Tonic Sol-fa to sign off after a long, long run

“When I started, I thought: ‘Oh, I will sing and it will magically work’ and it did for a while,” said Johnson, who had planned on going to law school after college.
Tonic Sol-fa became a small business, a do-it-yourself endeavor where the St. Cloud-based members took care of the booking, ticketing, marketing, promotion, the books and, of course, the musical arrangements.
Two decades ago, Johnson hired Michelle Massman to help because she knew more about the music biz than he did.
Tonic Sol-fa succeeded, performing in every state but Washington (yes, even Alaska and Hawaii) as well as Mexico. They’ve appeared at 27 state fairs and self-released 20 albums. They used to do 200 to 300 shows a year, including 52 in September alone one year. And they even have 401K plans for their members. How many bands can say that?
“The only thing I’ve ever done since college is sing,” Johnson said. “There’s something kind of cool and weird about that. A grown man singing a cappella is very unique. Like selling cassettes door to door.”
Of course, there were bumps in the road. Personnel changes, though there’s been a core threesome of Jared Dove, Greg Bannwarth and Johnson for the past 25 years. At one point, they worked with a counselor so the members could get along better. They landed a national record deal but the label went bankrupt right before the release of Tonic Sol-fa’s album. The singers got married and had kids but that didn’t disrupt the harmonies.