“I’m loud in every way. I wish I was a little quieter.”
Johnny Colt is a musician-turned-TV star-turned radio host-turned ... yogi? The longtime yoga student and teacher has traveled the world honing his meditative craft. And while his TV show, “At Full Volume” (which debuted on the Travel Channel but is in talks to make a network jump), highlights Colt’s more in-your-face worldly endeavors, it’s his more reflective side that caught our interest.
Originally when I was playing in the Black Crowes, we were at the top of our game and I started doing yoga when I became sober. I started practicing yoga and got sober because of yoga. It showed up for me when I desperately needed some sort of interpersonal growth. I wasn’t buying the rock ’n’ roll myth and lifestyle and the mind cult that fame puts you in. I grew up with artistic goals of being my own person and creating my own path and being self-made and functioning as a true individual and found myself at the top of my rock career living a cliché. I left the Crowes and went out on my own. I traveled to India and studied yoga and became a teacher. I taught full time in Atlanta for quite a few years.
[During this time, Colt was semi-retired from music, but a record company made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He went on to play with Train and Tommy Lee’s Rockstar Supernova, the latter of which led to his participation in Lee and rapper Ludacris’ eco-friendly reality show, “Battleground Earth.”]
In between all of this I practiced yoga. I taught off and on all over the world — everything from a cameraman with a bad shoulder to my singer having throat problems — it’s this science I’ve always had in my back pocket.
Yoga has grown. The last time I was teaching full time in Atlanta was eight years ago, and I’m just now returning to teaching in a formal way. It has grown and gained acceptance since then, but there’s a preconceived notion about it that it’s only for a certain type of person. What’s nice about yoga is the science has room for every personality type. There are very demanding ways to practice that are just physically bananas — the postures you can do — or you can do restorative practices, but there’s more to it. Yoga has a lot of links to the past. There’s also the science of breathing and concentration and meditation.
What I love about yoga is you don’t have to have any faith in it. I don’t have faith in things. You go to yoga — you just try it — and if you feel even an ounce better at the end than when you started, then that’s a good thing to do with your time. It’s a very practical thing. Come in; if you feel better, stick with it. If not, don’t come back.
It is an open format for every personality type. I am not a hippie — those aren’t my values — I am a do-it-yourself person who grew up with punk rock. For me, yoga is the single most nonconforming art and science that I can find beyond music. It’s the truest sense of individualism. Being able to express myself when I function in yoga allows me to express myself in totality, which writing doesn’t do, painting doesn’t do, music doesn’t do. It fills me up whereas others drain me. It’s the ultimate expression of creativity and the ultimate recharge of the batteries. There’s nothing soft or leftist about it. It’s what punk rock is supposed to be. No one is controlling me, it’s about me.
Where you can see, hear Colt around town
Colt’s travel show “At Full Volume” may be in limbo as he hashes out a deal with an undisclosed network, but there are plenty of places to get your fix in the meantime. When he’s not practicing yoga with his yogini Kathleen Pringle at Stillwater Yoga, he’s teaching it at Pinnacle Fitness in Buckhead. And never one to stay completely silent, Colt co-hosts a radio show called “Politely Disruptive” on 1690 AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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