John Collins Jackson a.k.a. Johnny Jackson Apparently, my mother, Dorothy, and father, JohnSr. had a pretty good time at Thanksgiving 1947, because I was born about nine months later on August 30th, 1948. I was the middle child of four boys and three girls raised mostly in the quaint little town of Hudson, Ohio. I did everything boys did in the black and white 50’s and the multi-colored 60’s. I was adventurous, independent, musical, athletic, theatrical, religious, artistic, academically lackadaisical and intrinsically in love with girls. After high school, 1966, one year of sports and books at Providence College, RI, gave way to creative vistas at The Philadelphia College of Art 1967-1973. There, I was a sponge; putting heart and soul into (imagine!) the opportunity to learn how to make art. Simultaneously, musical tendencies also began to emerge out of self-taught teenage dabblings on guitar. Roots deep with Elvis, Everly Brothers, Rogers and Hammerstein, folk singers, Youngbloods, Beatles, Airplanes and the Dead nourished musical obsessions. I began to write songs in 1968 and founded a group called Johnny’s Dance Band with several classmates at PCA in my sophomore year. We played around Philadelphia my junior year as a woodworking major but the allure of the muse was too great and I took leave of absence senior year to follow her calls. JDB disbanded a year later, 1970, and I finished my term at PCA in 1973. Like magic, the band reformed and quickly became a group of writers and performers as varied in song styles and unique in personalities as a three ring circus. I held down the country/folksy/sensitive side but was never out of character with the predominant rock and roll theatrical attitudes of the band either. Johnny’s Dance Band was always entertaining and youthful, eventually swelling from four to seven members and recording three albums on the RCA/Windsong label 1977-1981. We were a “Philly Phenomenon” through the 70’s but I chose to opt out of the band after the first album when the record company needed to narrow the focus. My follow-up band, Boomer, in 1979 was short lived for six months but portrayed itself admirably on the merits of my songs interpreted by some truly gifted musicians. Boomer was never signed, swallowed up by disco fever. (Our studio demos entitled “time delay” are featured on my current CD, Round Trip.) Dejected and worn out, I abruptly ended my musical pursuits and initiated the career in art I had put off earlier that decade. Furniture design commissions, sculpture exhibits and cabinetry jobs spilled out of Jackson Woodwork locations in Chalfont, Bucks County ‘til 1981, Cedarville, Chester County ‘til 1987, coming to rest here in West Reading, Berks County until its semi-retirement in 2007 and the resurgence of the new music. My woodworks and sculpture inhabit upscale private collections and everyday American homes. I have been a woodworking and ceramics instructor at Drexel University, Bucks County Community College and my alma mater, Philadelphia College of Art, now The University of the Arts. I have a BFA in Crafts/Woodworking, have been an exhibitor at American Craft Council shows: The Baltimore Winter Market, Rhinebeck Craft Fair, West Springfield and have shown at the Philadelphia Furniture show, Art Expo/NYC and the Wooden Boat Show, Newport, RI. I have been represented at galleries from Maine to Hawaii, most notably for my hand-carved wooden whales. Now, I manage our rental property in West Reading with offices for Jackson Woodworks, Jackson Music and Jackson Properties. I have produced two CD albums which are currently for sale: “Songs from Baseballtown” – in association with the Reading Phillies Baseball Club and “Round Trip”, a solo effort in 2008. I am halfway through recording my (ever growing) song catalog of 120 Jonitunes with plans to complete and make available in the near future. Lastly, if all goes well, I should complete the restoration of our unique house in Muhlenberg Park, Reading PA by late 2015, thus making my wife, Jan, a School Nurse for the Reading School District and Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, happy. We have three Children; Matt, Joe and Sarah, all happy and successful in their chosen careers. So far, this has been a life full to the brim, always looking forward to tomorrow...thanks to Dee and John.