HazelEye and The Pad (HATP) | About us
contact: thepad@hazeleyemedia.com
The father/daughter team of HazelEye and the Pad has been making music since the day she was born. She gasped, cried and took her first breath. He laughed, cried and exhaled in perfect harmony. 
Since that initial maternity ward performance, MW (Mother/Wife) has valiantly strived to keep her creative charges grounded in the reality they expertly ignore, avoid and distort with all available tools of aesthetic manipulation. It is a losing cause. They started arguing about music, art and popular culture as soon as young HazelEye learned to say “no.” (She wanted Barney, he wanted Bartok) The fiery discourse and beautiful harmonies continue to this day. Limited copies of their collaboration “Hanging Upside Down on a Train” were released in 2009 by HazelEye Media (the family business) through Germany’s experimental q-tone label. Their eponymous collection of words, music and sound has been licensed for Japanese release by Murmur Records/Art Union/Nature Bliss.
HazelEye 
HazelEye, who has grown up to become a world-class songwriter and distinctively expressive vocalist, is 22-year old New York City native Becca Johnson. She is a serial collaborator across the entire spectrum of popular music including Sun, a recording project with dance music producer Mark Renker, alternative pop/indie rock band The Roaring 20s and experimental art/pop group HATP.
As a USC Annenberg Graduate Fellow whose doctoral research focuses on the future of digital media and the Internet, she is a scholar of the art and business of music, equally comfortable with acoustic, analog, digital and MIDI technology. She is a Scholastic Art Award winning photographer and has worked as assistant to a Grammy-nominated audiophile producer, marketing intern at Interscope Records and research assistant/blogger at the Norman Lear Center’s Popular Music Project.
The Pad 
The Pad has worked with pianist/composer Matthew Shipp, avant-garde composer/songwriter David Garland, dance music pioneer Tom Moulton, Motown arranger Paul Riser and the Black Rock Coalition. He’s performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music and Knitting Factory, and has periodically appeared unannounced on the stages of downtown New York’s anti-folk scene.
The Pad, who has produced, arranged and been studio guitarist for an L.A. indie, is often accused of being a post-modern outsider whose art defies categories, inspires wonder yet sparks nostalgia. Guilty as charged, he reluctantly emerges from shadows to create mainstream media under the guise of a human being known, to the collector of taxes, as Gene Bryan Johnson co-producer of Hamlet for Radio (directed by and starring academy award winning actor Kevin Kline), executive producer for McGraw-Hill’s Reel Society series of interactive movies and managing editor of digital and social media for The Public Radio Energy Project.
Family roots in music
The Pad is first cousin once removed to the late singer/songwriter Claude Johnson. In 1959, as a member of The Genies, Claude co-wrote and sang a #71 pop hit called Who’s That Knockin’. In 1962, as a member of the duo Don & Juan, Claude wrote and sang What’s Your Name, a #7 pop hit considered a classic of the doo wop era and bridge between 50s doo wop and 60s soul/r&b. This link is to info about Claude Johnson and Don & Juan.
The Pad was five years old when Claude, known to friends and family as Sonny, had that huge pop hit. Perhaps because of the close relationship Sonny had with his father, The Pad has been an obsessive historian of popular culture for most of his life. One of his greatest joys is that HazelEye’s scholarly pursuits and artistic interests are the same as his own. Such is the foundational history of HazelEye Media, a family business wholly-owned and operated by Mama Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear. Dinner is at 6:30. Don’t be late.
Quotes:
HazelEye’s very soulful voice is young and honest with soul pop abilities in her choice of melody. The Pad’s successful production features arrangements that are subtle, soft and moody with a nice warm sound. Possibly perfect.– Gerald Van Waes (psychefolk.com)
Versatile songwriter, soulful guitar-player.-Indie Music.com
Smooth, lingering sound textures, slowly morphing distortive elements and gentle licks of acoustic guitar symphonically structured to create quite a peculiar reverie. — SonicImmersion.org
Singer/songwriter, ambient, experimentation and improvisation. Quite nice!-Frans de Waard (Vital Weekly)
