a manner that we would not have learned any other way. There were many churches that would have performed our beautiful ceremony, and many that would not. THAT is religious freedom. Our forefathers wrote of all of us having an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I do not need anyone else’s pursuit of happiness to look like mine. I also don’t need to stand in the way of them pursuing it in a way I wouldn’t, unless it hurts others. I also do not need them standing in my way. That has been something I love about the American ideal, we have been a lovely and diverse collection of people who came from all over the world to pursue happiness in a relatively free society that encouraged it. Often clumsy and awkward, it has frequently been beautiful. That is all being stripped away in alarming fashion and at terrifying speed. For what? I find “Christian” Nationalism to be anti-Christ, literally. The actions and words of the people involved in it are in direct opposition to everything Jesus taught and demonstrated. The topic emphasized most throughout both Testaments of the Bible is lifting up the poor. The second most frequently mentioned topic is welcoming strangers and treating them as our own. This strange movement is actively doing and saying the exact opposite of both. As Galatians 6:7 says, “Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows, so shall they reap.”

What are you currently up to?

Schaefer: We are actively involved in caregiving for two family members, one of whom is living with ALS and the other with early signs of dementia. In ways, they are opposites. Both are heartbreaking. One involves the deterioration of the body while the mind stays completely intact. The other involves deterioration of mental capacity while the body remains intact. As always, each day is full of lessons, love, and struggles that can be hard to navigate. My amazing husband makes it all so much lighter and richer.

All of this, of course, informs my music, and I have been writing a LOT of songs. It’s very hard to make money at this, and we are on a tight budget, so I am prioritizing projects. I’m learning recording software so that I can create better demos and save time in the studio. Perhaps one day I will be able to produce my own tracks. I’m 63, so we’ll see.

Lastly, I am trying every which way to get my music in front of people who would appreciate it. So, I’m truly grateful to you for this opportunity to connect with your readers. Many people are making a lot of money off of us indie musicians, and we are not. On my hearjohnny.com website, I let people pick their own price (at least a penny) to download my songs, and many times they choose to pay far more than they could on places like Amazon and Apple Music/iTunes, which is very cool. I’m always begging for people who genuinely like my music to subscribe to my YouTube channel (please don’t if you don’t like my music. It doesn’t help), like and comment on videos, follow me on social media, and streaming platforms, all the usual stuff. Anyone reading this may or may not do that with my music, but I encourage you to do it for artists you connect with.  

A while back, I was rehearsing for a Josh Groban show and we finished early so the music director, Tariqh Akoni, asked if the backup singers had any questions about the industry. I told him that I had won an international songwriting contest, recorded with phenomenal Grammy winners and other great musicians, and won numerous film festivals, but am not making any money. He said that I am at the stage of building my story and someday it might get big enough that the “right” people will take notice. Thank you for taking me one step closer to that.

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Thanks to Johnny Schaefer for speaking with us. Find out more about Johnny on his official website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify and Bluesky.