Hard Road to Redemption

By Jeffrey W. Hanna

Johnny X and his band, XFactor were stars. Well, at least for the moment. ­They had a hit in the late 70’s and since that time, Johnny followed the road of many one-hit wonders, eventually languishing in relative obscurity. Now, close to the bottom, Johnny chooses to finish the ride, ends up getting arrested, tossed from his apartment,

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Jul 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643675831

Jeffrey W. Hanna

Jeff Hanna has led an unpredictable, eclectic life. After a stint in the military he chose to really experience life. That led him to careers as an undercover narcotics detective, ordained pastor, homeless shelter manager, and risk manager for a church insurance company. He and his wife, Nancy, founded a faith-based nonprofit organization called Fish factory, here they provided safe space for the homeless, addicted, broken, lost, confused and lonely, loving and serving anyone in need. Jeff has published two books, Safe and Secure: The Alban Guide to Protecting Your Congregation (1999), and Emmanuel, the Christmas Lamb (2016). He is currently working on a trilogy of faith-based fables. He currently lived near Des Moines, Iowa and also serves as an interim pastor of a small church. In his spare time he writes and produces a humorous Christian variety show called, First Church Potluck Theater and Green Bean Casserole Band.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

I finished my last set at the Knoxville Bowlerama on June 14, 2017 to a small smattering of obligatory applause which quickly trickled into silence. As I looked into the faces of the thirty or so people caught up in private, often loud conversations, I realized not a damn soul had been listening to my music. I wondered if such crowds, now common for me, clapped mostly because the songs that challenged their conversations were finally over. As often was the case, my mind flashed with pictures from twenty plus years ago when times were so much different— better, more fulfilling and sure as hell more fun.

Can I freshen that up for you? Suzy or Sarah or whatever her name might have been, was one of two Bowlerama lounge waitresses. She was pointing to my glass that was sitting on the small amp. Yea, sure. Thanks. At least someone was paying attention, I said with an attempted smile. As I stood up and put my guitar in the case, I let out an obvious disgusting sigh and ran my fingers through my long, thinning and mostly grey hair wondering how it was possible that my career had sunk to such a pitiful level.

I glanced around the lounge with its velvety 70’s floral wallpaper; beer-matted and worn carpet; dim lights; and dark wood and once again hummed the chorus in my head. That song, Boo Yah Baby, was a tune that had catapulted my career to heights. I could have only imagined back in the late 80’s when our band, X Factor, began playing the local bars around Des Moines. It was then that I dropped the name Leslie and took on the stage name Johnny X. After all, who wants to call their favorite rock idol Leslie, freakin, Exline?

XFactor, like many bands before us, was a group of my high school friends who loved music. We weren’t overly talented yet had grand illusions we could make a living doing what we loved. The perks of free beer and babes were also attractive to four teenagers. And like many of those other wannabe bands, we started practicing in my friend Benny’s basement. We managed to work our way up to a few parties, and then several school dances. We thought we’d arrived when we got to do a set on the Knox county fair’s amateur stage. We were still too young for beer and the only babes around were related to the guys in the band.

Since we had barely graduated high school, none of us had any remote aspirations for college. After all, we were going to be stars or at least we thought so. Unlike most other bands we knew, over the next few years XFactor’s popularity started gaining traction. I’m not sure if it was because of our unique, soul/funk sound, amazing guitar riffs, or the probing vocals we sang for such a young band. We began putting together a nice following even by Des Moines music standards. Surprisingly within a year or two after graduation, we were somewhat in demand and were even getting to choose where we played in the central Iowa area. XFactor played some larger venues and opened for a few touring bands that rolled through town. Life was good.

We were still doing gigs out of ’72 Ford van we dubbed Mother, for a reason no one can remember. We still set up and tore down our own equipment, unless Jimmy, Benny’s younger brother tagged along. If so, he was the roadie who derived great pleasure telling people, I’m with the band. He later became XFactor’s official sound man. No one was getting rich, but we were more than covering expenses and were living a dream. A few of us worked odd jobs to make a real living. I did janitorial work at a Laundromat. But make no mistake, XFactor came first.

But even now, those fading memories were always the same. They produced snapshots of days gone by. With each passing year, the pictures in my mind continued to fade. And now here I was— older, fatter, and much more cynical— playing in a hole-in-the-wall, small county seat bowling alley lounge. To be honest, I wasn’t sure about what bothered me the most: that no one gave a rip about Johnny X’s music or the occasional interruption from out in the bowling alley that some no-name just rolled a 300 game. Maybe it was because I knew I was only making a hundred dollars and getting free refills on drinks or that I was at least 10 years overdue from calling it quits.

Here’s your refill, interrupted the waitress I am now pretty sure was called Suzy. She handed me the cheap whiskey on the rocks. Unlike the times before, she looked as if she wanted to say more. After an awkward pause, she spoke up and asked quietly, Hey, you want go out back and smoke a joint? It’s my break time. I stopped for a moment to consider the situation before me. Here’s a not overly attractive girl and at least twenty years my junior asking this old, has-been musician if he wanted to step outside and get high. Did she have other motives? Might I get lucky? Or maybe she pitied me as much as I pitied myself. Hell, it could be she just needed someone to keep an eye out for her in case her boss or the cops happened to come by.

Thanks, but no. I gotta run. I lied. I really had nowhere to go. I just wanted to collect my money and head back to my apartment. I was in no mood to find the answer to why Suzy really wanted me to step outside with her. Is Mike still here? I asked. Mike was the lounge manager. Nope, he had to, uh, run out for something, she responded. But he wanted me to tell you he no longer needed you to play here. He wants to try something new for music. Sorry, have a great night. And with that she bolted like some pit bull was chasing her.

I stood there stunned, although it wasn’t the first time I’d heard the phrase. It had been delivered to me in different ways, but basically it boiled down to, You suck. Your music is stale. See ya later. Now pissed, I grabbed my guitar case, headed for the door. As I passed the manager’s office, I yelled to the closed door, You suck more Mike!, not knowing if Mike was really there or not.

Luckily, I didn’t live too far from the bowling alley and began the mile or so walk home. People who are at the bottom only have those things they really can’t live without. I’d sold my car a few months back to pay some bills. So I had to walk most places or ask someone for a ride. That night I was walking. It was warm, quiet and clear. The stroll gave me time to cool down and reflect on yet another rejection. As had been the case countless other times, I found that when you are hanging on the lower end of the proverbial ladder, it’s a great time to ponder on several key facts of life. Most notably, How the hell did I get here? Followed by, What am I going to do next? My standard answer to the latter came with two options. I could either start climbing back up or let go. That second option had drawn closer than I’d like to admit. Tonight, instead of climbing or letting go, I decided to just hold on.

As I walked and held on to that last rung of the ladder, and for some reason unlike the countless other times I found myself there, thoughts of my whole life came flooding back into my mind. Oddly enough, the first thought that came to my head was wondering, for the first time since I was a child, why I had been named Leslie. In what universe is it OK to name your son Leslie?

I remember at an age of maybe five or six asking that very question. My mom simply said she liked that name. Not satisfied, I pulled my dad aside for a little son-to-father chat, asking the same question. It was then I learned that my mother’s favorite program at the time was called the Bold Ones and one of her favorite characters was none other than Leslie Nielsen who played a cop on the show. Dad confessed to me that day that he regretted allowing such chicanery to happen and even apologized to me. And, that was my introduction to my namesake. On the bright side, as I witnessed through my later years, Leslie Nielsen had gone on to star in such less than epic movies as Airplane, Police Squad, and Naked Gun. As you can imagine, being named Leslie Exline brought on the wrath of my classmates for many years to come. Not only did I take crap for my first name, but Exline bore a resemblance to that chocolaty laxative. Combined, you can imagine the wide variety of names I endured.

As I continued my trek home with guitar case and unemployment in hand, I thought about where my love for music started. I’m sure it came from my dad. He was an early rocker in the mid 60’s. While he cut his teeth on the likes of the Beatles, Stones, and Hendrix, I remember the soulful sounds of Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, and even Wilson Pickett playing on the console stereo in our living room. He loved it all and so did I. Henry Exline had fleeting aspirations of getting a band together and at least play out from time to time. However, having knocked up my mom when he was 18 (she was 17), he was forced to take a job at the foundry in town. A short time later, bouncing Leslie John Exline joined the human race.

My mother, Jean, on the other hand was not as fond of music as Henry. Come to think of it, I can’t think of anything short of soap operas that my mother did enjoy. She was not a great cook, didn’t seem to have many friends, and apparently had a hobby of seeing how many buttons of Henry’s she could push at one time. She complained constantly— of Henry, his job, the house, the car we drove, where we lived, and even their little bundle of joy, Leslie. She used me, for as long as I could remember, as a kind of chess piece to be played when she was in her button-pushing moods. The conversations often started with, If you hadn’t gotten me knocked up… Let me just be the first to say, being the object of an unplanned pregnancy and then a chess piece for arguing has a way of wearing on a kid. Needless to say, my mother and I were never close. When I started leaning into Henry’s appreciation for music, Jean simply referred to it as, that hideous crap I was trying to play. I was never sure if she really hated it, or just used it as another handy arrow from her quiver to shoot at my dad.

As those early memories flooded into my mind, a few had found their way to my heart and then to my tear ducts. I stopped walking, sat on the bench in front of Ruble’s pharmacy, and allowed myself a good cry as I thought of my dad. He had been dead now for eight years. I am not sure if it was the factory work, his smoking, or the constant drone of a nagging wife that finally did him in. At the age of 57, he died much too young. I would have given anything for him to be right there on the bench next to me so I could have one more conversation with him. I would ask him whether I should climb, hang on, or let go of the ladder. As always, he would have had the right answer. I sure missed him.

Having sufficiently disposed of enough tears from storage, I got up and began walking again. This time I started thinking about how fast XFactor had reached and then exceeded our dreams. It seems now, 25 years later, that it was in the blink of an eye. In reality, it was a matter of years, still amazingly fast for a quartet of four buddies to go from Benny’s basement to a number one hit. We went from traveling in Mother, that ’72 Ford van, to a small Winnebago, to a tour bus, and even an occasional private jet, supplied by Leo Wolfe, our manager, and our label. We also graduated from Jimmy as our roadie to a full-fledged road crew. In those peak years, basically, all we did was show up for a sound check; head back to our hotel rooms; chill for a while; drink some; get dressed; pile back on the bus; and arrive at the venue. We played our sets, rolled out of the place, and repeated this day after day. We went from payouts of three figures, as in hundreds, to nearly five figures a night. To think, we went from obscurity to rock stars in just four years seems almost embarrassing knowing how many bands worked their asses off for a decade or more and never came close to the fame XFactor had.

I’d like to think it was a lot of hard work, great musicians, huge talent, and my stunning vocals that got us there, but really, it was luck and timing. I’ll never forget the day I began tinkering with a new song. We were in our motorhome, somewhere between Kansas City and St. Louis I believe, still playing mostly regional gigs. I was in the back sleeping area by myself just messing with some new chord progressions. The tune came first. It was a new, funky little number, somewhat outside of our traditional style. On most of the songs we played, I usually came up with either the vocals or the tune, roughed it in, bounced it off the guys who then cleaned it up and turned it into a song. But this song was different. I caught the tune almost immediately. It came off as almost a jingle for a commercial. The chorus for the song came almost as quickly. I was having fun. I roughed in the verses and within an hour or so I had it all down on paper. I sat back and wondered, Where did that come from? I titled my new little ditty, Boo Yah Baby.

I remember waiting nearly a week to share it with the rest of the band. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. It was kind of corny and not our style. I was pretty sure they’d just laugh and