Is music cathartic? Of course. Is music therapeutic? The holistic practitioners at The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York think so. (See our article in Issue 229.) Is music medicinal? I think so.
When did music in the recognizable format we appreciate today begin? It’s subject to debate. But arguably an origin in a grunt or groan during the primitive hunt is conceivable. Sailors on seas to new worlds undoubtably sang. Soldiers in front line trenches guardedly sang. Slaves in fields sang. But why?
As a student of community psychology, I think contemporary music functions as a sort of acoustic prosthetic. It reinforces community beliefs, religious dogma and commercial ventures via entertainment value.
There is a general consensus that music subconsciously reorganizes a listener's perspective as to where and when in time it was initially heard. Vocals in particular have the ability to spark the imagination of where you were during the first airplay. How could I forget a Dylan song heard on a bus while a tourist in Portugal?
As one ages, their relationship with music becomes desperate in the sense of its functionality. Unmanageable dynamic stressors such as aging, physiological decline and cognitive deterioration exact a price. So one's taste in music diverts, often in a chronological sense to their past. Perhaps that explains my longings for bands of the British Invasion?
But I wanted to learn whether music actually could remediate medical issues. So I turned to a songwriter who structures his words not only in tribute, but remembrance of times and personas gone by. And of those struggles, which songs written “of the heart” prescribed themselves as medicinal ointment or salve.
Thus I present the most spiritual Q & A interview I have enjoyed in quite a while, by a tremendously gifted entertainer with a very big heart: singer/songwriter/composer and man of many talents, John David Schrader. In this first of a two-part interview, he looks at his life and career with an unblinking eye.
On the Beginning – Kingston, Elvis, and a Box of 45s
Joe Caplan: You've said you were hooked on music the first time you saw Elvis Presley on TV. What exactly happened in that moment – what did you see or feel that a kid could recognize as something life-changing?
John David Schrader: I was a little kid so it’s hard to remember the entire incident, but I do remember being outside in the front yard playing with neighborhood friends and my mom came to the door and said “Bub (childhood nickname), come on in the house. There’s someone on television I want you to see.” She knew I was musically inclined and loved music because this was after the time that I discovered my brother Bobby‘s cardboard box of 45s and his lunchbox record player.
I came in the house that evening and she said, “this is going to be Elvis live from Hawaii.” it was his concert that was seen around the world via satellite (Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite, broadcast in 1973). Now I had been listening to his music, but I didn’t know who he was until that night. I sat in front of the black-and-white TV that we had and when he came out on stage wearing that white jumpsuit, I remember being mesmerized. I thought to myself, “why are all these ladies screaming for him and trying to touch him?” I just remember as a little kid thinking to myself, “I want to be him,” but I wasn’t quite sure what that meant at that age. A switch was turned on inside of me that evening, and I’ve never looked back since.
John David Schrader.
JC: Finding that box of 45s in your mother's attic – Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beatles, Chuck Berry – is the kind of origin story that sounds almost mythological. What did it feel like to open that box? Was it like discovering a secret language?
JDS: I was even a little younger when my brother Bobby went off to serve during the Vietnam War. That’s when I was in the attic and found that cardboard box filled with 45s. I wasn’t quite sure what they were, but they were next to this lunchbox record player that I was equally as curious as to what that was. I dragged all of that stuff out of the attic and down the little ladder and into my room. When my mom came home, I asked her what it all was and how it worked. She showed me what to do and how to load the records and put the needle on the records, etc. and that’s where the magic really began.
I guess the whole thing was kind of mythological. The only thing that the whole scene lacked was that when I opened that cardboard box, no light rays shot out of it. LOL but that’s when I discovered Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Screaming Jay Hawkins, the Beatles and even older blues like muddy Waters and so many more. I’m surprised I didn’t wear the grooves out on those records. I can’t explain what the music actually did to me… The feeling that it gave me that went through my blood…but it sure was magic. I played them over and over and over and never got sick of it. I’m not sick of it to this day.
JC: You grew up in Kingston, New York, 90 minutes from New York City. Is that distance – close enough to dream, far enough to feel stuck – part of what drives your music? Would you have written the same songs if you'd grown up in Manhattan?
JDS: When I was a kid, New York City seemed like it was on the other side of the country. We didn’t have money to go visit New York City and do all those kinds of things so it just seemed foreign to me, even though I was aware of it existing where I grew up. You worked…you got a job…you worked…not much dreaming going on, and I felt those limitations. Even at a young age I spent most of my young life hearing people say “get a real job.” I was an average or below-average student in public school. I think mainly because I was bored, and as a result, I felt even more limitations in the small town that I lived in. College seemed out of the question, because we didn’t have money and we weren’t aware of financial aid or anything like that until the guidance counselor in my senior year of high school helped me out with all that.
But I grew up staring out classroom windows picturing a concert stage or a movie set or a baseball field, and knowing in my heart that I wanted to be part of all that, but it all seemed like a fantasy that was not attainable for a small kid in my town. I even had a couple of teachers say to me, “you won’t amount to sh*t.”
It didn’t really affect me. It just seemed normal at the time to hear that kind of criticism. I didn’t excel academically until I got to college. I hold degrees in music, film/audio and physical therapy. Yes, I also loved baseball and I was a damn good player for many years! But yeah, dreaming is something you did to yourself and kept to yourself. When I was a kid, that kind of stuff could certainly be the antithesis of fostering confidence in a child. I often wonder how those teachers would feel today if they saw me. Three degrees, accepted into The Recording Academy, last record balloted for a Grammy. They would probably still say, “you didn’t amount to sh*t!”JC: Your songs carry themes of the long climb up from what some call a dead end town. Do you still feel that pull between embracing Kingston and wanting to escape it? Has that tension ever resolved?
JDS: That long climb is something I look back on with almost disbelief. I still haven’t garnered the level of success that I would like, but to see where I came from and to see what I’ve achieved now…My dad died when I was nine and my mother had to work several jobs at once to put food on the table. Money was very tight but she did the best should could to not make me and my brother feel like we were struggling. She was amazing woman.
I think there will always be a pull between the town that made me who I am and the people that surrounded me, versus getting out. I don’t think that’s something that ever goes away, even if you “get out.” so many people I know have turned their backs on where they grew up, but I simply can’t do that. Kingston, New York made me who I am and I’m proud of that and I grew up being surrounded by amazing people…friends and family who also shaped who I am and what I believe and the morals that I hold today. I could never turn my back on where I grew up and who I grew up with…it’s just that simple. I come from blue collar parents and I make no bones about that. I’m very proud of how hard they worked to provide for a family and to give us structure, safety, and stability, and it was always at the cost of their own [lives]. I will go to my grave thankful for that and loving them for that.
JC: You started with violin in third grade, drums in fourth, then guitar and piano in high school. What was driving that hunger? Was it the music itself, or something you were trying to reach through music?
JDS: I really couldn’t say exactly what was driving that desire to play so many instruments, which continued while I was in college. When I was younger, I had a fascination with how musical instruments made noise, and I wanted to know how to make them make that noise. I just kind of made them playable for me even though I didn’t know how at the time, because I was teaching myself piano and guitar at first, but there was something that drove me to want to play those instruments. I don’t know if it was the desire to write songs or the desire to be good at the instruments. I just know that there was something in me that was driving me to make them make noise. I loved how it felt and still do to this day.
JC: You describe having “a magnetic drive toward any musical instrument you saw.” Is that curiosity still there, or has it transformed into something else?
JDS: Yes, that curiosity still there to this day. I can’t walk past a musical instrument without playing it. If I don’t know how to play it I want to try. Like you said, it’s magnetic. I can’t explain it. I wish I could, because then my explanations and interviews would make a lot more sense.
On Being Diagnosed with Cancer at 21 – When Music Became Essential
JC: You were diagnosed with aggressive testicular cancer at 21 – the same cancer Lance Armstrong faced – and given a five-year survival framework. What was the first thing you did after you received that diagnosis?
JDS: Actually, the survival framework they gave me was three years. At 21, it scared the life out of me. I tell people, until you’ve faced your own mortality, you don’t know what fear is. What was the first thing that I did? I cried in my mother‘s arms, scared to death like a little child again. My mother had watched my father die of cancer and now she faced that with her child. She was so strong through the whole thing. I remember thinking she was so strong that I never saw her cry. After her death, her best friend told me that she would come down the street to visit her, and that’s where she did her crying because she didn’t want to do it in front of me. It’s actually bringing tears to my eyes as I say these words.
JC: You've said everything you were going through “needed a voice,” and that voice became your songwriting. Before the diagnosis, were you already writing seriously, or did cancer unlock something that wasn't fully open yet?
JDS: Music was definitely the voice for what was happening to me on the inside that I couldn’t get out with a simple conversation. I’d like to think that I was writing serious songs back then and I did my best to do so, but like you said, cancer did unlock a more serious side to my songwriting. And since then, I’ve never struggled to write a song. Sometimes I feel like I’m just a vessel that it comes through and I’m not quite sure where it comes from.
JC: Is there a specific song you wrote during or immediately after your cancer battle that you consider the rawest, most honest thing you've ever put on record?
JDS: Immediately after [the diagnosis], I wrote a song called “Funny Man” about feeling like I lost a part me that was the fun-loving jokester who always smiled and laughed. I lived for fun and good times with family and friends. The seriousness of my diagnosis spun me around and I had to mature overnight. I feel today like I got some of that back, but I know some of who I was pre-diagnosis has been lost forever. That makes me sad, but it was a battle I was handed and I had to get through. That battle then became a new part of who I am.JC: Did music help you survive literally – did it give you a reason to fight, a reason to stay, or was it more that it helped you process what was happening?
JDS: I’ve lived through more pain and heartache than I care to remember. My close friends can attest to that. The heartache through growing up is something I try not to talk a lot about, because I don’t want to relive a lot of it. Some ask, “what is your biggest fear?” and I answer that I don’t answer that question because I’ve already lived through it. Music was and is something “they” can’t take away from [me]. It’s always been there for me when I needed to bleed, and it asks no questions. It gives me the answers. It surely helped me survive because I don’t know where I’d be today if I didn’t have that gift of music.
JC: When you were going through treatment, what did you listen to? Was there music that felt like medicine, and music that felt wrong, that you couldn't tolerate in that state?
JDS: Gee…it was a lifetime ago. I can’t really remember what I was listening to at the time but I don’t think I chose anything special or different. I was listening to Abbey Road for sure! One of my favorite records!
JC: Cancer forced a confrontation with mortality at an age when most people feel invincible. Did surviving change what you write about, or did it deepen what you were already writing about?
JDS: I do believe it changed what I write about and how I wrote lyrics and the content therein. It was such a large and traumatic event in my life that I can’t imagine it not changing how I wrote. So, fear and anger and injustice entered the fray, along with hope, in my writing. I have a tendency though to write very enigmatically because I don’t like the meanings to be so black-and-white and “out there.” I like each listener to take out of my songs something that resonates with them personally.
JC: You had already lost your father to cancer when you were nine. When you received your own diagnosis at 21, did you feel an echo of that earlier loss? How did you carry both of those feelings at once?
JDS: Yes, it all came racing to the forefront in an instant. My fear of dying was overwhelming at times. So much so that I couldn’t sleep with my hands on my chest because I felt like that’s what I’d look like in a casket. Once the fear subsided a little bit, I remember thinking to myself, “let it be quick and please don’t let my family be upset for too long.” That’s an awful lot for a 21-year-old to shoulder.
On His Mother Lorraine – “She Was My Hero”
JC: You've said your mother Lorraine got you through your cancer battle, that she was your hero and your best friend, and that it's not possible to put into words what she meant to you. And yet – you write songs. Have you found words for her yet?
JDS: There really are no words that I can say in an interview, as I’ve been asked [if I] could sum up in words how much I love and miss my mom. Yes, her strength got me through my battle. If it wasn’t for her, I think I would’ve just collapsed. As far as lyrics go, there are two songs that I wrote from my mom just after she passed. One is called “Picture Show,” just me and an acoustic guitar, and another song called “77” which is just me and piano. It was done in one straight take. I’ve never played them live because I know I couldn’t get through them.JC: She later died of leukemia – another cancer, another loss. Did losing her feel different from losing your father, both in life and in how it found its way into the music
JDS: I was only nine when I lost my father. That’s a very young age and [it’s] hard to say that I knew my father very well because I was so young, but I do have many great memories of my dad. But because I was so young, fear was overwhelming, because I saw what it did to mom and how she had to struggle to pay bills afterwards. Losing my mom was devastating. It stripped the air from my lungs. It’s a weight that I carry to this day even as a grown man. There was no way to stop her death from becoming part of my music. It was so large and so heavy and so hard to think about that I had to get it out somehow, and music was it. Music has always been a catharsis in one way or another for me.
JC: Is there a song of yours that is specifically hers, something you made for her, or something she would have recognized as being about her?
JDS: “77” and “Picture Show” – I think she knows.
JC: When you perform live, do you feel her presence in the music?
JDS: She’s always with me no matter where I go and no matter what stage I’ve been on. I feel her presence everywhere I go, and I keep her memory alive by telling stories about her. Oddly enough, the only place I do not feel her presence is at her grave.
JC: Grief is a recurring theme in your work. Do you think songwriting is one of the most effective ways humans have for processing loss, or is it something else – not therapy, but something harder and more necessary?
JDS: For me, it really is an effective way to process loss, and thank God I have that gift to be able to do that. Many people don’t, so what they have to do is what works for them, and I think what that might be is just putting your head down and barreling through it as best you can without collapsing. Everyone handles grief differently.
On Songwriting as Survival
JC: Your motto is “always dream out loud.” Is that something you arrived at through the cancer experience, or did it come from somewhere else?
JDS: As I spoke of earlier, as a child in a small town where people go to work and come home and don’t do much dreaming, you had to dream on the inside and not make it so known, or you would risk being mocked and pushed into dead end jobs. So as I’ve gotten older, I look back on those days and I just thought to myself one day, “always dream out loud.” The times I’ve been asked for an autograph, that’s how I sign it.JC: Your songs are described as your “slices of life”: pain, struggle, anger, yearning. Is writing those songs cathartic, or does putting them on record make them permanent in a way that's painful?
JDS: it is absolutely cathartic for me, but the way I’ve described writing a song about something so traumatic or painful and then doing it live is [that] I feel like the wound heals, but I pull the Band-Aid off and open the wound to bleed in front of an audience and then put the Band-Aid back on at the end of the show. And it repeats itself over and over, but you’re [eventually] able to deal with it much, much better with so much less pain.
JC: You write about loss, struggle, and resilience, but you also write about pride in the places and streets that shaped you. How do you hold both of those things in a single song – the wound and the love?
JDS: I believe that more than two things can be true at the same time. The streets you grow up in shape you. The good and the bad. The yin and the yang. They create the “you” that you are. But being aware and proud of where you came from and what it did for you is a way to have them coexist together.
JC: When you perform these songs live, night after night, does the emotion stay fresh or does it become something more like craft, executed rather than felt?
JDS: I always feel them. The pain certainly isn’t as potent but it’s like the Band Aid analogy I gave. Every night and every show is different and I think it also depends on the vibe you’re getting from the audience and how it lands on them. I’m there for the audience…I’m there to tell them my story and in turn I hope they take something from it and make it their own. I’m always grateful to everyone that comes out to any show.
JC: Has a stranger ever come up to you after a show and told you that one of your songs got them through something? What was that like?
JDS: Years back, I sang the song, “Funny Man” at a show. I spoke on what the song was about before I sang it. After the show, a man came up to me. His name was Moises and he was on crutches because he lost part of one of his legs to cancer, and he had tears in his eyes when he told me about losing his leg, and then he also added how he lost his daughter to cancer as well. I was moved to tears that my song met so much to him that he would share his story with me. I was honored.
JC: 21 Summers, your 2016 Grammy-contending album – the title carries a specific weight for someone who was once told to count their years. What does that title mean to you?
JDS: Summer is my favorite season, and I had 21 of them before my life changed for the rest of my life. 21 summers before cancer came into my picture.
The interview will be continued in Issue 235.
All images courtesy of John David Schrader.
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