Tag: jonnigreth

Around ten years ago or so I was going through my own “Love Supreme” conversion.

I had touched a darkness in my life that I didn’t know I could touch and I contacted a vital life inside of myself that I didn’t know I could contact.

Contrast. Light and Dark. The Logos that fills all things.

And yes I was truly jiving to some Coltrane as was I also giving Christ control again through the subtle and perhaps unwitting spiritual leadership of the mixtapes of my good friend Jonni Greth.

Having a taste for the Avant Garde, Jonni being raised in a very EVANGELICAL background had embraced Christ deeply but almost seemingly in spite of the spiritual milieu and atmosphere about himself. This I always respected and even if he didn’t know it it often made me receive helpful wisdom from him almost as if he were some closed off Jedi hermit.. Which for a hermitic like soul like mine made for an attractive candidate.

If that had not been enough he also had the gifting to express those life experiences of the ‘solitudinal’ heart through song.

Even hermits extrovert sometimes.

Jonni Greth introduced me to Daniel Johnston and copious amounts of outsider art and music, the depth in the like which I was clearly hungry for and yet through all of this our friendship showed me a sense of desire to nurture the artist in me, something I often felt very few people in the world tried to nurture.

But in the years around 2009 existential miracles happened in my life. Some precipitated by a life fallen away from my faith at the time, being caught up with by youthful indecisions and the untimely wreckedness of far too much imbibing (of various substance); the God of my youth began to become something and better yet someone to me again.. the presence of an old long lost friend.

Somewhere between breakups with people I didn’t honestly date but merely had deep emo college infatuations with and the sentiment that some sort of Aspergian colored cloud contrasting between genius possibilities and social catastrophes was my plight, I would finally, somehow, gain a notch in my proverbial life belt.

All of my fellow musician friends knew me as ‘that dude who would probably never get ahead or make anything worthwhile happen with music’ but slowly, somehow, like the slow tick of the oil drip leaving my white Chevrolet Astro van dry, a dry artist through experience and near caveman from primordial goo level emerging, I came seemingly out of nothing into existence for the first time.

“I had a panic attack in psychology class but with the guitar on my back no confidence lacked.” (Excerpt from a song I’m working on.)

But indeed it was true. One day a college infatuation of mine, whom I had been sitting behind in psychology class on the first day of class, having a panic attack when the teacher merely called for me to introduce myself, would be the girl I got the confidence to sing my song I wrote for her in the parking lot there at Pensacola Community College (as they used to call it).

She said “How is it that you have panic attacks to introduce yourself but behind a guitar your so confident?!”

A song Hosea was born. Next was Bay Leaves. Next “crap!”.. one day in my inner battle to remain atheist I had my secular humanism lead me back to Jesus (we’ll save that one for another blog. Hyperlink will be updated!)

Then another day walking through the mall like an anthropologist studying people and buying nothing as I often did, I walked into a Ross Dress for Less and stumbled upon a fortune cookie paper that read as follows…

“You will make a name for yourself in the field of entertainment.”

Things slowly got weird. My car almost broke drown one day on the way to a fund raiser for a Church Hippy Coffee Shop known as the Ole Mug at the Genesis barn in Foley, Alabama but I was all out of money “bless my heart!”

So I stopped by a Tom Thumb right down the road from ‘Flora Bama Bar and Grill’ remembering my guitar in the back of my on-e Chevy Astro Van that was sitting in the seat of my road side salvaged, leather lazy boy for easy back seat sleeping (if I so desired) and with a glint of proverbial providence and road magic went inside and made my pitch to the manager.

I said “sir I am out of gas and I have no money but I have a guitar in the back of my van and I would be more than willing to buy gas if I made some money out on the curb.”

Finding this a different kind of request and looking somewhat amused he accepted my request. I played my heart out in the middle of that summer day and by the end of an hour or so I made 35$! I bought some gas and got at least half a tank and saved the rest for Taco Bell and some as a momento. The fund raiser was over by the time I got to Foley {Isn’t it Ironic}.

The one time event turned into my semi regular gigs on the Gas Station circuit round playing at any gas station or public place I could until one day I thought I might take a chance..again.

I walked into the City Grille in Gulf Shores, Alabama that was newly opened and asked if they ever had live music. They said that they had been looking into doing it but had not booked anyone yet and then asked me if I would like to be one of their first. I WAS IN!

My job was music! One gig turned to 2 turned to I’m playing all week and I was finally good at something..something before that among my friends I was the worst at. Friends had moved away to different parts of the country but even as far as Salt Lake City Utah the word was out that Dillon was writing music and somehow it didn’t suck! What a novel thought!

As time would go by (around 11 years or so now) I have seen my song writers hermit syndrome go way way deep.

That first year and a half or so on the Gulf Coast and I was quickly finding myself drained.

Notwithstanding the facts of my lifelong undiagnosed sleep disorders and other maladies of which I only knew so much.

I was an originals artist in a world ruled by cover singers and it mystified folks how I even got out there as an originals artist ‘gettin gigs’

in the first place.

Though my song writing instincts are deep and most definitely instinctual and though my songwriters hermit syndrome is even deeper I could only say succinctly that I never could have begun getting out there without ‘finding my supporting cast’.

James Dillon broxson is an artist, musician and content creator. He is married to his wonderful wife Carolina originally from Venezuela and has a beautiful baby girl with her named Eliza. For enquiries email shastat78@gmail.com