[exciting rock music] ♪ It's deep ♪ ♪ Deeper ♪ I'm just excited to be playing again.

And the players that I've been playing with, we're all working together to create a collaborative group.

I'm Jeremy Wilson.

I'm a singer/songwriter from Portland, Oregon.

Lead singer, rock and roller.

[upbeat rock music] [upbeat rock music] My career really started back in the late '80s with my band, the Dharma Bums.

["The Light In You" by Dharma Bums] Three singers in one band.

was kind of the magic soup that became the Dharma Bums.

[exciting rock music] I think the first song ever wrote was literally called "Rebel Truce".

♪ There was a few kids, yeah ♪ ♪ Who wanted to be a little different ♪ You know?

From second one, it was about identifying as being different, and I have my own way of starting to process and create a song.

I usually start by strumming, and then writing, and then drawing a little bit to bring up the stew.

♪ Be with heavy hearts ♪ ♪ Drifting through ♪ It's it's my private world.

And it's a really important part of how I create.

[gentle guitar strumming] I was born on 8/8/1968 in Detroit, Michigan.

So I spent the first five years of my life in Inner City, Detroit.

Some of my earliest memory are actually bouncing around the house to the show, "Soul Train".

And then, of course, the other music that was around was the folk music and the protest music at the time.

[gentle guitar strumming] And there was a real sense of like, "Let's go West."

And in August of 1976, I celebrated my 8th birthday the month that we moved in Scotts Mills, Oregon.

My progressive, hippie, wonderful, well-educated mother, she discovers that there's a ballet studio in Silverton, Oregon, and I became the only boy to take lessons at this ballet studio, and started six or eight years of ballet training.

I absolutely loved it.

And then eventually was accepted to the Royal Academy of Dancing in London.

But that wasn't meant to be.

This is the middle '70s in a very rural area, where literally in the whole state of Oregon there were maybe two other boy ballet dancers.

This was a pretty intense way to start off my relationship with the other boys in Scotts Mills and Silverton area.

It wasn't just people calling me names, which was an every moment experience.

The abuse that began in second grade from pretty much the full spectrum age range of the male population of the area was pretty severe.

That's the real story, is that my dancing had been beaten out of me.

Even by the time I started making music professionally and was in my mid 20s and on major labels, I was still looking for ways to process what happened.

♪ I had a dream that I was floating ♪ It made me at a very, very young age age go inward and create a magical world which became my songs and my stories, and even my band's.

["The Light In You" by Dharma Bums] After the success of the Dharma Bums' first album, "Haywire", we wanted to honor this place that we were from.

We wanted to honor the Silverton area, and so we actually chose the Waldo Hills Community Club as a place to record the album.

[upbeat guitar] And we camped there for one whole month while we recorded the record "Bliss".

["Higher" by Dharma Bums] We literally had to schedule the recording session between two square dances.

The night after the first square dance, we'd hang microphones from the ceiling, we put the base rig down in the wood cutting room, and we record basically a live record in this, let's call it a grange hall.

["Higher" by Dharma Bums] The album "Bliss" was just received in Europe as like, "This is different music.

This is American music."

And we had an absolute glorious European tour in 1991.

["Far From Gone" by Dharma Bums] After our third album, "Welcome", a grueling tour, it just, it crushed us.

["Far From Gone" by Dharma Bums] It was a heartbreaking experience.

Five years into the band, it's probably, what?

1993 when the band broke up.

I then personally signed a publishing deal with Sony and I signed to Electra Records, and I formed a group called Pilot.

♪ Purify ♪ The first single comes out, and Time Warner Brothers buys Ted Turner Entertainment and fires 30,000 people.

And the month the record's supposed to come out, after two years, the record gets put in a vault and we did our last tour, and very amicably we broke up.

I was just exhausted and I was crushed, and I just wanted to come home.

[gentle guitar strumming] My idea was build a studio.

And within a couple years, I had that studio built.

♪ I want to recreate the man ♪ And I started bringing in projects.

[gentle guitar strumming] ♪ I wake every morning for the break of day ♪ ♪ And drive on as the dark begins to fade ♪ I decided that I did not want to pursue record labels and stuff.

What I wanted to do was be independent.

And lo and behold, what happens to me?

I end up passing out, waking up in an ambulance.

Turns out I have a congenital heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson.

And when the community heard that I was uninsured, I had just come out of a heart surgery, I was potentially gonna lose my business, outta nowhere, all these people came to my rescue.

They threw a show at the Doug Fir.

And when I got to the show, I stood in this one spot.

And then for the next four hours a line of people stood there, and every one of them came and gave me a hug and told me I was valued.

Those hugs absolutely changed the course of my life.

Omicron is so much more contagious, and we are seeing a spike in need.

I realized that in no way was my experience unique.

And that was the formation of the Jeremy Wilson Foundation, that desire to try to be a safety net for musicians.

The JWF Musician Health and Services Program offers help in two major ways.

One in navigational services from a social worker to help musicians navigate the whole health world, right?

Huge part of our program.

And then the second part is financial grants to help with living assistance and/or healthcare bills and stuff during a medical emergency or crisis or recovery.

In this last year and a half, we've helped several hundred people!

I can't stress enough how honored I feel when I get to talk to or work with somebody that's going through something.

It's profound.

It's greater than any rock and roll success could ever be.

Hey, man!

Hi, Jeremy!

[Jeremy chuckling] How are you?

Good!

I'm having the time of my life already, so this is really fun.

Oh, that's awesome, man.

[gentle music] Then when you're done with your move, spins you in hatchet, right?

And then spin you into hatchet.

I was invited to choreograph a dance for BodyVox, and I put my own music to it, and they told this story through dance.

[gentle music] There was a body memory for my own body!

These things I trained so hard to do are still in me!

It flipped the story.

It turned the story back into joy from the pain that was always associated with my ballet training and stuff.

And I really found myself able to say, "Yes, I was a dancer.

I am a dancer."

[gentle music] [audience applauding] I think finally taking care of myself on a health level is really opening up the door to the future and really helping me feel grounded now.

Success in music at this point is about the enjoyment of making the music, about the freedom and the creativity.

Hey, I just wanna say thank you for coming out tonight.

I kind of stacked the deck tonight with all the people that I really, really love and who I know without a doubt love me.

[crowd cheering] And I feel like I'm in a place where I can really clearly put certain things aside and actually go meditate in my studio and make records.

[gentle guitar strumming] ♪ To find a moment ♪ ♪ Invent a new day ♪ ♪ And own my own story ♪ ♪ Fear no change ♪ ♪ Fear no change ♪ ♪ Fear no change ♪