He got his first guitar when he was nine, had a record deal when he was eleven and released his debut album when he was thirteen. Literally, Trent Johnson has grown up in front of the world, something he admits is bizarre. "There are still people out there that, no matter how old I get - and I'm 29 now, by the way - still think of me as that same kid. I seriously have people come up to me and talk to me like I'm twelve."

Throughout his teens, Trent released a string of successful instrumental albums and built up quite a large fan base. 1980's My Story, My Life was one of the top selling records of the year, but despite his success in the genre, Trent was still restless. "I'd begun writing these lyrics," he shares, "and at first, I was thinking, 'Well, I'll just write songs for other people,' but the more I wrote, the more obvious it became that these were my songs. They were so personal and they were really little glimpses into my life, so I knew I couldn't give them to anybody else. I knew I had to be the one to sing them."

Getting the support of his label (the now defunct Faraday Records) proved to be a challenge, but Trent was eventually given the green light to branch out into unchartered waters. In July of 1983, his sixth studio album, Free, released, days after single "Stay" hit the airwaves. Shock resounded. While many were supportive and receptive to the change, there were a few very vocal holdouts. "The reviews I got, man!" Trent laughs. "They were just terrible! Universal reaction of the critics was, 'What the hell is he thinking? This kid can't sing!' What's funny is they'd spend four paragraphs saying that I couldn't sing and the last two would be about what great lyrics I wrote. I don't know if that was their way of softening the blow or what, but it always struck me as funny."

The critics weren't the only ones to pick up on Johnson's deft lyric writing abilities. Listeners everywhere were struck by the poetic passion and unflinching honesty with which he wrote. "When you're going through a rough spot, you tend to think you're the only one in the world that's ever gone through it. You feel alone. At least, I know I did a lot of the time," Trent relates. "So I didn't know if anyone would relate to those songs or not. And it's just amazing to think that someone out there felt the exact same way and here's this record, that's voicing everything they're feeling. I had people tell me, 'Public Hideaway' is so me. 'Falling' is so me.' I didn't set out to do anything but write down how I was feeling and I ended up giving a voice to so many people who didn't have one. I don't know if I even have the vocabulary to say how humbling that is."

1984 brought about big changes to Trent's career, when his longtime label Faraday was bought out by JLN. Greatest hits retrospective A Lyrical Scrapbook was his first record to be released on JLN and his first tour was quite a coup - one-third of the Solitude tour, which also featured Phoenix Reeves and Tony Millerstein. "That was...an experience," he admits, with a laugh. "It was a great time, really. I just remember the whole thing as an adventure, because we had so much fun. It was great."

In 1987, he released the long awaited Free follow up, The Golden Dream. The album, which Trent calls his "happy record," quickly won over new and old listeners with catchy melodies and telling lyrics, though purposely not as telling as the lyrics on Free. "I write what's going on with me at the moment," Trent relates. "And the lyrics of Free were what I was dealing with at the time. The stuff on The Golden Dream was written years later, after I'd moved past a lot of stuff, so they were happier. More at peace. Like I was."

Singles such as "Flipped," "The Sonata of Serenity" and "Look at Mary Rowe" made a big impression on consumers, selling out quickly and rocketing to the top of the singles chart. The album also won Trent a slew of awards, but he says that when time came to think about his next project, he wanted to shift gears a bit. "It was a conscious decision on my part not to place any instrumental tracks on the next album. I know that's probably not going to win me any points with the old school fans - and y'all, I am sorry - but I felt like it was a natural progression. Slowly but surely, I'd been phasing them out. I really feel like these days, I have a lot to say and with an instrumental, there's only so much you can convey."

Somewhere Outside Eternity, Trent's ninth studio album, is pensive, honest and slightly more rollicking than records past. If the lead-off single "Adrian's Song" (written in honor of the character Trent portrayed in the 1988 film Born to be Wild: The Rise and Fall of Adrian Sweeney) is any indicator, this will be a record that will bring in a whole new fan base. "A lot of that is my musical influences of late," Trent admits. "I've been listening to more progressive music lately, so that's translated to the music I wrote. It's not something that's going to turn off the over-30 crowd - I hope not, anyway - but it's something I think can appeal to an audience I haven't really reached yet. It's pretty exciting for me and I can't wait to see where it goes."

Somewhere Outside Eternity releases on December 26, 1989 and a companion book of essays (as yet untitled) will release in May of 1990.