John Berry returns to Grand Opera House Saturday for his 25th Macon Christmas concert

Hours before I talked to John Berry, the Grand Opera House put out a “low ticket” warning on social media, meaning seats to the country singer/songwriter’s annual Christmas show here were nearly sold out.

There seems to be a scattering of spots left now, but not many.

Berry, of course, was glad to hear it. He laughingly said “sold out” are two of his favorite words used together in a sentence.

Berry is at the Grand Saturday at 7:30 p.m. celebrating the holiday season and 25 years of popular Christmas tours around the southeast with Macon being one of the few spots he’s been to each year, mostly at the Grand.

With COVID rampant last year, the concert didn’t cancel but had to move to the Macon City Auditorium where ticket-holders could spread further out for social distancing.

Berry isn’t a Georgia native – South Carolina gets that honor – but he’s Georgia grown and raised from his earliest years around Atlanta where he learned to play guitar and started making home-grown recordings to his early 20s in Athens where he played, built a following and continued creating his own records before his career took off nationally.

Berry and his family continued to live around Athens until more recently when they moved near Nashville.

“In Atlanta, a friend of mine, Maria Taylor, would come to see me play a lot then she went off to Athens,” Berry said. “She called one day asking me if she could get me a gig there in Athens would I come. I said sure and ended up playing on a week, off a week doing about five weeks at a club. By the end of the second week, they booked me for the summer and it was such a great time with great crowds they booked me for the next school year.”

For those familiar with 1980s Athens, the place was called Wrappers, formerly the basement wrapping department of an Athens department store.

I asked Berry what he would tell his younger Athens self today, expecting him to encourage his younger self by saying not to worry, he had an illustrious career ahead with plenty of hits, awards, kudos and fans that loved him dearly.

I expected to hear him say he’d tell his younger self things like:

• You’ll be a big hit by the early ‘90s and then through the early 2000s have 20 singles on the county charts, six in the Top 5, with one hitting No. 1 on Billboard and Radio & Records’ country charts
• You’re going to record great songs like “Your Love Amazes Me,” “Standing on the Edge of Goodbye” and “She’s Taken a Shine.” There’ll be lots more
• You’ll debut at the Grand Ole’ Opry in 1997, play there 79 times by 2021 including Christmas Day at the end of 2021
• You’ll play with the biggest stars and do duets with the likes of Charlie Daniels and Patsy Cline while winning all kinds of awards, including a GRAMMY, and – remember that song you wrote called “The Graduation Song” when you were 17? – kids still love it, especially the 2020 graduates who had issues with something called COVID. But we won’t talk about that, just brace yourself
• Plus, you’ll do TV shows, have a successful podcast – you’ll figure that out later – and you’ll really shine doing Christmas concerts your fans love, especially when you do “O Holy Night”

Berry might have told me he’d encourage his younger self with such assurances of success, a great family and a long working career and how thankful he was for it all – but he didn’t say a bit of that.

Instead, he went in a different, very practical direction.

“I guess I’d tell myself what a very smart person eventually told me and what I tell up and coming artists who ask me for advice,” he said. “Without trying to sound negative, I’d say prepare for the end because the big fame won’t last forever. There’s a limit to the hit songs. Granted, people like Garth Brooks and Reba McEntire and some others beat that, but overall, people with decade’s long careers at the top are the exceptions. You want to plan ahead and pretend every dollar you make is the last one you’ll get.”

Though Berry is still popular and releases popular albums and projects, in light of such advice you can tell besides being talented he works hard to keep in touch with fans and build a long-lasting, journeyman’s musical career.

He also might have told himself to remember how he recovered from a motorcycle accident in his late-teens because there were other health challenges to come he would have to overcome.

Berry celebrated his first, early ‘90s No. 1 single, “Your Love Amazes Me,” from a hospital bed after brain surgery to remove a cyst. More recently in 2019, he was diagnosed with throat cancer and began dozens and dozens of chemo treatments.

But Berry sounds fine now, says he is doing well and is excited about future projects, including a new album to be released in late March that’s a collection of four new faith-based songs and six classic hymns with fresh arrangements.

Fresh arrangements because he is, after all, a country artist head to toe tough he said his life is solidly faith-based.

So what does he want audiences to experience or take away from this 25th Christmas show in Macon?

“It’s important to me people come and have a great time,” he said. “I hope we invoke all the great Christmases past and that this year’s songs mean a lot to them. And I hope everyone goes away without a question in their minds of what we’re celebrating – of the true meaning of Christmas. I hope some who need it get a new perspective of the holiday and a new grasp of something they may have lost touch with in their faith.”

There’s more to find out about Berry, his career and his music at www.johnberry.com. And you might luck out and find a ticket or two left at www.thegrandmacon.com plus information on other Grand entertainment like “The Princess Bride” showing today, “The Colonel Lightner Story” on Sunday about Macon’s military hero and the country’s first African-American, female colonel with Lightner herself on hand after the film shows, plus a Dec. 23 presentations of “Swan Lake” by the State Ballet Theatre of Ukraine.

Contact writer Michael W. Pannell at mwpannell@gmail.com.

This story was originally published December 17, 2021 at 12:00 AM.