May 21, 2025 • 37 mins
Welcome to Unbreakable! A mental wealth podcast hosted by Fox NFL Insider Jay Glazer. On today’s episode, Jay welcomes in Marine Corps Iraq Veteran, fire fighter, and recording artist John Preston. John shares his incredible 20-year journey through military service, firefighting, and music. Using his platform to serve others, Preston recently did a 704-mile hike to raise awareness about suicide prevention – motivated by the tragic loss of his brother. His story is truly unlike any other!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glacier, a mental wealth podcast
build you from the inside out.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Now Here's Jay Glacier.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome int Unbreakable mental Wealth Podcast with Jay Glazer.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
I'm Jay Glazer and really pumped for my guest today.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
You guys know who I do a lot of work
with combat vets, and he is a combat vet.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
But you guys also know that I've.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Done a lot of work recently with our first responders
out here in Malibu.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
He's also a first responder. He's a fireman. You also
know I've had a lot of musicians on here. He's
also a musician. So, yeah, what have you done on Tuesday?
This is what this guy does. He is a musician.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Who who's out a couple of hits, but also he
puts a lot of his experiences into his songs. I'm
really excited that I got the chance to meet him
and have him come on and tell his story.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
My dude, John Preston, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Man? Hey, let's up, and let's not forget poking at
it and screenwriter, filmmaker, but the most important dad that's
been Yeah, those are number one, But yeah, man, it's
been a it's been a wild ride and we're just
we're still riding.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
You know that's cool, man.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I love like you're right is wild And you know,
we have a vitual friend, Greg who's kind of you know,
introduced me to you, and he's like, man, you gotta
tell this guy's story. And he's like, you know, I
need to do a lot of work with vets, and
I can do Ben and the first Responders I do.
And then well he's a musician. I'm like, what is
He's like all three of them put in one and
they all play into each other.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
So I want you to tell everybody kind of your story.
I'm going to give you the floor here and start
where you want.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah. So, I mean I come from from very humble beginnings. Say,
I am a Northern Kentucky veteran, lived my life there
for the first twenty years of life or eighteen years
of life. Families from Cincinnati grew up there on that
cusp of basically living on a farm without full farm life.
(01:51):
We rented out a tobacco farm to the neighbors. They
came over and farmed. We farmed with them. Just a
different world than what I've been now here in California,
living and chasing the dream. Yee, I'm rocking a Bengals hat.
But there's a reason for that. First of all, my
bad Miles Garrett for rocking a Bengals hat with a
municipal shirt. But I mean this will have been back
to me for a long time.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
So Producer Ballers man, that's my guy.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, Yeah, that's a bad dude right there. So yeah,
I grew up with the dad that was a Vietnam veteran.
Both my brothers were Marines. I kind of had no choice.
I remember, dude, I was not on any good path.
I was hanging with the wrong people, doing the wrong things,
getting in a lot of trouble. My brother Michael at
the time, was a cop in my hometown, so he
(02:38):
kind of kept me safe. I really did have this
this blanket of safety as I made major mistakes and
he stopped me from making them. But I kind of
knew I was going to be a marine, so I
think looking at it, I kind of had no shit
given on what was going to happen to me at
that point in life. I was fearless because I knew
at some point I'd be walking across the grinder at
Paras Island. You know. So my whole family was Marines.
(03:01):
My father was a Purple Heart recipient. But I was
I was different. I knew I was different, and I
kind of had always been that way, and I think
I know where it comes from. But I had art
and me I had something that nobody else had. I
had music constantly playing, and I had this idea of
(03:22):
creating and being something bigger than just, you know, a
farm kid from Kentucky. So that was kind of it.
But back to whearing this. I'm born January twentieth, nineteen
eighty two, Super Bowl sixteen week and the first day
of life. The news shows up at the Jewish hospital
(03:43):
where my mom actually worked at the desk and they're like, hey,
we need some babies. We're doing a Bengals segment. So
day one of my life, I'm on TV as a
Bengal baby. So starting my life, no matter what, I'm
a Bengals fan and I'm meant for greatness. Man, We're
gonna do it under what it is. We're getting out
of here. We're gonna be on TV. We're gonna be
a star one day. So I think I've always felt
(04:06):
that in my heart, and that's what's always kind of
drove me. And then my dad was He was kind
of quiet about it, but he would always be like,
you You're meant for more than this, you know, get
out of here.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
But you went enjoy the Marines. Yeah, yeah, you put
your music career on hold. Were you working on stuff?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Like when I was young, I didn't. I wouldn't say
I take it serious. Right. I knew I was super talented.
I knew I could write, I knew I could play,
but I did have a dream of becoming this music
star when I'm you know, eighteen, nineteen years old, so
I go into Marine Corps. Nothing's on hold. I'm actually
just developing as an artist, right. I'm playing a lot
and getting more into kind of growth as a musician,
(04:46):
growth as a writer, understanding things that I didn't understand
before because I wasn't time. My dad handed me a
guitar at like ten years old, taught me a couple
of riffs and was like, have that it. So it
was a lot of self drive and a lot of
self work to to get that growth. At the same time,
I'm away from home for the first time. I'm out
in California now as a Marine I went through Paras Island.
(05:07):
I graduated for the first time in my life. I
believe made my father proud. It was something that I
didn't even graduate high school. Man. I ended up having
to get my diploma in summer school, and I didn't
walk with my class. I was a shithead and marines are.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Great man to help you grow up in a hurry.
And then you went, so where did you serve?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
So I initially ended up in twenty nine Palms as
an infantry marine. I I was a radio operator with
the infantry or a field wireman radio operator working with
a two seven golf company. And then I ultimately eleven
months in Japan and Korea because the war kicks off.
Then we have nine to eleven happen while I'm in
(05:47):
I'm out on a field off. We're literally out running
like a combined up arms exercise. Right, So we're there.
The colonel pulls everyone aside and said, he gives us speech.
Entry is under attack. We've had, you know, two buildings
hit by airplanes. And we're all sitting here, just came
out of school. So they're always doing this fake hype shit.
(06:09):
We're all looking at each other like, what are you
fucking kidding me, And you're doing this to us right
now to get us to go run this range today.
This is the way we're approaching this. So everyone is
kind of like in disbelief. A couple hours go by,
they bring a bunch five tons out and grab anybody
from New York, New Jersey, all these places and bring
(06:29):
them back to base. There's no cell phones at this time.
It's two thousand, you know, or nine to eleven happening
two thousand and one, so none of that exists yet
out in the desert in twenty nine palms. So they
bring everybody back to base. A buddy of mine is like, dude,
I'm hearing like this is real, you know. So by
that night I remember specifically, you know, because we just
(06:52):
slept out under the stars, laying in my sleeping bag
looking up and there's no planes crossing over top right,
and I'm thinking to myself, Fuck, can I only know
where I grab our Navy Corman. I'm like, talk, We're
going to war, dude, We're going to war. This is real.
Something I had dreamt of my whole life. My father
was in Vietnam. It was something that I saw the
truest hero of my life, you know, go and fight
(07:14):
that war. So it was something that in my heart
I always wanted to do. Was the reason I was
a Marine, not any other reason. So there we were.
In two thousand and four, my unit finally goes Diraq.
I don't go in the first Surge. We were stuck
in Japan and Korea, but eventually we get out there.
And then in two thousand and four I spent six
months all Aside air base and then as they basically
(07:38):
quick React Force Mission squad leader. I ended up running
an infantry squad while I was there as a Marine
corporal and did it up. Man, it was the experience
that I dreamt it. You know, not a lot of
you know, head on firefighting or anything like that, but
we were outside the wire. We probably about one hundred
plus missions. I think my Navy achievement metal senys like
(07:59):
one hundred and twenty. But I don't even think it
was that much, but it was somewhere around there. One.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, one of the problems that you have is you
guys are agreed not to talk about it to you know,
almost like put yourselves down.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Fuck that.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
But we all but we all come from humble beginnings.
You know so at least most of us do. So
when we're talking about that, I don't have anything to prove.
I don't have anything to show anyone. You know, I
did it, I lived and I loved it. I share
the things that I learned from after it that I
can give to other people, but I don't care to,
(08:32):
you know, get excited about it when I talk about
it or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
What was your transition out of the military difficult?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
No, it was weird. Hey, I'm in Iraq. I'm I'm this,
you know, young aspiring artist trying to make it in
the music industry as well. I write a song called
good Good America while I'm over there. We're we're out
on a mission. We're opening a school for for the
Iraqi kids, right, And this was something that the time
(09:00):
was not being talked about. We had every death of
every marine, every death of every anybody that happened was
what was making the news. Uh, And you didn't see
a lot of these pieces, these these stories that were
you know, encompassing the good that we were doing while
we were there. This this wasn't a dirty war. We
were as clean as we could be. Our mission as
(09:20):
second time seven Marines when we were there was to
win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. It
was a si out more than it was anything, you know.
So we're they're opening a school and these these kids
all gather around us, are probably like eight to ten
years old, and they're clapping and champion and they're dud
Guddha Medica, good Gouda Medica and dude. I like, to
(09:43):
that point, as a twenty two year old kid, I'd
never felt anything like that in my life. I felt purpose,
I felt real. I felt like, yeah, I know that
the Marine Corps kind of messed up. I know that
I haven't enjoyed this four years, but this moment right
here is worth it, you know, this moment right here,
(10:04):
and we saw a future for their people. We saw
growth and expansion and education. And I was stoked. Man,
I was hype. So I went immediately back to our
little cans that we lived in and I wrote good,
Good America. I remember a buddy of mine from New York,
Nick Hoffman, was probably and this was he was an
(10:25):
old ass man as a marine. He was thirty years old,
but he was my lance corporal. I was a corporal
and he was like, dude, we should like put this
on the internet. I'm like, what the fuck's the internet.
I'm from Kentucky. I don't know what any of this
stuff is. So he had a friend in New York
that had a website. I had a master guns that
wanted to send it to his brother, and had a
(10:46):
record label in Atlanta. I had all this stuff working
out to where we moved forward right motion, life is motion.
Anytime you move, things happen. So we created this music
video out of Windows Media Player. We cut the track
like raw. We put it on a website. You know,
at the time there wasn't even YouTube, so we put
(11:07):
it on a website. This guy, John Bowser from La
Times used to walk by me every day and I
comically would be like, hey, Bowser, you're writing about the
wrong dude, Like I told him now every day. So
I get a knock on my little can and it
turns out it's Bowser and he's like, hey, it's your turn.
You know, it's time to write about you. So he
(11:29):
had seen the video. Our battalion had showed it in
a battalion meeting. So Bowser takes he writes my story
at front pages is the calendar of Los Angeles Times,
and then front page is the calendar of probably every
newspaper in the country. Right, it's that fast splash. Our
website blows up, and this is the time to remember.
You click and you download, and you'd wait six hours
(11:50):
for your video to show up, and then you know,
you watch the video and hoorah. But we had five
hundred thousand downloads in a night. Wow, damn man. And
I'm in shock, like just blown away, like, oh my god,
I did it. You know, here it is? This is it,
you know. And I don't know how many times in
my life I had that moment where I'm like, I
did it, you know, and I was gonna be famous, man,
(12:14):
I was going to do it. And I spent about
two more months in Iraq, I think at that time,
still running my mission squat up until the last I
think the last six weeks or five weeks. Maybe my
captain didn't want me out there, he didn't want me
to die in my last few weeks there, he pulled
me out and put me back in the calm shop
to do calm stuff. So that whole time I'm banging
(12:35):
on the internet, typing like this, trying to get somebody
to pick me up with a record label, so I
grinded that out. By the time I got back, I
was meeting with what is today Pacific Records, but I
think back then they were called Real to Real Records,
and I was on my way to glory, you know.
(12:57):
So that's yeah, yeah, dude. First second TV appearance was
the moment I got back from my rack. I went
straight back to Fox and Cincinnati and uh, you know,
went on there, played good good America. I was vibing. Man.
I thought I thought the world was about to be everything,
but but what I didn't have was control of myself.
(13:17):
The universe was being very graceful to me. It was
being very beautiful to me. It was treating me. It
gave me an option if I wanted it, you know,
it gave me an option to go. Now, you know
you can do this. I easked out of the Marine Corps.
When I came back. I came back on advanced party,
probably a month before everyone else got out of the
Marine Corps because I literally spent my last six months
in Iraq. And I get back and I'm not okay
(13:39):
like I think I am, but I'm not. And that
was something honestly, personally, emotionally, physically. I didn't address that
until years later. But I was a mess. I was
drinking to blackout, a pretty constant living.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
With over there for like you saw and went through.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, I think it really just I never accepted anything
I saw or went through. It was more kind of
like I was focused so hard on like making it
out of that world, becoming what I'd always dreamed I
could become that I never absorbed everything in and actually
(14:18):
accepted what had happened. You know, people that we love
that are dead like this, this whole concept of you know,
fighting a war that at the time I believe a
one hundred percent just and right. But I get back
to the United States and I walk down the promenade
in San Diego and or in Santa Monica and people are,
(14:41):
you know, protesting our war and I'm seeing that and
I'm like this kid, that's just my mind is small
at the time. I'm coming from Kentucky. I'm not expanded yet.
I haven't grown, I haven't become you know who I
am today at forty three. Right. But so I rather
then except that something was going on, I put it
(15:03):
in a bottle. You know, and I pretty much so
really quickly pissed away the music career. I did have
a good friend, dat niece who he did the gift,
the documentary about Jason Dunham. Dave was doing a doc
on Dunham way back then, this is four and he
was already working on that documentary and he had read
(15:25):
my story. So he brings me in. He manages me
for a little bit. We play the roxy in La.
We do. You know, it's a lot of stuff, but
more and more, I wasn't showing up on time. I
wasn't My heart wasn't in it, Nor was my heart
in wanting to live a normal life. So I was
struggling with something that I didn't know I was struggling with.
And you know, God bless my my ex wife for
(15:47):
keeping me alive during that time, because you know, it altered.
I went. I walked away from music and at that
point left La, came to the Bay Area. It was
kind of done. I started pursuing, you know, a different life.
What was I going to do? What job was I
going to have? How was I going to do this?
Went to school to become a firefighter, started doing all
(16:08):
of that around the same time, I'd make one more
run with a different band, bands called Highway forty two.
It always proved that I was good, Like it always
proved that like I knew, like I was positive, that
I could write, I could play. I could say that
band had no agenda. We were just rock and roll
and we were nominated for Los Angeles Music Awards like doing.
You know, we were no agenda whatsoever, and we were awesome,
(16:31):
you know. And again we just couldn't keep together, and
I couldn't keep together, and I was a mess man.
I would blackout, drunk, fight, just madness, and I don't
understand what's going on. I still don't know. PTSD is
barely a phrase at this point. You know, this is
two thousand and five. I remember my friend that I
(16:54):
was in the Marine Corps with was working with a
group that was just starting to study PTSD and Vietnam veterans.
They weren't even addressing us yet. You know, we now
look at today and what we've done for that that's
incredible because it's been we had twenty years of dudes
fighting wars twenty years straight. That's not healthy.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
What got you out of this and kind of on
this straight and arrow.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I mean, it was a little mix of everything. But
the first thing that happens is I become a firefighter.
Worked my ass off to do that. My dad was
like when I was young. He was dealing with the
same alcohol problems I was, probably because of Vietnam, but
he never stopped working, right. He was always grinding, and
that's what I saw. So I grinded to become a firefighter.
(17:42):
I get that job. I start working for the city
of Palo Alto. Still not okay, I'm still a drunk.
I'm like putting down two three bottles of wine a
day when I get off, you know, shift in the morning.
I have a family, but I'm not I'm taking it
for granted. You know. I wish I could go back
and give my son when I get my four year
old daughter, now when he was that young, you know.
(18:02):
So this happens. I'm a firefighter and now I'm pursuing that.
And something clicks, Like something clicks, I want to play
music again. I end up getting injured at work. I
tear my shoulder out, and I go back to the
phone and I call Dave Nice, I call the guys
from Pacific Record Brian Wickn I call all these guys up,
(18:24):
and I'm like, hey, I've been writing music all this time.
Like my son's like three years old, four years old.
I'd love for him to hear what I did. Is
there any way that we can go back at this?
You know, I have a friend that's dealing with post
traumatic stress really badly at this time, meth addiction. I
write a song called Your Wars Over. I want Your
Wars Over to be. Pacific Records invites me down. They
(18:46):
like what I'm doing. We sign a contract with them,
and I'm back in motion. I'm back in motion and
I got purpose again. I though at the time am
wearing this really big Darth Vaders style mask pretending I'm
perfect and nobody else, you know, and I'm here on
this healing hand. You know, who the fuck am I?
(19:07):
I'm just a drunk asshole that knocks holes in his
walls when he's you know, when no one's around. And
I'm out there preaching this and doing this and it
gets success. Our first release was actually called This Is War.
That was about when Isis surged originally and attacked. We
shot a music video to that. Dave Nies comes in
(19:29):
and makes this video it's got a lot of live
footage from fighting a war over in Iraq. It's this
epic video and it takes off, and before I know it,
I go from no following, no social media, no nothing,
because I just hadn't done any of that, to one
hundred thousand views on a video. And then things are running.
And now I've got, you know, one thousand, two thousand
(19:51):
and ten thousand, and these Facebook followers are showing up,
and all this thing is like starting to come together,
and each time I'm learning a new lesson. Like what
people said they would take care of her do for you,
you basically had to do yourself.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So we released several albums. Things are moving along and
I am driving to Sacramento. I'm really dealing with alcohol problems.
At this point, we're going down to play a show.
I tell the band in the car, this is this
is our last show. We're done. I'm a hypocrite. I
(20:26):
can't be this guy anymore. I can't play this character.
I can't tell other people to get better when I
can't fix myself. My marriage is a mess, my life
is a mess. Just six months prior, my father dies.
His passing was sudden, it was. It was not expected.
We sat in the hospital for twelve days before we
took him off life support. It was the most grueling
(20:49):
week of my life. For two weeks of my life,
I'm in this hole. I had created these beautiful things,
music videos, we shot on the sets of Iron Man
and you know, did all these cool things. And this
kid from Kentucky is really from a really small town,
had showed everybody that it's possible to get out. But man,
it was a fraud. You know, I'm fake, at least
(21:12):
I feel that way.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
A lot of us.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah. Yeah, So I tell the band that I'm done.
We get to a hotel. We meet another band, Vetted,
which those guys are out there crushing it, and we're
jamming in the hotel room and my phone rings. I
get a phone call. Look at it. It's my my
wife at the time, and I'm like, oh, she never
calls when I'm out, you know, doing this stuff. And uh.
(21:37):
I walk outside and she's just BALI just completely in tears.
I'm trying to understand what she's telling me. And she
tells me John, Mike is dead. Mike is dead. I'm
like Mike who She's like Mike Mike killed himself, and
I'm like, well, who are you talking about, Mike, Mike
who She's like, John, your fucking brother shot himself and
(22:02):
everything I knew was gone, Everything Joe that I knew
was gone. This is on camera. We were filming. We were,
you know, covering this. We had been shooting a documentary
for the last two years. And I can't talk. I
can't think. I can't My big brother when my dad
was dealing with his alcohol problems, he was nine years
older than me. My big brother taught me how to drive,
(22:26):
coached my sports teams, taught me how to talk to girls,
did everything. And then he was the one that kept
fixing me when I was fucking up. You know. He
was the one that kept writing me when I was wrong,
and he was the one that I looked up to.
Is this guy can never do anything wrong. You know,
he could never do anything wrong. We went head to
head at the hospital because my dad had a dn
(22:48):
R that we found twelve days into him being on
life support. I didn't want to let him go. Mike
wanted to do the right thing. You know, my big brother,
who was my best friend my whole life. We stopped
talking six months before he shot, we had just started
communicating again. We used to go to Bengals training camp
every year, so it was a random text where I
(23:11):
think we were talking about, you know, somebody on the team,
Aj Green or somebody, and like what are they going
to do this year or something, And we had just
opened up our conversation again, you know, and just started
talking and I honestly think he already knew what he
was going to do. Wow, And I think he just
wanted to, in a way, yeah, in a way say goodbye.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
So you've taken what happened to him, though, and you've
embarked in a whole different journey now I help other
people dive into that.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
For me, honestly, within to the six months of him passing,
I went crazy, writing, producing, working, doing music right, and
I put two songs in the top two hundred in
the world in like six months of losing down. I
was I was now under the umbrella Universal with Concord Entertainment,
(24:00):
and I'm grinding and I again still feel like I'm
not doing enough. TV appearances aren't enough, songs aren't enough, videos,
aren't enough. None of it's enough. I made a decision
that I wanted to basically manifest what I was feeling,
Manifest what my nieces and nephews were feeling, Manifest what
(24:21):
my mother was feeling, my brother's wife, this whole family
that had been ripped to pieces by this battle, the
struggle that nobody even knew my brother was having. And
I said, how could I do that? And my decision was, Okay,
I'm going to put on a big ass heavy pack
and since there's twenty two veteran suicides every day, I'm
going to walk twenty two miles a day, every day
(24:44):
with fifty pounds on my back and day yeah, yeah,
I mapped it. I decided since I was a firefighter
in Palo Alto, I would start there. That's where my
life is today. And this first hike, we went from
Palo Alto to San Diego because San Diego is where
my dad went to boot camp. So it was like
(25:04):
where it all began, right where we all got that
envision in our heads to be marine. So I do
that walk absolutely hillacious, mass destruction. We end up midway
through it, I take over the whole project because we
were shooting in a documentary, and then I finish it, right,
(25:27):
you finish it, you crush it, you get through it.
It wasn't easy. It was the worst thing ever. And
I'll get to that at the end of the podcast.
But we go on this mission. I accomplished the mission.
I'm sitting on the other side of the mission and
I'm probably the most depressed I've been in my life.
Right and along the way, Jay, what's amazing about it
is a California firefighters are a cool thing on earth.
(25:48):
They really are, Like I know, you've probably met a
lot of us over time. They are amazing. I got
to a point where I needed help and they were there,
and we went almost down the whole state with support
just based solely on California firefighters, you know. And we
can do that because we make good money. We you know,
we're supported by our cities. Where so just a good
(26:12):
group of people that are ready to give their time
and their effort when effort is needed. So many people came,
they shared their stories, they became part of us. You know.
There are people from that first hike that I'm still
you know, I still communicate with weekly. There. You know,
people that now have told me and I've done this
at work. I've I've brought people back to life. You know.
I call them the heart starters, the old CPR arms.
(26:34):
But there are people now that that attest to the
work we did save their lives, brought them. They stopped.
They decided that that life was worth it, and everything
that we were talking about was worth it, and and
love was more important than leaving it, you know. And
I see it as nothing that has happened back there
means anything right now right here, you know, it happened
(26:57):
back there. That's a different world, that's a different time.
My body took the stress, but my soul and my
heart has to realize that I'm living for right now.
I jump off of every cliff in front of me
because I know if I jump, other people are going
to come with me. And I was thinking about I
was writing biography stuff, and I was thinking about just
all the different people I've inspired and now watching their
(27:19):
web of greatness and the things they're doing, and it's
so cool to see, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Pain to help others through their and that's exactly what
you've done. And you had another walk too, right from
Paris Island to Cincinnati.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah, we I end up. For the next two years
after the first hike, I'm making a film. I'm going,
I'm shooting, I'm interviewing. On instinct, I go and knock
on Lev's front door. I go and knock on the
door of Leverage Management. Yeah, yeah, my guy. Yeah. So
(27:54):
I go down to Leverage Management and just knock like.
I'm like, I'm cool, right, And I run into like
an in turn that day, and I'm like, hey, dude,
I think you guys should know who I am. Here's
a film trip, right. And I had already met with
Unrealistic Ideas, which is Marks and Lev's doc company, and
I started adding people on Instagram from Unrealistic Ideas and
(28:15):
kind of trying to tie all the knots together. I
was supposed to have a meeting with Leverage Management. This
guy Paul Sadowski, who just released the show with Unrealistic,
hits me and says if they say no, I want this,
I want it all, you know. And we're like hell yeah.
So we work up to this. We decide we're going
to hike again. After Paul and I sign a contract,
(28:36):
we start moving towards that I want to bring it home.
I want to take my brother. I want to come
home with this energy that I had in California. This
madness is insanity. My wife just retires as a San
Francisco firefighter. I asked her, Hey, you want to do
this with me. She says, oh, yes, this sounds stupid,
(28:58):
so she is all in. We trained for months and months.
I get a call from a friend who says, hey,
I saw your brother. I lost my wife to suicide
last year. We were childhood friends, we grew up together.
His dad used to pick my dad up after a
bad car accident and put him in the bathtub to
be clean. You know. So we go out, We bring Paul,
(29:22):
We shoot an incredible film and really just a different
hikes in California. In California, I struggled, and this one
I'm feeling good because I'm sharing the pack with everyone.
You know, I've got this concept of sharing the weight
and the three of us. But no fire support not
the same. It's the South. It's all volunteer departments. It's
(29:45):
smaller departments. There's more politics there. There's a lot of
things that we're dealing with that aren't normal. Literally make
it all the way to northern Kentucky before we get
our first piece of support. We do have fire departments
along the way, But it's not like everyone's jumping out
of the rig like, hey, let me take the pack
for you, dude. You know, it's a total different world there.
And I'm not saying we didn't meet incredible people. Way
(30:07):
thirty two days, twenty two miles a day. We take
fifty pounds now and spread it between the three of us, myself,
my wife and Isaac Chandler. And lots of struggles throughout it,
lots of injuries, lots of you know, the whole thing
is a story on its own, and you know, we'll
chat about that at some point. I'll tell you all
about it. But it was insane. We get to northern
(30:31):
Kentucky and the world showed up. It was from Owen
County to Cincinnati, Ohio, four days of hiking, eighty eight miles.
It was a fucking parade. It was straight up pomp
and circumstances. We never didn't have a fire engine or
police vehicle in front of us with lights on. We
(30:51):
never walked off the road again. After grinding through the appellations,
almost getting killed by cars, this insanity, this near death
after near death, and then we paraded. They shut down.
I know you've been down to Paycorp. They shut down
during commute time the bridge from Newport, Kentucky to Cincinnati, Ohio.
(31:12):
My brother was a Newport police officer. When he passed away,
Newport brought the house. It was every apparatus that they
had in their whole city. Led us across this bridge
and into Cincinnati, where my grandfather actually was a police officer,
and you know, walk into pay Court Stadium. I finished
on the fifty yard line. I make a decision. Then
(31:34):
I put my pack down on that big b and
and I tell the press and I tell the world.
You know, today I start walking for me. You know,
I've been walking for Mike for for years. I had
this realization while I was out there that I hadn't
let off the gas pedal since Mike had died. We
come back obviously, you know Greg. I started approaching Greg
(31:57):
and talking to Greg after the hike and ended up
signing with Lowbell Music Group. We released our video Rise,
which has a lot of this story, and it rises
that twenty year grind. I've been on man and uh
just never quitting. And and that's that's the message that
I've always tried to give out. I'm not anything special, dude,
I can't go out on the football field with with
(32:18):
Joe Burrow and look good, you know. But but I
don't stop and I never have. And I learned that,
you know, through the hardships of life. And my goal
is always, you know, with with the music I released
or the work that I'm doing in the films. We're
writing a TV series right now, with these things that
(32:39):
it's always is it going to inspire? Is it going
to move? And is it going to change the direction
of somebody that might be heading the wrong way? So
that's it, you know, dude, an incredible story.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
I love it. I love your life of service. And again,
I'm sure your brother's proud of you now, and yeah,
you feel that. I'm gonna give you my last question.
I asked every one of my guests, give me your
unbreakable moment, the moment that should have broken you could
have didn't. As a result, you came through the other
side of that tune was stronger forever.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Yeah, so it's a shadow moment. When I was ten
years old, my father was hit head on by a
drunk driver. He for almost a year didn't walk, Like
I said, Isaac's dad used to come and pick him
up and put him in the bathtub. He sat in
a hospital bed in our living room for nearly a year.
I see you for a long time, really really bad.
After that, his body was crushed to pieces, but his
(33:29):
brain was there. His head was there. It's like the
only thing left in all of that. Physical therapist shows
up at the house to teach Dad to walk again.
And it's day one of him learning to walk, and
I'm this little ten year old on the couch watching
all this happen. She gets my dad onto his feet
and he's shaking, holding onto the rails and he's okay, honey,
(33:52):
take a step. And my father takes the first step
and his whole body shaken. Now his face is porn
with tears, snotting everything that could come out, and he
he stops and she's like, Okay, you did a great job.
That's it. And he just shouts, fuck you, I'm fucking
walking and he takes another fucking step, right, and I like,
(34:15):
just one after the other. He gets probably three steps
in and then like kind of collapses and they, you know,
get him and move him and and that's the dad
I knew. I didn't know the guy that that My
brothers had the one that was dealing with Vietnam and
dealing with you know, the alcohol and those problems. I
knew that, Dad. So I'm two hundred miles into my
(34:37):
first hype with fifty pounds on my back and I
can barely walk again, and like I can't walk, we
pushed through. I end up having a whole group of
people push me physically to end this last this this
night ten or whatever it is, push me to the
finish line, throw the pack off, and just exhausted and
(35:00):
angry because I know if I keep going I'm done.
I go back. I decide, I make a decision. I'm
not going to drive it until I have to quit.
We have to figure something out. I decide at that time,
I'm asking for help. I do it publicly on a
social media post. By noon that next day, there are
(35:25):
a thousand messages in my inbox. There are people driving
from different states to come meet us. There is a
whole world happening now to pick us up and move
us the other four hundred and five hundred miles down
the coast. I decide that I can take the pack off,
that I don't have to carry my own burdens anymore.
(35:46):
I can give it to someone else to help me
through this, and I don't carry the weight, you know,
for for a lot of it. And it was amazing,
Like as we move forward, my feet started healing, things
started happening. I never never didn't take a step, but
he damn right, I didn't carry all my burdens anymore.
And that was it, man, that made me real life. Yep.
(36:09):
Well it made me realize I'm not alone, you know,
and and that that really has inspired me moving forward,
you know, just to take these fucking risks in life,
you know, because I'm not alone, man.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Absolutely not. John Preston, I appreciate you sharing your unbelievable story. Again,
you've lived life of service for others, for you, He's
had several songs, hit songs rock and pop now right, yeah,
yeah again, combat veteran Brols incredible messenger to help those
twenty two try and lower that number of twenty two
(36:41):
veterans today who take their own life. So sorry about
your brother, but it wasn't advantge. Just look at the
people you're helping. Dude.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Oh, he's saved so many lives with a mistake. He
made so many lives. So I'm grateful. Jay rises out
right now, so anybody wants to check out the new
single Lobell Music Group. That's our grind man, that's our
grind and we're here, we're standing on top of the
world and we're going to keep moving. We're going to
keep pushing lover.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
John Preston May keep walking. We'll walk this walk together
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Brother, Absolutely, thanks Jay,
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glacier, a mental wealth podcast
build you from the inside out.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Now Here's Jay Glacier.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome int Unbreakable mental Wealth Podcast with Jay Glazer.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
I'm Jay Glazer and really pumped for my guest today.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
You guys know who I do a lot of work
with combat vets, and he is a combat vet.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
But you guys also know that I've.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Done a lot of work recently with our first responders
out here in Malibu.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
He's also a first responder. He's a fireman. You also
know I've had a lot of musicians on here. He's
also a musician. So, yeah, what have you done on Tuesday?
This is what this guy does. He is a musician.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Who who's out a couple of hits, but also he
puts a lot of his experiences into his songs. I'm
really excited that I got the chance to meet him
and have him come on and tell his story.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
My dude, John Preston, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Man? Hey, let's up, and let's not forget poking at
it and screenwriter, filmmaker, but the most important dad that's
been Yeah, those are number one, But yeah, man, it's
been a it's been a wild ride and we're just
we're still riding.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
You know that's cool, man.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I love like you're right is wild And you know,
we have a vitual friend, Greg who's kind of you know,
introduced me to you, and he's like, man, you gotta
tell this guy's story. And he's like, you know, I
need to do a lot of work with vets, and
I can do Ben and the first Responders I do.
And then well he's a musician. I'm like, what is
He's like all three of them put in one and
they all play into each other.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
So I want you to tell everybody kind of your story.
I'm going to give you the floor here and start
where you want.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah. So, I mean I come from from very humble beginnings. Say,
I am a Northern Kentucky veteran, lived my life there
for the first twenty years of life or eighteen years
of life. Families from Cincinnati grew up there on that
cusp of basically living on a farm without full farm life.
(01:51):
We rented out a tobacco farm to the neighbors. They
came over and farmed. We farmed with them. Just a
different world than what I've been now here in California,
living and chasing the dream. Yee, I'm rocking a Bengals hat.
But there's a reason for that. First of all, my
bad Miles Garrett for rocking a Bengals hat with a
municipal shirt. But I mean this will have been back
to me for a long time.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
So Producer Ballers man, that's my guy.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, Yeah, that's a bad dude right there. So yeah,
I grew up with the dad that was a Vietnam veteran.
Both my brothers were Marines. I kind of had no choice.
I remember, dude, I was not on any good path.
I was hanging with the wrong people, doing the wrong things,
getting in a lot of trouble. My brother Michael at
the time, was a cop in my hometown, so he
(02:38):
kind of kept me safe. I really did have this
this blanket of safety as I made major mistakes and
he stopped me from making them. But I kind of
knew I was going to be a marine, so I
think looking at it, I kind of had no shit
given on what was going to happen to me at
that point in life. I was fearless because I knew
at some point I'd be walking across the grinder at
Paras Island. You know. So my whole family was Marines.
(03:01):
My father was a Purple Heart recipient. But I was
I was different. I knew I was different, and I
kind of had always been that way, and I think
I know where it comes from. But I had art
and me I had something that nobody else had. I
had music constantly playing, and I had this idea of
(03:22):
creating and being something bigger than just, you know, a
farm kid from Kentucky. So that was kind of it.
But back to whearing this. I'm born January twentieth, nineteen
eighty two, Super Bowl sixteen week and the first day
of life. The news shows up at the Jewish hospital
(03:43):
where my mom actually worked at the desk and they're like, hey,
we need some babies. We're doing a Bengals segment. So
day one of my life, I'm on TV as a
Bengal baby. So starting my life, no matter what, I'm
a Bengals fan and I'm meant for greatness. Man, We're
gonna do it under what it is. We're getting out
of here. We're gonna be on TV. We're gonna be
a star one day. So I think I've always felt
(04:06):
that in my heart, and that's what's always kind of
drove me. And then my dad was He was kind
of quiet about it, but he would always be like,
you You're meant for more than this, you know, get
out of here.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
But you went enjoy the Marines. Yeah, yeah, you put
your music career on hold. Were you working on stuff?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Like when I was young, I didn't. I wouldn't say
I take it serious. Right. I knew I was super talented.
I knew I could write, I knew I could play,
but I did have a dream of becoming this music
star when I'm you know, eighteen, nineteen years old, so
I go into Marine Corps. Nothing's on hold. I'm actually
just developing as an artist, right. I'm playing a lot
and getting more into kind of growth as a musician,
(04:46):
growth as a writer, understanding things that I didn't understand
before because I wasn't time. My dad handed me a
guitar at like ten years old, taught me a couple
of riffs and was like, have that it. So it
was a lot of self drive and a lot of
self work to to get that growth. At the same time,
I'm away from home for the first time. I'm out
in California now as a Marine I went through Paras Island.
(05:07):
I graduated for the first time in my life. I
believe made my father proud. It was something that I
didn't even graduate high school. Man. I ended up having
to get my diploma in summer school, and I didn't
walk with my class. I was a shithead and marines are.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Great man to help you grow up in a hurry.
And then you went, so where did you serve?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
So I initially ended up in twenty nine Palms as
an infantry marine. I I was a radio operator with
the infantry or a field wireman radio operator working with
a two seven golf company. And then I ultimately eleven
months in Japan and Korea because the war kicks off.
Then we have nine to eleven happen while I'm in
(05:47):
I'm out on a field off. We're literally out running
like a combined up arms exercise. Right, So we're there.
The colonel pulls everyone aside and said, he gives us speech.
Entry is under attack. We've had, you know, two buildings
hit by airplanes. And we're all sitting here, just came
out of school. So they're always doing this fake hype shit.
(06:09):
We're all looking at each other like, what are you
fucking kidding me, And you're doing this to us right
now to get us to go run this range today.
This is the way we're approaching this. So everyone is
kind of like in disbelief. A couple hours go by,
they bring a bunch five tons out and grab anybody
from New York, New Jersey, all these places and bring
(06:29):
them back to base. There's no cell phones at this time.
It's two thousand, you know, or nine to eleven happening
two thousand and one, so none of that exists yet
out in the desert in twenty nine palms. So they
bring everybody back to base. A buddy of mine is like, dude,
I'm hearing like this is real, you know. So by
that night I remember specifically, you know, because we just
(06:52):
slept out under the stars, laying in my sleeping bag
looking up and there's no planes crossing over top right,
and I'm thinking to myself, Fuck, can I only know
where I grab our Navy Corman. I'm like, talk, We're
going to war, dude, We're going to war. This is real.
Something I had dreamt of my whole life. My father
was in Vietnam. It was something that I saw the
truest hero of my life, you know, go and fight
(07:14):
that war. So it was something that in my heart
I always wanted to do. Was the reason I was
a Marine, not any other reason. So there we were.
In two thousand and four, my unit finally goes Diraq.
I don't go in the first Surge. We were stuck
in Japan and Korea, but eventually we get out there.
And then in two thousand and four I spent six
months all Aside air base and then as they basically
(07:38):
quick React Force Mission squad leader. I ended up running
an infantry squad while I was there as a Marine
corporal and did it up. Man, it was the experience
that I dreamt it. You know, not a lot of
you know, head on firefighting or anything like that, but
we were outside the wire. We probably about one hundred
plus missions. I think my Navy achievement metal senys like
(07:59):
one hundred and twenty. But I don't even think it
was that much, but it was somewhere around there. One.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, one of the problems that you have is you
guys are agreed not to talk about it to you know,
almost like put yourselves down.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Fuck that.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
But we all but we all come from humble beginnings.
You know so at least most of us do. So
when we're talking about that, I don't have anything to prove.
I don't have anything to show anyone. You know, I
did it, I lived and I loved it. I share
the things that I learned from after it that I
can give to other people, but I don't care to,
(08:32):
you know, get excited about it when I talk about
it or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
What was your transition out of the military difficult?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
No, it was weird. Hey, I'm in Iraq. I'm I'm this,
you know, young aspiring artist trying to make it in
the music industry as well. I write a song called
good Good America while I'm over there. We're we're out
on a mission. We're opening a school for for the
Iraqi kids, right, And this was something that the time
(09:00):
was not being talked about. We had every death of
every marine, every death of every anybody that happened was
what was making the news. Uh, And you didn't see
a lot of these pieces, these these stories that were
you know, encompassing the good that we were doing while
we were there. This this wasn't a dirty war. We
were as clean as we could be. Our mission as
(09:20):
second time seven Marines when we were there was to
win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. It
was a si out more than it was anything, you know.
So we're they're opening a school and these these kids
all gather around us, are probably like eight to ten
years old, and they're clapping and champion and they're dud
Guddha Medica, good Gouda Medica and dude. I like, to
(09:43):
that point, as a twenty two year old kid, I'd
never felt anything like that in my life. I felt purpose,
I felt real. I felt like, yeah, I know that
the Marine Corps kind of messed up. I know that
I haven't enjoyed this four years, but this moment right
here is worth it, you know, this moment right here,
(10:04):
and we saw a future for their people. We saw
growth and expansion and education. And I was stoked. Man,
I was hype. So I went immediately back to our
little cans that we lived in and I wrote good,
Good America. I remember a buddy of mine from New York,
Nick Hoffman, was probably and this was he was an
(10:25):
old ass man as a marine. He was thirty years old,
but he was my lance corporal. I was a corporal
and he was like, dude, we should like put this
on the internet. I'm like, what the fuck's the internet.
I'm from Kentucky. I don't know what any of this
stuff is. So he had a friend in New York
that had a website. I had a master guns that
wanted to send it to his brother, and had a
(10:46):
record label in Atlanta. I had all this stuff working
out to where we moved forward right motion, life is motion.
Anytime you move, things happen. So we created this music
video out of Windows Media Player. We cut the track
like raw. We put it on a website. You know,
at the time there wasn't even YouTube, so we put
(11:07):
it on a website. This guy, John Bowser from La
Times used to walk by me every day and I
comically would be like, hey, Bowser, you're writing about the
wrong dude, Like I told him now every day. So
I get a knock on my little can and it
turns out it's Bowser and he's like, hey, it's your turn.
You know, it's time to write about you. So he
(11:29):
had seen the video. Our battalion had showed it in
a battalion meeting. So Bowser takes he writes my story
at front pages is the calendar of Los Angeles Times,
and then front page is the calendar of probably every
newspaper in the country. Right, it's that fast splash. Our
website blows up, and this is the time to remember.
You click and you download, and you'd wait six hours
(11:50):
for your video to show up, and then you know,
you watch the video and hoorah. But we had five
hundred thousand downloads in a night. Wow, damn man. And
I'm in shock, like just blown away, like, oh my god,
I did it. You know, here it is? This is it,
you know. And I don't know how many times in
my life I had that moment where I'm like, I
did it, you know, and I was gonna be famous, man,
(12:14):
I was going to do it. And I spent about
two more months in Iraq, I think at that time,
still running my mission squat up until the last I
think the last six weeks or five weeks. Maybe my
captain didn't want me out there, he didn't want me
to die in my last few weeks there, he pulled
me out and put me back in the calm shop
to do calm stuff. So that whole time I'm banging
(12:35):
on the internet, typing like this, trying to get somebody
to pick me up with a record label, so I
grinded that out. By the time I got back, I
was meeting with what is today Pacific Records, but I
think back then they were called Real to Real Records,
and I was on my way to glory, you know.
(12:57):
So that's yeah, yeah, dude. First second TV appearance was
the moment I got back from my rack. I went
straight back to Fox and Cincinnati and uh, you know,
went on there, played good good America. I was vibing. Man.
I thought I thought the world was about to be everything,
but but what I didn't have was control of myself.
(13:17):
The universe was being very graceful to me. It was
being very beautiful to me. It was treating me. It
gave me an option if I wanted it, you know,
it gave me an option to go. Now, you know
you can do this. I easked out of the Marine Corps.
When I came back. I came back on advanced party,
probably a month before everyone else got out of the
Marine Corps because I literally spent my last six months
in Iraq. And I get back and I'm not okay
(13:39):
like I think I am, but I'm not. And that
was something honestly, personally, emotionally, physically. I didn't address that
until years later. But I was a mess. I was
drinking to blackout, a pretty constant living.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
With over there for like you saw and went through.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, I think it really just I never accepted anything
I saw or went through. It was more kind of
like I was focused so hard on like making it
out of that world, becoming what I'd always dreamed I
could become that I never absorbed everything in and actually
(14:18):
accepted what had happened. You know, people that we love
that are dead like this, this whole concept of you know,
fighting a war that at the time I believe a
one hundred percent just and right. But I get back
to the United States and I walk down the promenade
in San Diego and or in Santa Monica and people are,
(14:41):
you know, protesting our war and I'm seeing that and
I'm like this kid, that's just my mind is small
at the time. I'm coming from Kentucky. I'm not expanded yet.
I haven't grown, I haven't become you know who I
am today at forty three. Right. But so I rather
then except that something was going on, I put it
(15:03):
in a bottle. You know, and I pretty much so
really quickly pissed away the music career. I did have
a good friend, dat niece who he did the gift,
the documentary about Jason Dunham. Dave was doing a doc
on Dunham way back then, this is four and he
was already working on that documentary and he had read
(15:25):
my story. So he brings me in. He manages me
for a little bit. We play the roxy in La.
We do. You know, it's a lot of stuff, but
more and more, I wasn't showing up on time. I
wasn't My heart wasn't in it, Nor was my heart
in wanting to live a normal life. So I was
struggling with something that I didn't know I was struggling with.
And you know, God bless my my ex wife for
(15:47):
keeping me alive during that time, because you know, it altered.
I went. I walked away from music and at that
point left La, came to the Bay Area. It was
kind of done. I started pursuing, you know, a different life.
What was I going to do? What job was I
going to have? How was I going to do this?
Went to school to become a firefighter, started doing all
(16:08):
of that around the same time, I'd make one more
run with a different band, bands called Highway forty two.
It always proved that I was good, Like it always
proved that like I knew, like I was positive, that
I could write, I could play. I could say that
band had no agenda. We were just rock and roll
and we were nominated for Los Angeles Music Awards like doing.
You know, we were no agenda whatsoever, and we were awesome,
(16:31):
you know. And again we just couldn't keep together, and
I couldn't keep together, and I was a mess man.
I would blackout, drunk, fight, just madness, and I don't
understand what's going on. I still don't know. PTSD is
barely a phrase at this point. You know, this is
two thousand and five. I remember my friend that I
(16:54):
was in the Marine Corps with was working with a
group that was just starting to study PTSD and Vietnam veterans.
They weren't even addressing us yet. You know, we now
look at today and what we've done for that that's
incredible because it's been we had twenty years of dudes
fighting wars twenty years straight. That's not healthy.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
What got you out of this and kind of on
this straight and arrow.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I mean, it was a little mix of everything. But
the first thing that happens is I become a firefighter.
Worked my ass off to do that. My dad was
like when I was young. He was dealing with the
same alcohol problems I was, probably because of Vietnam, but
he never stopped working, right. He was always grinding, and
that's what I saw. So I grinded to become a firefighter.
(17:42):
I get that job. I start working for the city
of Palo Alto. Still not okay, I'm still a drunk.
I'm like putting down two three bottles of wine a
day when I get off, you know, shift in the morning.
I have a family, but I'm not I'm taking it
for granted. You know. I wish I could go back
and give my son when I get my four year
old daughter, now when he was that young, you know.
(18:02):
So this happens. I'm a firefighter and now I'm pursuing that.
And something clicks, Like something clicks, I want to play
music again. I end up getting injured at work. I
tear my shoulder out, and I go back to the
phone and I call Dave Nice, I call the guys
from Pacific Record Brian Wickn I call all these guys up,
(18:24):
and I'm like, hey, I've been writing music all this time.
Like my son's like three years old, four years old.
I'd love for him to hear what I did. Is
there any way that we can go back at this?
You know, I have a friend that's dealing with post
traumatic stress really badly at this time, meth addiction. I
write a song called Your Wars Over. I want Your
Wars Over to be. Pacific Records invites me down. They
(18:46):
like what I'm doing. We sign a contract with them,
and I'm back in motion. I'm back in motion and
I got purpose again. I though at the time am
wearing this really big Darth Vaders style mask pretending I'm
perfect and nobody else, you know, and I'm here on
this healing hand. You know, who the fuck am I?
(19:07):
I'm just a drunk asshole that knocks holes in his
walls when he's you know, when no one's around. And
I'm out there preaching this and doing this and it
gets success. Our first release was actually called This Is War.
That was about when Isis surged originally and attacked. We
shot a music video to that. Dave Nies comes in
(19:29):
and makes this video it's got a lot of live
footage from fighting a war over in Iraq. It's this
epic video and it takes off, and before I know it,
I go from no following, no social media, no nothing,
because I just hadn't done any of that, to one
hundred thousand views on a video. And then things are running.
And now I've got, you know, one thousand, two thousand
(19:51):
and ten thousand, and these Facebook followers are showing up,
and all this thing is like starting to come together,
and each time I'm learning a new lesson. Like what
people said they would take care of her do for you,
you basically had to do yourself.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So we released several albums. Things are moving along and
I am driving to Sacramento. I'm really dealing with alcohol problems.
At this point, we're going down to play a show.
I tell the band in the car, this is this
is our last show. We're done. I'm a hypocrite. I
(20:26):
can't be this guy anymore. I can't play this character.
I can't tell other people to get better when I
can't fix myself. My marriage is a mess, my life
is a mess. Just six months prior, my father dies.
His passing was sudden, it was. It was not expected.
We sat in the hospital for twelve days before we
took him off life support. It was the most grueling
(20:49):
week of my life. For two weeks of my life,
I'm in this hole. I had created these beautiful things,
music videos, we shot on the sets of Iron Man
and you know, did all these cool things. And this
kid from Kentucky is really from a really small town,
had showed everybody that it's possible to get out. But man,
it was a fraud. You know, I'm fake, at least
(21:12):
I feel that way.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
A lot of us.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah. Yeah, So I tell the band that I'm done.
We get to a hotel. We meet another band, Vetted,
which those guys are out there crushing it, and we're
jamming in the hotel room and my phone rings. I
get a phone call. Look at it. It's my my
wife at the time, and I'm like, oh, she never
calls when I'm out, you know, doing this stuff. And uh.
(21:37):
I walk outside and she's just BALI just completely in tears.
I'm trying to understand what she's telling me. And she
tells me John, Mike is dead. Mike is dead. I'm
like Mike who She's like Mike Mike killed himself, and
I'm like, well, who are you talking about, Mike, Mike
who She's like, John, your fucking brother shot himself and
(22:02):
everything I knew was gone, Everything Joe that I knew
was gone. This is on camera. We were filming. We were,
you know, covering this. We had been shooting a documentary
for the last two years. And I can't talk. I
can't think. I can't My big brother when my dad
was dealing with his alcohol problems, he was nine years
older than me. My big brother taught me how to drive,
(22:26):
coached my sports teams, taught me how to talk to girls,
did everything. And then he was the one that kept
fixing me when I was fucking up. You know. He
was the one that kept writing me when I was wrong,
and he was the one that I looked up to.
Is this guy can never do anything wrong. You know,
he could never do anything wrong. We went head to
head at the hospital because my dad had a dn
(22:48):
R that we found twelve days into him being on
life support. I didn't want to let him go. Mike
wanted to do the right thing. You know, my big brother,
who was my best friend my whole life. We stopped
talking six months before he shot, we had just started
communicating again. We used to go to Bengals training camp
every year, so it was a random text where I
(23:11):
think we were talking about, you know, somebody on the team,
Aj Green or somebody, and like what are they going
to do this year or something, And we had just
opened up our conversation again, you know, and just started
talking and I honestly think he already knew what he
was going to do. Wow, And I think he just
wanted to, in a way, yeah, in a way say goodbye.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
So you've taken what happened to him, though, and you've
embarked in a whole different journey now I help other
people dive into that.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
For me, honestly, within to the six months of him passing,
I went crazy, writing, producing, working, doing music right, and
I put two songs in the top two hundred in
the world in like six months of losing down. I
was I was now under the umbrella Universal with Concord Entertainment,
(24:00):
and I'm grinding and I again still feel like I'm
not doing enough. TV appearances aren't enough, songs aren't enough, videos,
aren't enough. None of it's enough. I made a decision
that I wanted to basically manifest what I was feeling,
Manifest what my nieces and nephews were feeling, Manifest what
(24:21):
my mother was feeling, my brother's wife, this whole family
that had been ripped to pieces by this battle, the
struggle that nobody even knew my brother was having. And
I said, how could I do that? And my decision was, Okay,
I'm going to put on a big ass heavy pack
and since there's twenty two veteran suicides every day, I'm
going to walk twenty two miles a day, every day
(24:44):
with fifty pounds on my back and day yeah, yeah,
I mapped it. I decided since I was a firefighter
in Palo Alto, I would start there. That's where my
life is today. And this first hike, we went from
Palo Alto to San Diego because San Diego is where
my dad went to boot camp. So it was like
(25:04):
where it all began, right where we all got that
envision in our heads to be marine. So I do
that walk absolutely hillacious, mass destruction. We end up midway
through it, I take over the whole project because we
were shooting in a documentary, and then I finish it, right,
(25:27):
you finish it, you crush it, you get through it.
It wasn't easy. It was the worst thing ever. And
I'll get to that at the end of the podcast.
But we go on this mission. I accomplished the mission.
I'm sitting on the other side of the mission and
I'm probably the most depressed I've been in my life.
Right and along the way, Jay, what's amazing about it
is a California firefighters are a cool thing on earth.
(25:48):
They really are, Like I know, you've probably met a
lot of us over time. They are amazing. I got
to a point where I needed help and they were there,
and we went almost down the whole state with support
just based solely on California firefighters, you know. And we
can do that because we make good money. We you know,
we're supported by our cities. Where so just a good
(26:12):
group of people that are ready to give their time
and their effort when effort is needed. So many people came,
they shared their stories, they became part of us. You know.
There are people from that first hike that I'm still
you know, I still communicate with weekly. There. You know,
people that now have told me and I've done this
at work. I've I've brought people back to life. You know.
I call them the heart starters, the old CPR arms.
(26:34):
But there are people now that that attest to the
work we did save their lives, brought them. They stopped.
They decided that that life was worth it, and everything
that we were talking about was worth it, and and
love was more important than leaving it, you know. And
I see it as nothing that has happened back there
means anything right now right here, you know, it happened
(26:57):
back there. That's a different world, that's a different time.
My body took the stress, but my soul and my
heart has to realize that I'm living for right now.
I jump off of every cliff in front of me
because I know if I jump, other people are going
to come with me. And I was thinking about I
was writing biography stuff, and I was thinking about just
all the different people I've inspired and now watching their
(27:19):
web of greatness and the things they're doing, and it's
so cool to see, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Pain to help others through their and that's exactly what
you've done. And you had another walk too, right from
Paris Island to Cincinnati.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah, we I end up. For the next two years
after the first hike, I'm making a film. I'm going,
I'm shooting, I'm interviewing. On instinct, I go and knock
on Lev's front door. I go and knock on the
door of Leverage Management. Yeah, yeah, my guy. Yeah. So
(27:54):
I go down to Leverage Management and just knock like.
I'm like, I'm cool, right, And I run into like
an in turn that day, and I'm like, hey, dude,
I think you guys should know who I am. Here's
a film trip, right. And I had already met with
Unrealistic Ideas, which is Marks and Lev's doc company, and
I started adding people on Instagram from Unrealistic Ideas and
(28:15):
kind of trying to tie all the knots together. I
was supposed to have a meeting with Leverage Management. This
guy Paul Sadowski, who just released the show with Unrealistic,
hits me and says if they say no, I want this,
I want it all, you know. And we're like hell yeah.
So we work up to this. We decide we're going
to hike again. After Paul and I sign a contract,
(28:36):
we start moving towards that I want to bring it home.
I want to take my brother. I want to come
home with this energy that I had in California. This
madness is insanity. My wife just retires as a San
Francisco firefighter. I asked her, Hey, you want to do
this with me. She says, oh, yes, this sounds stupid,
(28:58):
so she is all in. We trained for months and months.
I get a call from a friend who says, hey,
I saw your brother. I lost my wife to suicide
last year. We were childhood friends, we grew up together.
His dad used to pick my dad up after a
bad car accident and put him in the bathtub to
be clean. You know. So we go out, We bring Paul,
(29:22):
We shoot an incredible film and really just a different
hikes in California. In California, I struggled, and this one
I'm feeling good because I'm sharing the pack with everyone.
You know, I've got this concept of sharing the weight
and the three of us. But no fire support not
the same. It's the South. It's all volunteer departments. It's
(29:45):
smaller departments. There's more politics there. There's a lot of
things that we're dealing with that aren't normal. Literally make
it all the way to northern Kentucky before we get
our first piece of support. We do have fire departments
along the way, But it's not like everyone's jumping out
of the rig like, hey, let me take the pack
for you, dude. You know, it's a total different world there.
And I'm not saying we didn't meet incredible people. Way
(30:07):
thirty two days, twenty two miles a day. We take
fifty pounds now and spread it between the three of us, myself,
my wife and Isaac Chandler. And lots of struggles throughout it,
lots of injuries, lots of you know, the whole thing
is a story on its own, and you know, we'll
chat about that at some point. I'll tell you all
about it. But it was insane. We get to northern
(30:31):
Kentucky and the world showed up. It was from Owen
County to Cincinnati, Ohio, four days of hiking, eighty eight miles.
It was a fucking parade. It was straight up pomp
and circumstances. We never didn't have a fire engine or
police vehicle in front of us with lights on. We
(30:51):
never walked off the road again. After grinding through the appellations,
almost getting killed by cars, this insanity, this near death
after near death, and then we paraded. They shut down.
I know you've been down to Paycorp. They shut down
during commute time the bridge from Newport, Kentucky to Cincinnati, Ohio.
(31:12):
My brother was a Newport police officer. When he passed away,
Newport brought the house. It was every apparatus that they
had in their whole city. Led us across this bridge
and into Cincinnati, where my grandfather actually was a police officer,
and you know, walk into pay Court Stadium. I finished
on the fifty yard line. I make a decision. Then
(31:34):
I put my pack down on that big b and
and I tell the press and I tell the world.
You know, today I start walking for me. You know,
I've been walking for Mike for for years. I had
this realization while I was out there that I hadn't
let off the gas pedal since Mike had died. We
come back obviously, you know Greg. I started approaching Greg
(31:57):
and talking to Greg after the hike and ended up
signing with Lowbell Music Group. We released our video Rise,
which has a lot of this story, and it rises
that twenty year grind. I've been on man and uh
just never quitting. And and that's that's the message that
I've always tried to give out. I'm not anything special, dude,
I can't go out on the football field with with
(32:18):
Joe Burrow and look good, you know. But but I
don't stop and I never have. And I learned that,
you know, through the hardships of life. And my goal
is always, you know, with with the music I released
or the work that I'm doing in the films. We're
writing a TV series right now, with these things that
(32:39):
it's always is it going to inspire? Is it going
to move? And is it going to change the direction
of somebody that might be heading the wrong way? So
that's it, you know, dude, an incredible story.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
I love it. I love your life of service. And again,
I'm sure your brother's proud of you now, and yeah,
you feel that. I'm gonna give you my last question.
I asked every one of my guests, give me your
unbreakable moment, the moment that should have broken you could
have didn't. As a result, you came through the other
side of that tune was stronger forever.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Yeah, so it's a shadow moment. When I was ten
years old, my father was hit head on by a
drunk driver. He for almost a year didn't walk, Like
I said, Isaac's dad used to come and pick him
up and put him in the bathtub. He sat in
a hospital bed in our living room for nearly a year.
I see you for a long time, really really bad.
After that, his body was crushed to pieces, but his
(33:29):
brain was there. His head was there. It's like the
only thing left in all of that. Physical therapist shows
up at the house to teach Dad to walk again.
And it's day one of him learning to walk, and
I'm this little ten year old on the couch watching
all this happen. She gets my dad onto his feet
and he's shaking, holding onto the rails and he's okay, honey,
(33:52):
take a step. And my father takes the first step
and his whole body shaken. Now his face is porn
with tears, snotting everything that could come out, and he
he stops and she's like, Okay, you did a great job.
That's it. And he just shouts, fuck you, I'm fucking
walking and he takes another fucking step, right, and I like,
(34:15):
just one after the other. He gets probably three steps
in and then like kind of collapses and they, you know,
get him and move him and and that's the dad
I knew. I didn't know the guy that that My
brothers had the one that was dealing with Vietnam and
dealing with you know, the alcohol and those problems. I
knew that, Dad. So I'm two hundred miles into my
(34:37):
first hype with fifty pounds on my back and I
can barely walk again, and like I can't walk, we
pushed through. I end up having a whole group of
people push me physically to end this last this this
night ten or whatever it is, push me to the
finish line, throw the pack off, and just exhausted and
(35:00):
angry because I know if I keep going I'm done.
I go back. I decide, I make a decision. I'm
not going to drive it until I have to quit.
We have to figure something out. I decide at that time,
I'm asking for help. I do it publicly on a
social media post. By noon that next day, there are
(35:25):
a thousand messages in my inbox. There are people driving
from different states to come meet us. There is a
whole world happening now to pick us up and move
us the other four hundred and five hundred miles down
the coast. I decide that I can take the pack off,
that I don't have to carry my own burdens anymore.
(35:46):
I can give it to someone else to help me
through this, and I don't carry the weight, you know,
for for a lot of it. And it was amazing,
Like as we move forward, my feet started healing, things
started happening. I never never didn't take a step, but
he damn right, I didn't carry all my burdens anymore.
And that was it, man, that made me real life. Yep.
(36:09):
Well it made me realize I'm not alone, you know,
and and that that really has inspired me moving forward,
you know, just to take these fucking risks in life,
you know, because I'm not alone, man.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Absolutely not. John Preston, I appreciate you sharing your unbelievable story. Again,
you've lived life of service for others, for you, He's
had several songs, hit songs rock and pop now right, yeah,
yeah again, combat veteran Brols incredible messenger to help those
twenty two try and lower that number of twenty two
(36:41):
veterans today who take their own life. So sorry about
your brother, but it wasn't advantge. Just look at the
people you're helping. Dude.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Oh, he's saved so many lives with a mistake. He
made so many lives. So I'm grateful. Jay rises out
right now, so anybody wants to check out the new
single Lobell Music Group. That's our grind man, that's our
grind and we're here, we're standing on top of the
world and we're going to keep moving. We're going to
keep pushing lover.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
John Preston May keep walking. We'll walk this walk together
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Brother, Absolutely, thanks Jay,
Fox Sports Radio News
Host
Jonas Knox
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