Emerson Hart – Page 2 – Sandra's Hart My Over 60 Lifestyle Journey

FROM HURRICANE TO BEST FRIENDS

When my daughters were teenagers and shared the same room they fought so much that I had to move my young son out of his room and give it to one of the girls to keep them from killing one another. The problem? One was extremely neat and the other lived in chaos.

One daughter loved John Denver, Glen Campbell, Mac Davis and horses. The other Billy Idol, the Eagles, Buffalo Springfield and fashion. Two peas of mine living together but definitely not in the same pod. And as a young widowed mother, the last thing I needed was refereeing two teenagers drawing lines in the sand.

Thankfully, we survived those hormonal years…..well….kind of. They got more beautiful and tolerant of their differences, my son moved to Los Angeles and became a rock star and my hair turned white.

My Chaos Aquarian daughter is the same today as she was way back then. She has so many things going on in her life with the children, her job, horse farm and charitable social causes. Her big heart and life is always like a whirling dervish. She thrives with energy and a schedule that would drive me into a straight jacket. When I visit her I am always folding and cleaning and straightening up. Just hearing about her day makes me want to take a nap. Okay. It’s my mishigas, not hers.

The other half of the dueling teenage duo is my creative and very Neat Virgo child. A hard-working flight attendant, she moved from New Jersey to Chicago two years ago and lives in a lovely apartment in the suburbs, not far from the airport.

She also has remained the same with an astute eye for fashion and decorating. She always has her apartment fixed up beautifully. She is, like her mother, a ‘Rearranger’. What on earth is a ‘Rearranger’ you ask?

(Wikipedia: Rearranger. Inconvenient habit certain females acquire. i.e, constantly moving furniture around.)

More than once my daughters have reminded me, "Mother, when we were kids, don't you remember? We'd walk into the house after school and the furniture would be completely rearranged."

Laughing on the outside, but crying on the inside, because, you know what, they are right. I don't know why, but somehow when I had a lot on my mind, I rearranged the furniture. In the worst of times* I was rearranging the furniture probably about every two months or so, as though that task was going to help me clear out the mishigas in my head. But, it did. It really made me feel good…therapy, at least for awhile.

Whenever I am starting to write, I rarely begin my day at my desk to write without the beds made, the laundry going, or the dishwasher running. I have to have all those tasks at least started and working before I can actually sit down and concentrate on my real day job.

Watching my daughters grow up into accomplished and compassionate mothers and career women has been well worth those fractious teen years. And it is so true that we all have our own ‘craziness’ going on. All three of us have grown up to become more accepting women. My son has benefited by a successful career trying to explain it all!

*BEHIND THE MAGIC MIRROR by Sandra Hart

The Father Who Might Have Been

(The following is a reprint of an article written about my son and I by Brain And Behavior Research Foundation May 27, 2014.)

Holidays are sometimes very hard for those with depression and other forms of mental illness, so I wanted to share our story again to give hope to families who are in chaos due to mental illness to give them hope that research and cures are our biggest priority. We care about you.

In Schizophrenia’s Wake, a Son Laments the Father Who Might Have Been

Sandra and Emerson Hart, Professional Actress from “Romper Room” and Grammy-Nominated Singer/Songwriter, Lead Singer of Tonic
Sandra and Emerson Hart

Emerson Hart is a singer-songwriter. In the 1990s, he co-founded the Grammy-nominated rock band Tonic and, as the lead singer, has written hit songs for the band’s multi-platinum albums. Emerson credits his mother, Sandra Hart, an actress and writer, for his love of language and performing, and his late father, Jennings, a singer in his youth, for handing down his musical talent. But Jennings also bequeathed to his son a darker legacy.

The most salient fact of Emerson Hart’s life from earliest childhood, one he kept hidden for years, was his father’s mental illness. Untreated and only belatedly diagnosed as schizophrenia, it manifested itself in abuse and rages that cast a shadow of unrelenting terror over the family, which included Sandra’s two small daughters from an earlier marriage. A decade ago, Emerson began confronting the family “secret” with the release of his first solo album.

Emerson Hart, singer/songwriter

“I love kids and I wanted to be a father,” he says, “but I felt that if I continued to keep that stuff inside, it would poison my relationship with a child.” (He now has a daughter, Lucienne, age six.) Since he has gone public, many fans tell him, often in tears, that his story is theirs. This is a main reason he and his mother so strongly support the work of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation—there should be a way to diagnose and treat these illnesses before havoc is wreaked.

The story began in 1968 when “Miss Sandra,” then the Baltimore-area hostess of the children’s television show “Romper Room,” found “the perfect husband.” Jennings, she says, “was handsome and charming, had his own business, lots of friends and a beautiful Irish tenor voice.” He also, she was to learn, had great skill at hiding the symptoms of his illness.

After Emerson’s birth in 1969, Sandra struggled to keep the family functioning. Then came a night when goaded by inner voices that told him she was unfaithful, Jennings, brandishing a screwdriver, lunged at her. She was somehow able to knock him off balance long enough to grab the children and flee. Arrested and hospitalized, Jennings was finally diagnosed and treated, but as soon as he was released and returned home, he stopped his medications and the violence resumed.

Unable to help him and increasingly concerned for her family’s well-being, Sandra divorced Jennings in 1977. Then, she says, the stalking began. “He stalked and threatened me constantly. I was certain he would kill me.” Instead, in a stranger-than-fiction twist, Jennings was killed, or so it is presumed. In 1980 he vanished without a trace, believed murdered by a jealous husband.

Sandra Hart – “Behind the Magic Mirror”For Sandra, Jennings’ death brought relief, but closure came slowly. Although she married again, happily, and resumed a career as a television and film actress, it took her decades to exorcise the past. She did, finally, by writing about it in the book “Behind the Magic Mirror.” (photo above) (Romper Room fans will recognize the allusion to the show’s “magic mirror.”)

For Emerson, the death brought nightmares. “To this day,” he says, “when I’m under great stress, my father will appear in my sleep, sometimes alive, sometimes dead, smoking a cigarette and staring at me.” Because of the unresolved circumstances of the death, Emerson long feared his father might return. Another “hammer over my head,” as he calls it, was the worry that he would inherit his father’s illness.

Ultimately, however, his deepest feeling is sadness. “If my father had had the right diagnosis and medication early on, if treatment had been possible, with all the good qualities he had going, I know he would have been an awesome father.”

Bedtime Stories

Her white hair was pulled so tightly away from her face and knotted on top of her head, stretching her wrinkled skin so that it morphed her face into something scary. Her high collared black dress disappeared into the colorless quilted cover that fell to the floor from her throne – the fourposter bed on which she lay against a mound of pillows. I stood there looking up at my grandmother, not moving. I was afraid. She looked like the witch I had seen in Snow White. This is the only memory of my father’s mother that I have stored. I’m not sure where those impressions are kept and what neurons are fired in my brain, but that is all I have saved. That one experience, that one moment in time, the snapshot saved of my father’s mother when I was four.

Maybe in reality she was not at all what I remember, but somehow a child’s eyes can be clairvoyant, more often than not. Stories I have heard since about my grandma fortify that perhaps I was able to see things as a four year old more clearly than the adults around me realized.

Seventy years later, my scary grandmother lives on through me in several ways. I have inherited the gene for her white hair and I also have her bed. My life has unfolded, year after year, while sleeping in the comfort of that big cherry fourposter. I have nursed three children, cried myself to sleep when I lost a husband, then my parents, and throughout many nights have kept my grandchildren safe from their ‘boogeyman dreams’ in my scary Grandma’s bed. And from the comfort of that old bed I have been blessed to have been awakened slowly by 15,330 beautiful Eastern sunrises popping over the New Jersey Shore hills.

My ancestors supposedly bought the German bed made of Kirscholz when they traveled from England to America. Large slats with high posts secured by substantial wooden screws hold the bed together, the horse hair mattress laid across the slats, provided them and the generations to follow, comfort fit for a king.*

I was told by my father that William Tecumseh Sherman, a relative of my great, great grandmother Sherman has slept in my bed. Whether this is true or not, I have no proof, but my father, a southerner, always called it “The Burning Bed,” referring to Sherman’s march through Atlanta. I have a suspicion that is why the valuable bed that my Ohio mother loved, in his eyes, was not so valuable to him and therefore, his Yankee daughter was more than welcome to it.

So I guess what it all comes down to is the eye of the beholder. My scary grandmother through the eyes of a four-year-old, maybe wasn’t so, so scary after all, but just very ill, and the ‘Burning Bed’ through the eyes of a southern gentleman was really just a beautiful work of German craftsmanship. In most things in life, it comes down to one’s interpretation. Our brain gathers the information, maps it, and then we interpret it in our own way because of prior impressions.

My son will get the poster bed this summer and it will begin a new life with another generation. Yankee based since 1949, she will travel to Nashville to live in a bedroom in a lovely plantation house in Confederate country. She will be loved and well taken care of. I think that will suit her just fine. General Sherman may roll over in his grave, but that is another story for another time.

* Horse hair mattresses priced in six figures last for years and years and are now owned by mainly royalty and billionaires.

Facebook Friends: I Know You-I Met You Not

It is no hidden fact that social media has changed the world, has changed our lives and how we connect to people. I have been thinking about this lately, and more so after I recently posted a blog regarding Kosovo and my son’s band tour there in 2000.

I know there are people who have hundreds of friends on Facebook, but I am very selective about whom I bring into my inner social circle. I have no strangers within that group, but I do have a few people that are connected to me by others and I also have a few people who I’ve known, or feel that I have met, because the connection through mail, email and then Facebook has been consistent throughout the years.

One Facebook friend in particular I have electronically known for 14 years, but never have met. His name is Bill Putnam, a photographer and journalist whom I first interacted with when he took pictures of and also wrote a very nice article about the band Tonic’s stop at Camp Bondsteel where he was stationed in 2000.

Since the lead singer/songwriter of that band just happens to be my son, Emerson Hart, the friendship began when Bill offered to send me some of the pictures he had taken of Emerson and the band during their visit during their performance at Bondsteel. Ever since that kind gesture, from time to time, I have been in touch with Bill, following him through the various phases of his life and career, both in and out of service for our country.

Bill has evolved from email-sometimes-friend to Facebook friend and has attended a few Tonic Concerts and generously taken pictures he has shared with this Tonic mother.

Electronically throughout the years I have witnessed him grow as a person, evolve, as my own son has done, and always enjoyed his photo journeys. I have invisibility watched him become a very competent photojournalist who is not just satisfied with standing still in his craft, but always experimenting, learning and challenging himself.

From his postings I gather he likes a good beer now and then with friends, loves certain sport teams, has a good sense of family and most of all, has an eye for what we want to see in the world.

Although I may never ever meet Bill Putnam in person, (the percentage chances of that unfortunately probably are pretty high), I feel I already have had that good fortune through his photography and photo posts. Bill is not afraid to tell it like it is. He crosses the lines for us. He is an interesting and talented guy, indeed, who years ago I “met” because he was a kind enough kid to send me some photos of my son in concert at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo.

PS. You can find out more about my Facebook friend Bill Putnam at http://www.billputnam.net

Good Morning Kosovo 2000

In June of 2000 my son, Emerson Hart, and his band Tonic traveled to Kosovo and Bosnia to entertain our American troops. It would be first of many more war zone tours the boys would do in the ensuing years, including going in to Iraq, where Emerson almost was blown away by a mortar that landed near Saddam Hussein’s palace where the band was staying.

During the Kosovo tour our men and women soldiers there were tired, home sick, but always the best audience when any American came over to entertain and spend time with them. The boys always had such a warm greeting whenever they landed at the various camps along the way.

Emerson, whose father served in the Army during the Korean War, has always felt it was a privilege to be able to give back to our troops protecting our freedom. So when I recently discovered a diary post from the Tonic website from June 2000 of the days they spent during that Bosnia tour I thought I would share it with my readers and you Tonic fans. The sad reality is that Fourteen years later the Middle East is still at unrest.

Day 1
7 PM….Dinner at the venue

9 PM….Showtime! The show was great…. these men and women are the best audience ever considering the fact that they’re not allowed to leave the base unless on patrol…and it is a dry base-no alcohol at all. They really made us feel welcome.

11 PM….The deputy mayor of the base presented us with a certificate of appreciation. Then we met with a lot of the soldiers, signed autographs and took many pictures.

1 AM…… Sleep at last!!!

Day 2

8 AM…… Why are we up so early?

9 AM….Breakfast!

11:30 AM…… Flight to Skopje, Macedonia. They have to reroute our flight around Serbia since they will not let us fly in their airspace. The flight takes us over Italy and the Adriatic Sea. A one hour flight now takes three hours….the sites were very beautiful.

2:30 PM…… Arrive Skopje, Macedonia… Wait on the French military installation after the Chanuck helicopter to pick us up to take us to Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.

3:30 PM…… Helicopter arrives. We find out that the gear had been delayed coming over the border from Germany , so now our helicopter has to sling load the gear in a huge metal compartment. That compartment is then hanging from the bottom of the helicopter as we fly… 16,000 pounds!!!!

3:35 PM…… Flight briefing and Flak jacket and helmet fitting.

3:45 PM….Departure for Bondsteel. As we crossed the border between Macedonia and Kosovo, the escorts put on their Kevlar vests and lock and load their M-50 machine guns.
Emerson gets to ride shotgun next to the pilot and the flight engineer. Jeff rides next to the star board gunner. Dan rides next to the floor opening where there’s a soldier lying down keeping an eye on the cargo below us. Remy looks like he’s going to fall asleep.

4:30 PM….Arrive at camp Bondsteel.

5 PM…… Showers? I don’t think so..Dinner… Again… the food is really good.

6:30 PM…… Major Dillon presents us with coins from the base on behalf of the Brigadier General Sanchez. They even made a concrete star for us and they had us sign!

9 PM… Showtime once again!!!!

11 PM…… After the show we met more soldiers and signed a bunch of autographs. We had to be done by 11:20 so we could get on the chopper back to Skopje, Macedonia.

1120….Board the chopper… Jeff sits shotgun in the cockpit wearing night vision goggles. Emerson sits next to the gunner on the port side of the chopper and Dan sits next to the gunner on the starboard side. Remi has night vision goggles also, sitting in the rear of the chopper next to the open bay door. In flight we saw a house burning with all of the people standing outside watching it burn. Hard to watch.

12 AM…. Arrive Skopje.

12:30 AM….dinner at the Army base.

1:30 AM….Arrive hotel in downtown Skopje … SLEEP!!!!

3:00 AM… Emerson gets awoken by gunfire outside of the hotel. Needless to say, that was frightening!

Day 3

DAY OFF….Dan and some of the crew go into town to see the sights – – – Emerson, Jeff and Remi sleep most of the day – – that night we all go to town for a dinner that was great. The whole place is amazing… It’s weird to think that it was a communist country only nine years ago.

Day 4

10 AM…… Lobby call

11:30 AM…… On the chopper to camp to Montieth. On the flight we saw more destruction and empty houses than on the other flights… It was pretty surreal… Dan sat shotgun, Emerson rides with the gunner again, Remi hides in the middle and Jeff is in the back by the open bay door.

12:15 PM….arrive at camp Monteith. This camp has many more trees and we see locals working on the base, but it is much smaller than the other three camps we visited.

1 PM…… Lunch… Outdoor barbecue… Wow!!!

3 PM….Sound check

5 PM…… Resorting to sitting on the camp bus so we can be in air-conditioning… It’s 105°!!!!

6:30 PM…… Dinner with the crew in the commander of “Big Windy”, the flight crew that is been flying us all over Kosovo in the helicopters. Definitely some of the nicest people we’ve met!!!

8 PM…… Showtime… A lot of the soldiers that were at this particular show where about to leave for home the next day. They had been there for seven months. They were really rowdy and into the show. They were also REALLY ready to go home!!!!

11 PM…..Signing autographs and taking pictures with the soldiers….Are all such great men and women.

12:15 PM….Chopper back to Camp Able Sentry and Macedonia. Jeff gets to sit on the way back of the helicopter dangling his feet off the back. Emerson’s next to the Gunter again, Dan is in the middle and Remi is in the rear. This was the best flight. The pilot really pushed the helicopter to the max… Flew about 35 feet off the tree line. Like a roller coaster ride. Pretty unbelievable.

1:30 AM snack time at the mess hall at Camp Able Sentry.

3 AM….Hotel… Lights out… Sleep!!!

Day 5

Fly to Amsterdam and begin the rest of the European leg of the tour.

This whole trip was such an amazing experience for us. Everyone was so gracious and kind. Playing for the troops was truly amazing and fulfilling. Besides, when do you ever fly in a chopper into a war zone!!!!

Jersey Strong

New Jersey. It has a reputation of oil refineries and wild south New Jersey shore kids (who in reality are not from the Jersey shore.)

New Jersey is called the Garden State because it does produce the most magnificent fruits and vegetables. Nothing better in the summer than a succulent Jersey tomato, corn that is sweet as sugar and juicy, colorful peaches. We have acres of cranberry bogs, flower farms and fruit orchards where if you’d like you can pick your own baskets of apples and berries.

Our ocean and bays provide us with all types of wonderful seafood, some of which is exported as far away as the Scandinavian states.

We have miles of beaches for swimming and boating in the summer and mountains for skiing in the winter. All within an hours reach of each other.

Monmouth County within the state of New Jersey has more horses per capita than any other state in the union and acres and acres of riding trails for the equestrians.

New Jersey is the only state in the union who also can drop the New and just be recognized as part of the states name ‘Jersey.’

As far a education goes, New Jersey is home to Princeton and other universities that are part of the many fine colleges that we have here in our state.

So the next time you think that New Jersey from mile to mile is filled with Sopranos and soprano types please don’t be misled. From Thomas Edison to Marconi who sent the first overseas telegram from New Jersey to Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Dana Evans, and of course, Emerson Hart. We have a lot to offer.

In spite of our small size we are a mighty state full of diversity in landscapes and peoples and industry. So New Jersey Housewives, and all the crazy reality shows based in New Jersey, in my 42 years of living here, I have never met anyone like you. Thank Heavens!

YOU CANNOT BE REPLACED

If you have followed my blog you already know how I feel about chance meetings. There are no chance meetings and every encounter we come across has to take us another step forward.

Stepping out of his truck, his red hair cut in a crew and a big broad smile he greeted me and Sophie in the cul-de-sac. He was part of the team that had come to refurbish the trim on my house.

Sophie was in her usual ‘this- is -my- territory-protect-everybody’ mode. He quickly understood and bent down to Sophie’s level and said “I’m here. I’m a friend…you’re so sweet,” and he caressed her behind her ears. Sophie was immediately his. I liked him right away, too. His name was Billy. Billy Egan.

The boss and he immediately plugged in all of their equipment to the outlets and a big music box with an iPod attached to it began playing music that I love, soft rock. Sofi and I went back to the deck and I continued with my next writing assignment.

During a break just before lunch I mentioned to Billy how much I loved his music. He smiled and seemed pleased. He only does this kind of work now and then he said because he has a source of income from speaking. Speaking? My reporter/writer ears went up. And that’s when he shared his story with me.

In a nutshell: Billy was an AP student and a varsity athlete but he was also addicted to cocaine which led to pills and eventually heroin. As his addiction grew his life changed, the downward spiral costing him his friends, his family and eventually his freedom.

He was kicked out of two colleges and after a stay in rehab and nine months clean he used again and overdosed. He ended up in jail and was left with the choice; prison or Drug Court.

Through hard work, sober houses and the structure provided by the Drug Court program Billy is coming up on five years clean from his addiction. He just finished his semester at Rutgers with a 3.8 GPA and is on the Dean’s list and is pursuing a career teaching teenagers and urban environments or alternative high schools.

I found out Billy is a member of the You Can NOT Be Replaced team and speaks to help those with addiction. He is taking the negative years of his life and turning them into a positive by giving back. Sound like familiar Karma?

Just like my son and I have been doing for mental illness awareness through Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. And my son through his other charities-each of us trying to give back in our own way. Taking what life has dealt us and making something positive of those life circumstances.

The You can NOT be replaced team does a concert and awareness fundraiser each spring in Nashville on the Vanderbilt campus and I am going to try and make a concert marriage here.

Nothing feels better than giving back, or the excitement of life throwing you a morsel of ‘no chance meetings.’

http://bit.ly/YCNBRvideo

http://www.YOUCANNOTBEREPLACED.com

BRAIN BEHAVIOR

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Lately, it has been hard to turn on the news. It seems as though there is so much violence among us that every day or so it easily makes its way into the headline news. And the most tragic element of it all, a great portion of the deadly violence is by persons who are mentally ill. Time and time again, it is not the guns or knives, but the instrument of death among us is a mind afflicted with mental illness.

Until we as a society wake up and make a conscience effort to erase the stigma of mental illness, arm ourselves with tools to recognize those who need help and take action by opening the attic door to the myths of brain disorders, the tragic news will only increase.

Why am I so compassionate about this? Because I care? Yes. Because I want to support research for cures? Yes. Because I am one who has recovered from the trauma of living with someone who was mentally ill? Yes. My husband was an acute paranoid schizophrenic.
http://bbrfoundation.org/stories-of-recovery/in-schizophrenia%E2%80%99s-wake-a-son-laments-the-father-who-might-have-been

As the article explains, recovery is sometimes a difficult journey for not only the patient, but those caught in the chaotic mental web that is spun around them.

I found my healing through my writing and my son, Emerson Hart through his music.

There is recovery also by giving back to society through knowledge and understanding that if diagnosed early before the illness becomes acute there is help and hope for those who are not able to rationally help themselves.

Within our communities and families let us all start a dialogue about how we can erase the stigma of mental illness and in the process save lives of both the afflicted and their potential victims. Brain Behavior is the issue, not guns.

The Final Cut

My son, Emerson Hart, released his second solo album today and on the inside cover is a picture of him in his studio in Nashville. On the wall behind my son is his grandfather’s fiddle and a grouping of family pictures, including a silhouette of me when I was about 13 years old. Seeing that silhouette reminded me of an event relating to my short hair in that period of my life.

Summer of 1946………

“Now don’t waste your time trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, young lady. Your curly locks you got from me, and they’ve suited me just fine!” Grandma used to say as she pulled and tugged at my golden mass of kink, taming the wildness on top of my head into thick braids tied with rubber bands at the ends. Much better her fussing with my hair than my mother, who would make the plats so tight my scalp would hurt for days.*

September, 1952………..

I was twelve and I had never had my hair cut. Ever. Except I did have bangs, but that was the only part of my wild flaxen locks that were ever touched. And to me that really didn’t count. I couldn’t wear my hair loose because it was like a big tumble weed on my head it was so thick. So my mother insisted and saw to it that I had braids for what seemed to me to be—-forever.

I was a cheer leader at Roosevelt School on LaBelle View in an industrial town on the Ohio River and in the sixth grade. To be a cheer leader for all of us girls chosen was really a big deal. But for me it was just the opposite. Almost an embarrassment. I had to suffer the humiliation of those braids when all my girlfriends had short hair. On Saturday nights I would hang out with my girlfriends who would wrap strands of hair into pin curls fastened with bobby pins like the grown up girls did. And I envied them for having mothers that understood.

But no matter how much I begged, my mother stood her ground and refused to budge regarding my golden braids – until her patience with my pleading wore thin when I was twelve. She went upstairs and got her big sewing scissors and with one final cut to each braid severed them from my head. Wack. Wack. Just like that. Then she sent me next door to my Aunt Dorothy who did hair from her house, to try to make something of what was left of my hair. Needless to say, that wasn’t easy.

I really should have been traumatized by the harsh and finality of my mother’s chopping off my braids, But at the time I was so relieved from not having those braids anymore, that I didn’t have any thoughts about what my mother did and how she went about it. It just was what it was and I grew into a teenager inside of myself instantly once those those appendages were removed from my head. Kind of a free-at-last .

But it wasn’t until forty five years later when my mother died and I was going through her things did I remember about those braids.

It is true that we never know what is in someone’s heart, a lesson I learned too late in my relationship with my mother.

I loved her very much, but sadly, I never understood how painful it must have been for her to cut from her daughter what she never had. There, in a long faded blue box that probably once held a necklace were my two golden braids-remarkably intact with the rubber bands still securing the silky curled ends.

Who Knew?

Break dancing? Who knew? In 1984 my then almost 15 year old son and I traveled through Egypt and Israel. We were fortunate to have been invited onto to a secret underground air base in the Israeli desert. The pilots and their families gave my son a birthday party while there and he was the hit of the party break dancing for all of them. They had never seen anything like that in person before and were taken with my young sons moves. (Ahhh…the days before everyone was on the internet and social media).

Little did we all know that my son, Emerson Hart, would grow up to be a twice Grammy nominee, Billboard awarded for the most played radio rock song, ASCAP award for the best television theme song, movie theme song writer (including hit film “American Pie” multi platinum artist, lead singer/ songwriter for the band Tonic.

It is against this remarkable backdrop of self-achievements that my son will release his second solo album, “Beauty in Disrepair” on April 15, 2014, “Beauty In Disrepair”, a follow up to his last “Cigarettes and Gasoline” solo effort that garnered two top 20 singles.

emersonhart.com. .

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