A daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts, and entertainment, produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from November 2014 – March 2020. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists.
In 2012, a mostly-unknown musician in Los Angeles named Tobias Jesso Jr. got dumped. Shortly after, he was hit by a car while riding his bike. He survived, the bike didn’t.
The next day, while contemplating life’s cruel ways, he found out his mom had been diagnosed with cancer. He put his instruments in a storage unit and bought a plane ticket home to Vancouver to be with her. While there, he started writing songs at the piano.
Practically the minute he put them out into the world, they got praised by the big music blogs, Adele, and Jimmy Fallon.
Jesso's story is made even more unlikely when you factor in that he was a musical novice.
“My sister had a piano at my parents’ house,” he says. “When I got the impulse to write a song, I just sat at the piano and note-by-note figured it out.”
This was a man who had never played more than “Chopsticks.” Nevertheless, the songwriter immediately felt comfortable on piano.
“It was a lot easier, because it was sort of a more linear type of understanding,” he says. “Bottom to top. Guitar never made much sense.”
His first attempt proved he was a natural:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8rEY2Gt8SI
After getting positive feedback from friends, Tobias sent “Just A Dream” and a few other rough demos to Chris “JR” White of the now-defunct San Francisco indie rock band Girls. White immediately offered to work on an album.
In the interim, the demos circulated online, drawing comparisons to John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman and a host of other '70s singer-songwriters Tobias never really listened to. He’s more of an Adele fan, which made that tweet all the sweeter.
This is fantastic, click away
— Adele (@OfficialAdele)
This is fantastic, click away https://t.co/DhX8RPVNhu
— Adele (@Adele) January 21, 2015
Tobias and White finished the album last year. "Goon" was just released, and Tobias is touring Canada and the U.S. in support. It’s a victory lap he’s looking forward to, but there’s a chance his crippling performance anxiety will get in the way.
“My singing voice goes away when I get nervous,” he says. “And I get nervous before I sing.”