The Story of Secondhand Serenade

By Melanie Chung

It's a horrible Tuesday in Toronto. Wind gusts make it hard to see, flurries are abound and most Torontonians are sick of the cold. But Secondhand Serenade has brought out a crowd willing to wait in line outside of The Mod Club in below freezing weather. Some, even in T-shirts. Now that's dedication.

Secondhand Serenade, fronted by - or rather, is John Vesely - from Menlo Park, California. With his four-inch spikey blonde hair, tattoos that cover his right arm, an unfinished butterfly on his left and heartfelt romantic lyrics - I'm not surprised to see the concert-goers as dominantly female and dominantly underage. Wristbands indicating the legal drinking age are few and far between and there's an abundance of parents and chaperones. You can hear the hearts aflutter - John is a one man boy band.

But don't let the image fool you. Though he has a drove of female fans he's also wooed quite a few parents. Even the boys are getting into it. It's not hard to see the appeal anymore. John can rock out on a guitar. And he can put on a damn good show. Something he declared he would do. Between songs John breaks out into Richard Marx's Right Here Waiting - all the mothers swoon. Then Augustana's Boston. The girls squeal with delight. Regardless, Secondhand Serenade has much more artistry than he's given credit for.

Secondhand Serenade's sophomore album, A Twist in My Story had two heavyweight producers on board - Butch Walker and Danny Lohner of Nine Inch Nails fame, a band of a vastly different nature from the work of Secondhand. "They were both amazing, and completely different experiences to work with. I didn't know what to expect with Danny - I was to work on a couple tracks with him but I ended up living with him for six or seven months and he became one of my best friends. We made some really great songs and I ended up using them on my album," says John. "And with Butch, we only had two or three weeks to do all the songs that we had together. He's very professional, straight to business - just a very genuine guy who knows what he's doing. It was great to have that work ethic."

Despite having such renowned producers, Secondhand Serenade still gets swept into the infamous "emo" bin. An unfortunate side effect of today's generation of micro-categorization. It's a relatively new term weighed with the stigma of ascribing the music of the broody kid that sits alone in the corner. "There's two parts to emo - one is that negative connotation, and the second part is that every type of music is emo. What is emo except for being emotionally charged music and what music isn't emotionally charged?" John says adamantly. "Beatles' I Want to Hold Your Hand is as emo as it gets. But it's the Beatles so it can't be emo. I don't believe in that kind of classification. There are always skeptics and critics who don't like your music and with that comes a lot of people that do. To each his own. I'm just happy to be able to do this."

At the end of the day, if being emo means writing truthfully then music is in need of this emotional charge. I'm still waiting for the day when the Miley Cyrus' and Hilary Duff's of the music scene level off. A Twist in My Story takes you through the cycle of a relationship - the infatuation, the arguments, the love and finally, the end of it all. And this could only be written with the bare honesty of experience. A refreshing take on the usual sappy love ballads. The record ends with Goodbye, a dramatic telling with an epic musical buildup. "No its not necessarily a happy ending - no it doesn't (have a happy ending)," he laughs. "It's about the deterioration of a relationship and the things that happen leading up to it. And its not always easy - no, actually, it's always hard, so the album outlines that."

Secondhand Serenade's first album, Awake was a bit of an anomaly in the music industry, a successful DIY project that took off on MySpace. It caught the attention of record execs and put John's life in a whole new direction. A lifestyle change and a career change where A Twist in My Story bears witness to it all. "The album is an overview of how my life has changed in regards to being in this industry and how it's affected my personal life because it has, in a very difficult and negative way. But I had a good time writing it. It was very therapeutic." Spoken like a true artist, John is painfully aware of the affects of fame, success and the pressures to get there.

In the liner notes of A Twist, John thanks his family and friends for their support as he boldly states "when it seemed like I was wasting my time." Its hard to imagine how writing the album was a waste of time looking at the long line out the door of fans anxiously awaiting to get into The Mod Club. "At the time, I had a little boy, I was married, I was working fulltime, but I was still taking all this time to pursue music. And it was time for an ultimatum. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I gave myself a year, which pushed me to make an album. It was a big risk. And there is a lot of pressure on yourself when you have mouths to feed...Its definitely a lot of pressure."

And if it weren't for the fans, Secondhand wouldn't be where they are today. "(With Awake) I was dealing with a cult album and these fans are very very strong fans. They were extremely behind Awake. (But with A Twist) I was afraid they were going to reject it because I was changing it up a bit. And making an album as pure as Awake was a very difficult thing for me," he says. With genuine concern and thought, John is afraid of disappointing his fans.

John has always been faithful to his fans and unlike most artists, he does his best to maintain contact with them, maintain a connection with them. And its not the kind of "contact" or pseudo availability like that of an intricate and well-manipulated PR plan of most musical acts. Like Brit Brit really knows how to blog. And I admit, I was skeptical. Doing what I do for years I've encountered artists that are all about themselves. And I nearly committed journalistic suicide, asking for a (dare I say it) an autograph for my devoted 15 year old cousin. But (thankfully) John doesn't carry that chip on his shoulder. During the opening acts, John was right there with the fans watching the show. He strolled the bar and College Street casually. And it is this that gives the work of Secondhand Serenade that added punch. Its entirely tangible, the emotions are real, and it's as raw as we all feel it. He's just like one of us.

He is one of us.