ParadoX / Members
John (Gdog) Gertson
Drummer Background VocalistFrom my earliest recollection I've always had a special love for music. I remember listening to The Beatles and just losing myself in every note and every lyric. Even before that, I had a book called Peter and the Wolf that had a record you'd play as you read it that followed the story along like a soundtrack. A lesson in music hidden in a beautiful children's story and I drank it up not knowing it was shaping my fresh mind into what I'd some day become. My fourth grade teacher who built a cardboard space capsule and had each of us get inside one at a time and listen to The Animals' Sky Pilot while we imagined flying through space. The beautiful country gospel music we all sang along to every Sunday morning basically my entire childhood. The endless flood of classic rock pouring from the dashboard speakers of my dad's Chevy Luv pickup. You could say I was destined to have some kind of musical future and here I am. My mother bought piano lessons for me and my teacher would come once a week to the house and show me a few things. I really liked it because she was beautiful. She had long blond hair, blue eyes and I got to sit there beside her at the piano for an hour. Made it hard to learn much but I learned a little. I learned about chord progression and melody. I learned how all the notes are in order and how mathematical music is. I liked everything I was learning but couldn't find a real passion for piano. I had an old electric guitar that was given to me by my uncle Rick. It sat in the closet collecting dust for a year or two till I was around 13 years old. For some reason I got fed up just dreaming about making music and decided to get serious about it. I picked up the guitar and began battling my way through the frustrations of learning and before to long I was putting chords together and making music. Unlike my lack of passion for piano, I quickly fell in love with my guitar. A love that exists to this day. Junior high school started out with some changes. First, the summer before my 7th grade year my parents bought a new house and we moved out in the country. We were in the same school district, just three or four miles out of town. There were two grade schools in our district but only one junior high so 7th grade came with a lot of new faces. The new neighborhood brought some new faces as well. The worst part about our new residents was the bus ride from school. It took every bit of an hour to get home and being a big guy, like I am, it was very uncomfortable. However, it played a big part in the advancement of our story because it gave me a chance to meet all of the other kids that lived out there. It also gave us all something in common. Our hatred for that damn hour bus ride. One day we were on the bus heading home from school and it was unusually quiet for whatever reason that day. Suddenly a kid stood up and asked very loudly so everyone could hear. " Anybody wanna be in an air band?" Nobody said anything for a few seconds so I raised my hand and said. " I do." "Well, come down to Prairie St. in about an hour and we'll meet up with you there" said the kid who by this time had introduced himself. His name was Kenny and later that day I met the whole gang. There was Kenny, Kenny's brother Drew, Jason and Lori. We all became friends as we competed in what they call today, a lip sync battle, but back then we called it an air band. Kenny was a little older than than Drew, Jason and myself so after the air band event was over he didn't hang with us as much. Drew and I didn't really have any common interests and Lori was, well she was sweet and we were friends but Jason and I became best friends having a shared love for music among other common interests. After the air band thing I started talking to Jason about maybe starting a real band. By this time I had a pretty good grasp on playing guitar and had already dabbled in writing songs. Jason soon after finagled his mom into buying him a snare drum and we started jamming together. It sounded like shit but we just kept plugging away at it. It wasn't to long after Jason decided he really wanted to play guitar after all, there's not much you can do with just a snare. He saved his money and bought a Washburn guitar/amp package from the local music store and we both started developing our skills as guitarists and writing songs. We started looking for a drummer and we heard that John Gertson was the only drummer in school who actually owned a drum kit so we recruited him and he brought Jeff Mattox who played bass. Just like that, we were a band and nothing else mattered. We practiced every weekend for hours driving our neighbors crazy and we sounded terrible. We sucked so bad but we just kept pounding and scratching our way through the shit till after a while a light began to appear at the end of the sonic tunnel of hell we'd tortured everyone who heard us with. Just like that, the light turned on and we got good, then, we got better and then we thought, I think we can do this, wait! we are doing this. We named the band ParadoX because it was the coolest sounding word I found after blindly opening a dictionary and randomly reading the first word I saw after opening my eyes. Not the best way to find a name for your band but I think it worked out nicely for us. The last show we played was at our own graduation party. After that we got together a few more times but we were working, getting married, buying cars, houses and life happened. We all went our own way and ParadoX faded away. I kept chasing my dream and started another band called Face in the Crowd. We toured off and on for a good fifteen years releasing three studio albums and having a blast doing what we loved but that band too faded away. By this time I had built my own studio and was writing and recording my own stuff, releasing four studio albums and hundreds of singles I was still chasing my dream but in a different way. I got a call one day from one of my other good friends Steve Curwick. He told me Jason was in the hospital and he might not be with us much longer. Jason was born with diabetes and needed two insulin shots every day of his life and the insulin was weakening his veins. The one thing keeping him alive was also slowly killing him. I went to visit him in the hospital and we had a good long talk. We remembered the good times and laughed and just reconnected in a special way. I shook his hand and said "see you later" when I left, but that was the last time. The funeral was sad and we will always miss Jason but he was in a lot of pain and if you believe like I do, he's in a much better place. We all have to play the hand that's delt us and I believe Jason made the best out of a bad situation. When he was alive, he really lived. About a year or so after Jason's passing John Gertson contacted me with a proposition. He wanted to dig up the old songs we wrote in ParadoX and release an album as a tribute to Jason and I thought it was a great idea. We started watching old home videos of ParadoX so we could remember all the old songs and slowly one by one we reconstructed note by note every one. A year later we had a pretty rockin album done and we called it Flashback. I had just released my album Reflection and was needing a drummer to help promote it with some live performances. The drummer I had in mind didn't work out so I asked John. We played a couple shows and people really took to us and we were having a blast so we just kept on rockin wherever they'd have us. We'd do songs off Reflection and Flashback but we'd also throw a cover or two in the mix. It was and is a lot of fun. Since then we've released another studio album, Come Hell or High Water and added a new member, Jimmy McG and as far as I can tell we're in this for the long haul. We've got our next album half done. Video shoots, models and photo sessions all in the works. Whenever I talk to Jimmy McG he always says "we're going!" And, I believe he's right. Find out more about ParadoX, listen to their music and find event dates/times at. www.paradoxflashback.com Thanks,
Jeff E Reed
Guitarist VocalistFrom my earliest recollection I've always had a special love for music. I remember listening to The Beatles and just losing myself in every note and every lyric. Even before that, I had a book called Peter and the Wolf that had a record you'd play as you read it that followed the story along like a soundtrack. A lesson in music hidden in a beautiful children's story and I drank it up not knowing it was shaping my fresh mind into what I'd some day become. My fourth grade teacher who built a cardboard space capsule and had each of us get inside one at a time and listen to The Animals' Sky Pilot while we imagined flying through space. The beautiful country gospel music we all sang along to every Sunday morning basically my entire childhood. The endless flood of classic rock pouring from the dashboard speakers of my dad's Chevy Luv pickup. You could say I was destined to have some kind of musical future and here I am. My mother bought piano lessons for me and my teacher would come once a week to the house and show me a few things. I really liked it because she was beautiful. She had long blond hair, blue eyes and I got to sit there beside her at the piano for an hour. Made it hard to learn much but I learned a little. I learned about chord progression and melody. I learned how all the notes are in order and how mathematical music is. I liked everything I was learning but couldn't find a real passion for piano. I had an old electric guitar that was given to me by my uncle Rick. It sat in the closet collecting dust for a year or two till I was around 13 years old. For some reason I got fed up just dreaming about making music and decided to get serious about it. I picked up the guitar and began battling my way through the frustrations of learning and before to long I was putting chords together and making music. Unlike my lack of passion for piano, I quickly fell in love with my guitar. A love that exists to this day. Junior high school started out with some changes. First, the summer before my 7th grade year my parents bought a new house and we moved out in the country. We were in the same school district, just three or four miles out of town. There were two grade schools in our district but only one junior high so 7th grade came with a lot of new faces. The new neighborhood brought some new faces as well. The worst part about our new residents was the bus ride from school. It took every bit of an hour to get home and being a big guy, like I am, it was very uncomfortable. However, it played a big part in the advancement of our story because it gave me a chance to meet all of the other kids that lived out there. It also gave us all something in common. Our hatred for that damn hour bus ride. One day we were on the bus heading home from school and it was unusually quiet for whatever reason that day. Suddenly a kid stood up and asked very loudly so everyone could hear. " Anybody wanna be in an air band?" Nobody said anything for a few seconds so I raised my hand and said. " I do." "Well, come down to Prairie St. in about an hour and we'll meet up with you there" said the kid who by this time had introduced himself. His name was Kenny and later that day I met the whole gang. There was Kenny, Kenny's brother Drew, Jason and Lori. We all became friends as we competed in what they call today, a lip sync battle, but back then we called it an air band. Kenny was a little older than than Drew, Jason and myself so after the air band event was over he didn't hang with us as much. Drew and I didn't really have any common interests and Lori was, well she was sweet and we were friends but Jason and I became best friends having a shared love for music among other common interests. After the air band thing I started talking to Jason about maybe starting a real band. By this time I had a pretty good grasp on playing guitar and had already dabbled in writing songs. Jason soon after finagled his mom into buying him a snare drum and we started jamming together. It sounded like shit but we just kept plugging away at it. It wasn't to long after Jason decided he really wanted to play guitar after all, there's not much you can do with just a snare. He saved his money and bought a Washburn guitar/amp package from the local music store and we both started developing our skills as guitarists and writing songs. We started looking for a drummer and we heard that John Gertson was the only drummer in school who actually owned a drum kit so we recruited him and he brought Jeff Mattox who played bass. Just like that, we were a band and nothing else mattered. We practiced every weekend for hours driving our neighbors crazy and we sounded terrible. We sucked so bad but we just kept pounding and scratching our way through the shit till after a while a light began to appear at the end of the sonic tunnel of hell we'd tortured everyone who heard us with. Just like that, the light turned on and we got good, then, we got better and then we thought, I think we can do this, wait! we are doing this. We named the band ParadoX because it was the coolest sounding word I found after blindly opening a dictionary and randomly reading the first word I saw after opening my eyes. Not the best way to find a name for your band but I think it worked out nicely for us. The last show we played was at our own graduation party. After that we got together a few more times but we were working, getting married, buying cars, houses and life happened. We all went our own way and ParadoX faded away. I kept chasing my dream and started another band called Face in the Crowd. We toured off and on for a good fifteen years releasing three studio albums and having a blast doing what we loved but that band too faded away. By this time I had built my own studio and was writing and recording my own stuff, releasing four studio albums and hundreds of singles I was still chasing my dream but in a different way. I got a call one day from one of my other good friends Steve Curwick. He told me Jason was in the hospital and he might not be with us much longer. Jason was born with diabetes and needed two insulin shots every day of his life and the insulin was weakening his veins. The one thing keeping him alive was also slowly killing him. I went to visit him in the hospital and we had a good long talk. We remembered the good times and laughed and just reconnected in a special way. I shook his hand and said "see you later" when I left, but that was the last time. The funeral was sad and we will always miss Jason but he was in a lot of pain and if you believe like I do, he's in a much better place. We all have to play the hand that's delt us and I believe Jason made the best out of a bad situation. When he was alive, he really lived. About a year or so after Jason's passing John Gertson contacted me with a proposition. He wanted to dig up the old songs we wrote in ParadoX and release an album as a tribute to Jason and I thought it was a great idea. We started watching old home videos of ParadoX so we could remember all the old songs and slowly one by one we reconstructed note by note every one. A year later we had a pretty rockin album done and we called it Flashback. I had just released my album Reflection and was needing a drummer to help promote it with some live performances. The drummer I had in mind didn't work out so I asked John. We played a couple shows and people really took to us and we were having a blast so we just kept on rockin wherever they'd have us. We'd do songs off Reflection and Flashback but we'd also throw a cover or two in the mix. It was and is a lot of fun. Since then we've released another studio album, Come Hell or High Water and added a new member, Jimmy McG and as far as I can tell we're in this for the long haul. We've got our next album half done. Video shoots, models and photo sessions all in the works. Whenever I talk to Jimmy McG he always says "we're going!" And, I believe he's right. Find out more about ParadoX, listen to their music and find event dates/times at. www.paradoxflashback.com Thanks,
