


- Secondhand serenade your call acoustic version full#
- Secondhand serenade your call acoustic version professional#
Vesely began writing his own songs when he met his wife Candice Vesely. Vesely was also the son of a Czech immigrant. Vesely follows in the tradition of John Ondrasik's Five for Fighting. After years of playing bass, he opted for an acoustic guitar. One of the bands he played in, Sounds Like Life, included fellow Bay Area artist Ronnie Day. He spent 8 years playing bass in local bands, featuring in a number of acts ranging in style from ska and hardcore to rock and pop.
Secondhand serenade your call acoustic version professional#
Vesely was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area in a musical family and as the son of a professional jazz musician father, commenting that "getting into music was a natural thing" for him.

if you have a good product… chances are you’ll get further.Early history, first release (2004-2006)John Vesely formed Secondhand Serenade in his home town of Menlo Park in California, USA, in 2004. “Digital distribution is as easy as paying a fee and sending it in. “Whether a label picks you up or not, you can support through music,” says Vesely.
Secondhand serenade your call acoustic version full#
Secondhand Serenade’s nascent fan base has more to look forward to this year, when the artist releases a new album with a full band and production by Butch Walker and Danny Lohner, who have worked with the likes of Avril Lavigne and Nine Inch Nails, respectively. In between club dates all over the West Coast, he’s scheduled to play at next month’s South By Southwest music festival and at New Jersey’s Bamboozle festival in May. Via MySpace, “I’m constantly reaching out to new people that are hearing my music for the first time every day,” Vesely says. Vesely was recently featured on MTV’s “You Hear It First,” and the online love keeps coming, with spots on AOL Music’s “Breakers” and next month on Yahoo! Music’s “Who’s Next?”. 6 with two additional songs, it debuted on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart at No. After the album was released on Glassnote/ILG on Feb.

In total, Secondhand Serenade has sold about 73,000 digital tracks and more than 10,000 copies of his album “Awake,” according to Nielsen SoundScan. The strength of his online sales and plays caught the attention of longtime label exec Daniel Glass, who signed Vesely to his new Glassnote Records, which is distributed through the Warner Independent Label Group. His digital push came after signing up with distributor TuneCore, which made his songs available on iTunes and other music portals. Those receipts turned into real money when Vesely recorded his demo and started playing local shows, promoting them on his MySpace page and selling his CDs through mail order with a PayPal account. “I did a lot of writing on receipt paper.” “I wrote a lot of my songs at Neiman Marcus, and some of them at Bloomingdale’s,” Vesely tells. Meanwhile, when business was slow at his retail jobs, he would write music. Vesely and his bandmate would send out a MySpace bulletin and play “organized street performances” in downtown Palo Alto, Calif. He picked up the guitar after meeting his wife, who wanted him “to serenade her.” Instead, Vesely gravitated to the San Francisco bay area punk and ska scene, playing bass in several bands before forming an acoustic duo. His father, a Czech jazz musician who played gigs from Cuba to Siberia, encouraged his son to play saxophone and piano. Vesely, 25, records acoustic emo under the name Secondhand Serenade. But by getting his music online, John Vesely was able to marshal enough buzz to do just that - and show up on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart with his first release, “Awake.” Ten years ago, a department store employee with time on his hands wouldn’t have had much hope of quitting his day job to become a rock star.
