Jay - On the Cusp of His Future

(This is the second post of the day and non horsey. Scroll to the next one if you wish to skip this one.)

I love it when students stay in contact with me after they leave my classroom. After two years together, you become very close and care about them - deeply. When they leave in May at the end of the second year with me, it is a real wrench and I always have a good cry the last day of school.

Jay Thoennes is one of those students that I cried over when he moved on to 6th grade.

Jay and three other former students who were in my class at my surprise retirement party last May.

Jay and the entire Thoennes family (I taught older brother, Drew, too) have stayed in touch over the years. He is now a senior in high school and his future is very bright.

In 2015, Jay began a YouTube channel which has grown to nearly 64,000 subscribers. He is quite musical and has a beautiful voice. This exposure caught the eyes of some music producers in Los Angeles and Jay was invited to appear on The Voice. He and his family declined because, if Jay should happen to win, then he would be under contract to those producers for ten years, which was not appealing to them.

Jay continued putting out music on his YouTube channel, and he was contacted again by some more music producers in Hollywood. They were interested in bringing him out to L.A. and doing some demo tracks. After talking to my son Cole (who works in the Nashville music industry and could give the family some insight into contracts, agents, the legitimacy of the producers and their offer etc.), Jay flew out to L.A. last May, signed a contract, and went into the recording studio.

His first single is to be released soon (I think January 26 on Amazon, but I am not sure), and he is giving a kick-off concert next weekend. To my delight, I was invited to come as Jay's family's guest to the concert.

As you might imagine, I am very much looking forward to watching him perform. I wish Jay every success - he was such a nice 4th and 5th grader, and has grown into a wonderful young man.

And just maybe Jay will follow in the footsteps of Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, and Shannon Hoon and be the next person from Lafayette to make it big in the music industry. (He's already up on the Famous Birthdays website due to his YouTube success.)

Regardless of how his recording career goes, I am happy for Jay and proud of him as well.