Alexz Johnson

Jude Harrison on CTV's Instant Star

The role that made her name in Canada began in 2004. On the CTV series Instant Star she played Jude Harrison, a teenager trying to handle a recording contract after winning a televised talent competition. Johnson contributed songs to the show's soundtrack, and the series ran four seasons. A 2014 GRAMMY Pro article dates her time on the series from 2004 to 2007, while a 2014 Canadian Press report puts the show's run at 2004 to 2008.

The part earned her three Gemini Award nominations. On October 21, 2008, at a children's and youth programming gala in Toronto, she won best performance in a children's or youth program or series for the episode "Let It Be," beating Lauren Collins and Shane Kippel of Degrassi: The Next Generation. Playback reported that Johnson was not in the room to collect it.

Acting work came alongside the series. She played a goth character with attitude in Final Destination 3, appeared as Saturn Girl on Smallville, and guest-starred on The Chris Isaak Show. In early 2009 she was on Vancouver Island shooting Stranger With My Face, a Lifetime adaptation of the Lois Duncan novel in which she played twin sisters, Laurie and Lia. A scene required her to be pulled out of the ocean in a wetsuit. "I love playing darker roles but this is crazy," she said on set. "I've never done anything like it and I don't think I'll ever be able to again." She told the same reporter that acting gave her "eight months off a year to focus on writing."

The Album Epic Records Shelved

Johnson signed with Epic Records in February 2008 and began a debut album. She and her brother Brendan wrote and recorded it together, and it was called Weight. Before release, Epic posted five of the songs on MySpace, a move she disliked. "Songs being leaked online, I can't stand it," she said in 2009. That year Epic went through structural changes and dropped her from the label. The album never came out, and Epic kept the songs from being released.

She was 22. "I said, 'I'm moving to Brooklyn and I'm going to start from the ground up; I don't trust anybody, and I'm going to make my own music'," she later told Atwood Magazine. In March 2010 she released Voodoo independently, through the Toronto label Orange Lounge Recordings.

The loss stayed with her for a decade. "I know it sounds pretty simple to say, 'You just don't get to release those songs again,' but it's kind of like having your children taken from you at some time in your life," she said in 2019. That year she and Brendan went back to the shelved material and recorded it again. The first result was a new single, also titled "Weight," released on her own Laydee Spencer Music.

$67,140 on Kickstarter for a Tour in a 15-Passenger Van

After two label deals that did not lead to a tour, Johnson decided to pay for one herself. "I realized that I've been signed twice. I've done major label albums. I've never really had the chance to go on the road and do what I love," she told GRAMMY Pro. She set a Kickstarter goal of $30,000, which she said was the exact cost of touring the United States with a full band and a 15-passenger van.

She reached the goal within a day. She kept the campaign open to pay for future demos and recordings, and a live broadcast from a Los Angeles coffee shop on StageIt brought in another $3,000. The campaign closed at $67,140. Rewards included signed copies of her Skipping Stone EP, phone calls, house concerts and clothes she had worn on the Instant Star set. One backer in Rochester, New York, who gave $5,000, got a private acoustic set at home from Johnson and her band during the tour.

She used fans again for the next studio album. By 2014 she was living in Brooklyn, had signed with United Talent Agency, and had pledge-funded a record cut at Avatar Studios in New York with the producer David Kahne. "I feel like signing a major deal ... isn't the be all and end all anymore," she told the Canadian Press that August.

Busking on Venice Beach for Rodrigo Garcia's Blue

In 2014 a gig led to an acting job. Rodrigo Garcia, the director of Albert Nobbs, saw her play with a band in Los Angeles and asked her over coffee to join the third season of Blue, his web drama starring Julia Stiles. She played a musician dating the sister of Stiles's character, a role played by Stiles's real-life sister, Jane O'Hara. For one scene the crew hid the cameras on Venice Beach and had her play a cover song on the street as if she were busking. She also wrote songs for the soundtrack, as she had for Instant Star.

Seasons, Recorded at Home in Ontario

Her sister Mackenna died in 2019 of complications from cancer, and the loss shaped the title track of her fourth album, Still Alive. The fifth, Seasons, came out independently on April 7, 2023, and she made it from home. She wrote the songs on guitar and recorded every vocal herself, which she said she had never done before. James Lewis, a mixer based in Australia who had worked on several of her records, mixed it while she worked from Ontario.

She told Atwood Magazine what an album like that costs. Recording, gear, mixing, mastering, artwork and videos add up to "the equivalent to a down payment for a home, depending on where you're buying," she said. "My Patreon community made this happen. If they didn't make this happen, this record wouldn't exist."

The same subscribers paid for the album after it. On her Patreon page Johnson credits them for both Seasons and Salvage, released in February 2025. "This community feeds directly into my art," she writes there, "and I'm thrilled to have a platform where I can be who I was always meant to be, on my own terms."

Sources

• Diva and Doppelganger - Victoria Times Colonist
• Small Screen: B.C.'s Alexz Johnson finds new challenge on web TV - Victoria Times Colonist
• MTV edges out Stroumbo » Playback
• Crowdfunding: How To Raise Money For Your Music | Grammy
• The Spiritual Release of Alexz Johnson's Fresh, Raw "Weight" - Atwood Magazine
• Interview: Alexz Johnson Embraces the 'Seasons' of Life on Her Hopeful & Healing 5th Album - Atwood Magazine
• Alexz Johnson Movies & TV Shows List | Rotten Tomatoes | Rotten Tomatoes
• Alexz Johnson - Livestreams, Exclusive Music Content and a Fan Club Community | Patreon