Jon Weems’s Joyful Noise

“The main theme of my music is believing that you can achieve anything you want,” says Jon Weems, a United Spinal member from Roanoke, Virginia. Lyrics from his song “Shake the World” illustrate this theme.

I want to shake the world
And I have no plan to stop
I’m gonna leave the past behind me now
I’m shootin’ for the top.

With his album, Ordinary Man, Weems hopes to do just that.

“A lot of people think that I named it that because of my disability, but it has nothing to do with that,” Weems says.

Early Love

“I had a great childhood,” Weems remembers. In his early years, he discovered a love of music. “My sister took piano lessons, and she got me interested in music when I was very young. I started getting up on the piano bench and emulating her. When I was 3-years-old, I started tapping out tunes on the piano. My parents were surprised at how well I could do simple tunes.”

At the age of five, Jon was enrolled in piano lessons, which he took for five years. He played a variety of instruments in school bands, including the trumpet, snare drum, and baritone sax.

The youngest of three children, Weems also developed a taste for adventure. “I always did crazy things, jumping bikes and climbing trees. I was always getting involved in accidents.”

“I didn’t graduate from college. I attended Virginia Western Community College when I graduated from high school in 1985, and dropped out.” Then, he found work in local restaurants. “I started managing at Domino’s Pizza and trained to be a manager at Western Sizzler,” he explains. “I went back to college to study computer programming at what was called Virginia College at the time, when I had my accident.”

A Life Changed

In July 1992, at the age of 24, Weems’s thirst for adventure changed his life. “I remember every detail of my accident, because I didn’t hit my head. I was diving through an inner tube in a backyard pool. The last time I went through it, I caught my head on the front of it, and I think it snapped my neck back, and I broke the C-6 vertebrae. I can remember being underwater, upside down, looking up. It was after dark, and I remember seeing the spotlights on the water. All I could think was, ‘I can’t stand up.’ I didn’t realize what was happening to me at the time. I was trying to move my feet and legs, and just couldn’t do it.”

An ambulance was called, and he was taken to Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where he underwent a thorough evaluation. Afterward, he was taken by helicopter to the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, where he went through eight weeks of rehabilitation.

“From there, I went straight to Blue Ridge Rehabilitation, which was the UVA Medical Center’s rehab division. I used to be a night owl, but, in rehab, I had to be in bed earlier than I was used to. I would just lay there with my headphones on, with a box of tapes next to me. I would imagine playing the parts of my favorite songs I used to know. I realized that I still knew them, I just couldn’t physically play them anymore.”

After over three months there, Weems spent Christmas at home, then he went to the Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center in Fishersville. “It was a lot of physical work, having to learn to dress myself, and trying to be as independent as I could,” he recalls. “At the time, everything seemed kind of bleak. One of the first things I said to my sister after my accident was, ‘If something this bad can happen, then I know something equally as good can happen.’”

Weems’s injury left him with limited use of his arms, but deprived him of the use of his hands and fingers. This presents some challenges. “I need some help with dressing, getting in and out of bed and showering. I try to do as much of it as I can on my own,” he explains. He can drive (using a special device to move the steering wheel and levers that function as gas and brake pedals), brush his teeth, and comb and dry his hair independently. “Once I’m in my chair, I’m pretty much independent. I try not to focus on the things I can’t do, and work with everything that I can. I still live with my parents. Everybody gets along really well. They don’t treat me any differently than they did before.”

Music Man

Despite his limitations, Weems was determined to make music again. “I was talking to my friend, who I had worked with before in music, about getting another keyboard that I could use. Before my accident, my friend purchased some recording equipment, synthesizers and computers, and we started writing songs together. Through that process, I learned how to use sequencers and computers in writing music. After the accident, I still had all these ideas for tunes going through my head.”

Wondering how to get them down, Weems remembered the simplicity of being able to add one note on top of another to build more complex arrangements. He figured if he could tap out a one-note melody, he could create a whole song.

Weems found an instrument that met his needs when he returned to Roanoke in 1993, an Ensoniq EPS 16 Plus synthesizer.

“I miss picking up a guitar and playing it, but I use the keyboard to make the guitar, drum, and bass sounds now,” he explains. “After rehab, I let the keyboard sit for awhile. I didn’t go right to it.” Eventually, Weems composed the synthesizer, drum, bass and lower guitar parts of a song. “It gave me a thrill to be able to hear that I had created something from nothing,” he says.

“To operate the keyboard, I use a typing stick, balanced between my thumb and index finger. It goes from the top of my hand to the bottom. My index finger goes into a little hole, and the stick is kind of an extension of my index finger. I use one on each hand, and I set the keyboard for the time signature and instrument I want.”

By slowing the song’s tempo with a sequencer, Weems can tap out melodies for whichever instrument he’s using. Through a process called “quantizing,” a computer arranges the notes and puts them on beat. When the tempo is sped up again, it plays what Weems has written, which he calls “standard rock with a classical feel.”

“The recording process took a long time, because I did it all myself. I created all the parts on my keyboard, and had to record those to my computer and sing the vocals.” An Internet company called Peacework Music helped Weems design the album’s cover. The CD is available for purchase on-line from www.peaceworkmusic.net

“I get lots of e-mails from people who love it; that motivates me. I’d love to have a deal with a major record label, and to meet up with some musicians to play my music with. I want to get my music out to as many people as I can.”

He does this, in part, by singing a spiritually themed song of his, “You Keep Calling Me,” in church.

“My faith has helped me a lot. I pray every day,” he says. “You have to have hope to want to face tomorrow.”

Through his music and his compassionate spirit, Jon Weems gives that hope to others. This quality makes him an extraordinary man.

Lori A. Wood is a frequent contributor to Orbit.