By 1999, I had spent almost two decades as a manufacturer’s representative in the lawn & garden and hardware industry. It taught me many aspects of marketing and design in terms of packaging and promotion. It was then that I was going through a divorce from a 29-year marriage, which was the start of an early on-depression. In the following three years, my mom was diagnosed with colon cancer, my dad attempted suicide over the thought of losing my mom, and my brother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. If it wasn’t for the fact that I had walked into a Circuit City, saw a keyboard and hit the demo key which started playing the theme to the James Bond movies, I probably wouldn’t be here today doing what I’m now most passionate about in and that is music. It didn’t happen over night. I first bought the Yamaha Keyboard, took it home and labeled the keys since I never took piano lessons, nor could I read music.
It had those built in music loops for various styles of music and I could just start a loop and improvise a melody by playing around with the keys. It wasn’t long before I started to write my own lyrics to go with the different melodies I was improvising. I purchased a recording device with cassette tapes and started to record my pieces. I also signed up with the CT Songwriters Association and started to attend their monthly meetings, where you could bring a sample of your music to have it critiqued by its members. This was where I met my very good friends and producer from Funkee Boy Music and his wife. We hit it off right from the start and I had him take my rough material and produce tracks I never imagined it could sound like. This was my new passion.
But, I was still dealing with a certain amount of depression and in September of 2001 ended up purchasing an existing graphic design business to see what I could do and learn from it. To be perfectly honest, I spent the next several years just milking the existing business not being proactive in growing it, as I was still not in a motivating mind set. It took some time to get out of my rut and it was then I realized music was my true passion, not just for myself, but I loved to listen to new
music from independent music artists as opposed to just listening to main stream radio.
So, I started to envision hosting networking events combined with music to connect with people and connect
From Tampa Florida
Connecting Through Music
by Jon Landers