the highlight of 2009 came right towards the end for me. on december 22nd jon played his guitar on stage for the very first time ever. i have been waiting a very long time for this to happen. whenever we go to a show and watch other musicians play i often whisper in his ear "that could be you, imagine how fun it would be to be up there like that". but for jon music is very personal and not at all about the performance or attention. not many people have actually heard him play, even though he plays every single day and night. only our close friends and family have had the pleasure to listen to him strum. usually only our friends who are willing to stay up until 2am will ever hear a basement or bonfire jam session and if they are willing to stay up until 4am then they might even hear him sing. he doesn't try to play "hard to get". he is just really shy when it comes to his music. and that is why we were all so proud watching him up on the stage that night.
jon has been playing music with a group of guys for about a year now. the band is called "after zion" and as a group they make fresh original reggae inspired music. jon plays ukulele, guitar and slide in the band. the other members of the band have been very eager to play out a club, and after a lot of work and practice they decided to commit to a show in december. as soon as i heard the news i got butterflies. i wasn't sure if jon wanted me to spread the word or not but i knew that all our friends and family would kill me if i didn't tell them. so, i started spreading the word and oh my, the word traveled fast! the turn out for the show was amazing! the room was oozing with love and support. it was just what our shy modest musician with nervous cold hands needed that night to take the stage. his performance was brave, exciting, exhilarating and probably the most happy 37 minutes of my life!
i was so amped up that i had a really hard time focusing on taking photos. i was way too busy dancing and smiling at friends to worry about my camera settings or flash. i did managed to get a few fun shots of our enthusiast fans and a couple of jon playing his ukulele and slide guitar. lucky for us, jon's brother jeremy is an awesome videographer and showed up with all his gear (four cameras!) and filmed the whole thing. then he worked around the clock editing away and gave us the completed videos for christmas, such an awesome gift! it was amazing to watch the show live and i have been loving reliving the moment again and again while watching the videos. if you are a bride looking for a videographer you have to contact him, go check out his work over on endless love productions. thank you so much jeremy for sharing your skills and talents with us, we are blessed!
hers's my sister holly (left) dear friend sylvia (middle) and jon's auntie glenna (right) getting their groove on at the show. i am striving for "mel status" from "flight of the concords". i am planning on being the president of the fan club just like her, and i am thinking my sister holly would make one awesome v.p.!!!
she's got the spunk i am looking for. any one else want to join? we still need a secretary and treasurer. and now on to the music, here are two of our favorite tunes from the show. enjoy!
you can check out more videos from the show and listen to some beautiful music over on jon's myspace. if you are from the seattle/tacoma area you can hear jon's band (after zion) live this wednesday (jan 6th) at ToST in fremont. they are the opening band and the show will start around nine. it's going to be a fun night, hope to see you there!