Alex Johnstone

Musician
Best known for Mandolin Fiddle

Alex Johnstone is a mandolin and fiddle player and songwriter who was a member of Spring Creek, the Colorado bluegrass quartet that in 2007 won the band contests at both the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and RockyGrass, the first band to take both in the same year. He played mandolin on all three of its albums, the last of them for Rebel Records in 2009.

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He came into the band by chance. The guitarist Taylor Sims, who had met the banjo player Chris Elliott and the bass player Jessica Smith at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas, picked him up hitchhiking outside Crested Butte, Colorado. In 2004 the four became the house band at Harmel’s Guest Ranch near Crested Butte, and in 2005 they went back to Levelland so that Sims, Elliott and Johnstone could return to school. In 2006 they moved together to Lyons, Colorado.

Spring Creek released Rural & Cosmic Bluegrass on its own in 2006, and after the 2007 contest wins it made Lonesome Way to Go (2008), for which Johnstone wrote “I Don’t Like This Missin’ You.” In 2008 the band signed with Rebel Records, the label’s first band from west of the Mississippi, and Rebel released Way Up on a Mountain in May 2009, with Johnstone on mandolin and all four members singing lead on different songs. That autumn the band played as a showcase act at the IBMA’s World of Bluegrass.

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