PATRICK'S PEOPLE: John Chevere has music with meaning

John Chevere, who performs as JC, uses music to say things that were left unsaid, to work through the sorrows of life.

A collection of those songs are in “From Tragedy to Triumph,” his first CD, which has been released by the Tate Music Group.

“I grew up in the little town of Mangum, Okla.,” he said during at telephone interview. “There were 32 students in my high school class.”

Chevere said his love of music started at the age of 3 when he began playing drums at church, but was soon pushed aside by other issues. When he was 6 his father went to prison, and his mother was faced with raising five children by herself. Chevere moved in with his grandparents.

“I was the oldest boy, so I helped raise everybody,” he said.

Sports took up much of his time, and he was a member of the Mangum High School 1998 state runner-up football team, playing tight end and defensive end.

“After high school I was offered a football scholarship to the University of Kansas, but I gave it up to go into the U.S. Marines,” Chevere said. “There was no music included anywhere at that time.”

He served in the Marines from 1999 to 2003, then moved to the Columbus area after leaving the military.

“My brother was doing drilling for fiberoptic lines and I kind of fell in line with that,” Chevere said.

In 2004 he moved to Joplin and eventually became a regional sales manager for Verizon.

“In 2005 I met a friend and I booked events for him,” Chevere said. “One day we were recording and he had a couple of guys with him. One of the back-up vocalists didn’t show up, so I sang, and that’s how I got into it. I did choruses for them and started learning how to record, mix music and compile our beats.”

He began posting some of his songs on the Internet. Tate Music of Mustang, Okla., came across his songs and offered him a contract. Undecided at first, Chevere signed the contract in November 2010.

Some of his songs were written in response to personal tragedies. In 2008 his beloved grandfather died of cancer. In 2010 a horrible car accident at Fourth and Range Line took his unborn son, who would have been named Lincoln, and the child’s mother.

“My son was 27 days away from being born,” Chevere said. “Doctors tried to save him, but he had already passed on. The car that hit them was driven by teenagers high on hydrocodone.”

He put together his first CD, “From Triumph to Tragedy,” which he dedicated to his lost son.

More tragedy came on May 22, 2011, when a killer tornado hit Joplin. This time the victims were family members of Chevere’s friend, musician Moses Caton.

“He was at my house when the tornado came and I would not let him leave,” Chevere said. “Afterward, we drove and had to park four blocks away.”

When they finally reached the site were the Caton home had been, they found that it was gone, and that Caton’s oldest daughter, Shante Marie Caton, 10, was dead.

“His son was a few yards from there, but alive,” Chevere said. “I stayed with Shante until the coroner got there.”