You know how sometimes you hear a song and it’s as if that song has lived inside you your whole life but only now do you realize it? Love at first listen. Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car was like that for me, and so was the first Jon Dee Graham song I ever heard, Something Wonderful Is Going to Happen. His voice came roaring out of the speakers in my little Mazda-3 and that was it, I was a lifer.
From that moment on I tracked down every Jon Dee song I could find and listened to them obsessively. That giant voice, that guitar, the everything he put into his music that everyone who ever heard him felt. I bought his CDs, because back then I still had a CD player, and a few years ago I bought a record player so I could buy his albums.
Jon Dee was a lifelong Texan. He lived in Austin but he used to tour every year, and one of the cities he came to regularly was Minneapolis, where I live. Many years ago I saw he would be in town, but only for a private house party. I messaged him –the first time I ever reached out–to ask if he would be playing anywhere else in town. Let me check on something, he wrote in response. Later that day he told me the people hosting the party were fine with having me show up. So down to a suburb I drove, into a house full of people I didn’t know, and I sat on a folding chair in the front row of their living room.
There he was, my music idol. Every song he played, I knew, and I tried not to sing along but it was hard not to. After the set he went outside to smoke and I followed him and introduced myself. Alison! he said, and gave me a hug.
That summer evening, which hangs in my memory, was long ago. I keep trying to remember the details of how we became such good friends but they’re fuzzy. Maybe because everything is a little fuzzy since last Friday, when I first heard of his death. I’m so sorry, my friend Al messaged me, and instantly I knew Jon Dee was gone. It’s hard to write those words. Hard to remember, each day since, that he’s not in this world anymore. Hard to think of how my phone won’t light up with another text from him, some little message that no matter what the topic will make me smile, if only because it came from Jon Dee.
After that first house concert I went to see him play if I were anywhere near. Once, when I was in Austin on a book tour during SXSW, I Ubered to a restaurant/bar where he was playing, sat at a table in the dark and ordered a drink. At some point he called out to the audience, wanting to know the farthest anyone had come. I called out “Minneapolis!” and he shaded his eyes and peered out into the dark room and said in a wondering voice, “Alison? That’s not you, is it?” It was.
Years later, he asked me to help him with a picture book he was writing and illustrating –he was also an artist–and we worked together for a long time. Me teaching him what I know about picture books, him instantly absorbing it all.
You’re pan-artistic, JD, I texted him at one point. I mean damn. Songs. Artwork. Writing. Storytelling. What’s next? Ballet?
Hmm, he texted back. Not LIKELY. But not UNLIKELY either! I’m tryin not to rule anything out.
Another time, in Minneapolis, he had a show in one of my favorite tiny venues, The Listening Room. He came out on stage with his guitar, sat down, tuned up, then looked out at the audience. He saw me near the front, and without a word, came down into the audience and gave me a huge, silent hug. Writing that makes me choke up. I don’t even know why. Maybe because Jon Dee saw something in me, something kindred?
Whatever it was he saw in me, he saw in everyone. He had an uncanny ability to see people, to divine their heart and soul, and an equally uncanny ability to somehow, no matter the circumstance, comfort others. In the pandemic he went online each week to read picture books to his followers, calling himself Tio Pantalones and greeting everyone he saw sign on.
Jon Dee was a big man with a big voice and a big smile and an enormous, tender heart that he ripped out of his chest over and over and over, in every song he wrote and every story he told. His talismanic creation was The Bear, a gruff, tender bear portrayed in so many of his paintings, and the subject of the beautiful children’s book he wrote and illustrated. He identified with the Bear, he told me once, but he didn’t go into detail.
Some losses hit harder than others. The night Al messaged me, I wandered around my house, crying. But there was no one to cry with, because none of my friends but Al knew Jon Dee. I spooled up all my favorite JDG songs and listened to them on repeat. Went to bed and woke up and remembered that he was gone and my heart broke again, the way it does, morning after morning, in the wake of someone you loved so much.
I didn’t want to grieve alone but what could I do? Go online. I opened up my laptop. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a spontaneous outpouring of grief, so many people just like me, filled with sorrow for our lost legend. It is somehow a comfort to see this, and to know that so many others are sending their love to Jon Dee’s wife and sons, who were so beloved to him that his voice usually dropped to a whisper when he talked to me about them.
Why did he have to die when the monsters just keep, on, living? Why Jon Dee, when every day they double down on cruelty and greed and he just made the world better for everyone? I wailed to the Painter. Dumb question, without an answer, but still, why?
Little things around my house are all Jon Dee: a mug I bought at one of his shows, some artwork he sent me, his albums. Jon Dee did not believe in encores –he always said they were kind of doofy, like okay, we’ll all walk off stage and wait a minute, and then we’ll all walk back on and play another song–so he always played a full set and more, giving us his whole heart every time.
And then poof, he was gone.
My favorite song of his is Faithless.
The story of your life
Written page by page
Careful what you write
You gotta read it all someday
You need a strong heart
You need a true heart
You need a heart like that
In a world like this
Alison McGhee 