Stand By Me, Sing With Me

Mark Johnson is a Grammy award winning engineer, producer and film director who began thinking about a project bringing musicians together from different parts of the world after seeing two Buddhist monks playing music in a subway in New York, over ten years ago. The monks, in their robes, were painted head to toe all in white, playing guitar and singing in an unknown language. A couple of hundred people stopped to watch this amazing thing, people that Mark realized would usually just push past each other in their rush to get somewhere else. He watched the music bring them together - and a great idea was born: To start a project to help build music schools in places where the community of music is most needed.

While Mark Johnson's idea for bring world musicians together started around 1998 (see the Bill Moyer's interview linked below for more information) it was while he was on a street in Santa Monica in 2004 that he heard the man who would start off the singing heard around the world: singer and blues guitarist Roger Ridley...


I think the hard times of the past few years made this project speak more clearly to me than most. Watching Roger playing on the street is something I know well. I've been a busking musician. I know what it's like to sit down and just give the music, hoping people will like it enough to leave something in the case or bucket, but knowing, first and foremost - you play the music because that's what you do. Simple as that. That's something everyone can appreciate and understand.


Roger died soon after the completion of the Stand By Me video. He was able to see what he had begun...