MY STORY
For as long as I can remember, music was just what we did as a family. Whether it was singing at church, watching my dad and cousins in their different bands growing up, or all the family get-togethers at my grandparents’ house where we’d set up music in their basement…music was just always there. Little did I know at the time, those memories were forming a strong desire and passion for my own music. I can remember my first time singing on stage at an early age (maybe when I was second grade), when my cousin Dean pulled me up on stage at church to sing with him. Though I wouldn’t really start pursuing music until much later in life…that day the spark was lit.
I got my first guitar for Christmas when I was 13, and quickly started learning to play and write my own songs. Over the years I’ve been blessed to work and serve along side so many people in church youth group and worship teams, and I truly don’t think I’d be the artist I am today without those experiences. After a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign I was able to record and release my very first EP “From There to Here”. I was actively playing, writing and growing a great fanbase. I really thought I had finally found a way to make music a career. I’ve lived the ups and downs of musician life, struggling to make ends meet at times but I always seemed to have music. Until I didn’t…
2016 was supposed to be the greatest year of my life. I was working for a church as their worship and tech director, and I was about to marry my beautiful wife, Tori, we had just bought a house, and everything was looking great. Then in late 2016 after a long battle with cancer my aunt Yvette passed away, and then a little more than a month later my best friend Brian passed away from a brain tumor. Life just didn’t make sense anymore; I had never dealt with grief or loss like that before. Music wasn’t an outlet this time, it became a resentment. I hated the songs I was writing, they all reminded me of the ones we’d lost, and I just didn’t want to feel that hurt anymore. So, I stopped playing, stopped writing, and ended up down a deep path of depression. Even on days I wanted to get out and start playing music again, I couldn’t find the strength to do it. God was incredible faithful to my wife and I during that time. I had left my position at my former church in early 2017 and by that summer I was offered another tech director position at the church I grew up in. God was providing a way financially for us and would do so for the next several years.
By the end of 2017 and early 2018 I started to slowly start feeling like my old self and opportunities were presenting themselves for me to get back involved with music. Then life threw us another curve. While leading worship on a youth retreat in November of 2018 we discovered that Tori was pregnant…and weeks later the news that not only was she pregnant, but pregnant with twins. Naturally, my mind immediately went to how we were going to provide for twins…I knew my music career wasn’t going to sustain us. Once again, God provided for us. The church I was working part time for stepped up and offered to bring me on full time as their tech director. With anticipation we started to prepare for what would end up being one of the craziest times of our lives. A 4-week hospital stay before our twin girls were born, and then 77 days of NICU (1 week at Children’s Hospital in DC, and 1 week at John’s Hopkins in Baltimore) stay later we were finally home with our girls. And though fatherhood hasn’t been easy at all, I have learned and grown so much over the last 3 years, and I’m blessed beyond measure.
You’re probably wondering what this has to do with music career? In my opinion, all these things, whether good or bad, have helped shape who I am today as person, as an artist and as a musician. For so many years I let the world tell me who I should be, what I should focus on in life, instead of becoming who God created me to be. So finally, after all those years, culminating in the craziness of the pandemic in 2020, I started to hear God say for the first time…it’s time. It was time to start prioritizing music but I just didn’t know how to make that happen. Like God has done so many times before in my life, He made a way. He provided an amazing replacement for me at the church and throughout all the years I was working for those churches He was preparing me with the knowledge and skills I needed to step out now and pursue music. So that’s what I did, 2021 marked the beginning of my new music career. A rebrand of who I used to be as artist, and a new direction and purpose. My heart is this, that my girls grow up believing that they can be or do whatever they feel God has called them to be, and that anyone who hears my music will be touched by the stories in these songs and helped in whatever way they need help. Your support along the way has been incredible to see, and I’m so grateful.
~Jason Knight