T’was almost 10 years ago when I saw Jump, Little Children. I had just moved from the town I was born, raised, and lived my whole life in, Los Angeles. I was lucky enough to have worked with a band that sold a bunch of records, but was over dealing with the whims of a junkie, and had to move on….for my own sanity.

I moved to Columbia, SC….which seemed perfect at the time. I needed to downshift in a big way after a four-year blur that featured all in all about 75 ‘days off’ in 4 years. So, I move to this little town to run a record label, and am given a list of bands I was supposed to investigate to see if any would be right for our label. At the top of that list was this band Jump, Little Children.

I collected opinions on the band from my newly hired assistant “could change the world”, to the local club owner “a bunch of F*&ing F^&*ots” (Hmmm, yes, I wasn’t in Los Angeles anymore), and felt it was probably wise I check them out on my own. A funny thing happened on the way to do that. The rumors started to spread that Sony had offered them a boatload of money, and we couldn’t compete. The then president of Sony was flying to Augusta to close the deal, and that was that.

Undaunted, I went to see the band. They were playing at this really cool theatre in Columbia (as I quickly learned, maybe the ONLY thing that you could use the words “really” “cool” and “Columbia, SC” in the same sentence for). The band were playing acoustically to a small, but sold out crowd, 50% of which were seated in Barca Loungers (the reclining seat your grandfather has). The band were doing this whole ‘Wizard of Oz’ “theme” and everyone was dressed like a character in the show. To be frank, the singer (dressed as Dorothy in a dress, with pigtails) looked like an idiot to my jaded, LA, music business eyes.

Anyway, it was clear that this band had everyone in the room 100% enraptured with what they were doing. Although I still wasn’t buying into the music completely, I could see there was a ton of talent, and maybe the dirtiest word in today’s music business “Potential”. I watched the show, and for the first time, at least ‘got’ what this band were trying to do. Still, the business side of me knew Mr Sony was going to wrap this up, and I couldn’t get emotionally invested in this band.


Still, since I was there, I figured I should meet the band. I approached ‘Dorothy’, the singer, who was slumped against a wall, ratted out pigtails barely holding on. I walked up to him, stuck my hand out, introduced myself, and….he was a complete jerk. He wouldn’t look up at me, mumbled a few responses, and was basically acting like a pompous art school kid . You heard it here first, folks – Jay Clifford was a jerk to me the first time I met him. It took me nearly two years to find out he had a 103 fever, probably shouldn’t have played the show, and was concerned about getting ME sick….plus not feeling terribly social. I can honestly say 10 years later my first encounter with Jay was the only negative one I have ever had.

I didn’t bother meeting the tin man, or the cowardly lion. I simply left.

Despite the success of all 6 founders of the label at the time, we knew we couldn’t go head to head with Sony. We were, after all, a ‘boutique’ label, and these were decidedly non-boutique bucks. So, we scratched them off the list, and moved on.

Probably a year and a half passed before the name Jump, Little Children surfaced again in the halls of our little label. The Sony thing had fallen apart (word was the band passed….which seemed odd), and other random labels had come calling, but the band was still unsigned. I had heard the band cancelled a show because the drummer had a test…all the signs were pointing to ‘pain in the ass art school kids’. Danger! Danger!

I had listened to the music when I first got to SC in 96 (Licorice Tea Demos), and found the melodies, and vocal phrasings fantastic, bordering on the brilliant, with lyrics that were really well thought out….still at the time it was a bit, um….’organic’ for my taste.

Back to ’97 now - I called the manager at the time, who sent me a tape of a recent show (this is how long ago this was, kids….an actual cassette tape). I found mostly the organic Muesli I had heard before, but there was a song called ‘Violent Dreams’ on the tape. Certainly not a radio song, but it hinted at a change in song structure (or songwriting philosophy, or both), and for the first time, I was truly interested on a musical level in Jump Little Children.

I secretly went to see the band again (not sure they know this, actually) with a musician friend from LA who was staying with me at the time. I heard another song that piqued my interest (“all those days are gone”, I think), and off I went.

I asked my partners in the label if I could give it a crack. I got 5 instant thumbs up. Even though Jump hadn’t signed, and the record business had sort of gotten tired of waiting for them, I knew it would not be a deal that our little label could afford. I had been lectured from the president of Atlantic, and the head of A&R when I took the job not to get involved in bidding war bands. Here I was, flying to NYC, and I was going to ask them if I could pursue a band that had (reportedly) turned down one of the biggest deals of the prior year.


Luckily, I exploited one key fact about all record label presidents….they have all got egos bigger than their corner offices. Both the president, and the head of A&R had sent one of their best men out to land this band a year earlier, and he had gotten nowhere.

“No way you can close Jump. No way.” Said the President. “They’ve turned everyone down, forget it” said the head of A&R. ‘What if I could?’ I said (mind you, I still had not MET 80% of the band). “If you can sign Jump for a sane amount, I’ll make it happen” Mr Prez wound up saying. Mr A&R, still unconvinced, left the room without saying another word.

I went out to meet, and spend a few days on the road with this band. That is when I fell in love. Not only weren’t these five guys pompous, I found them to be the five most genuine, down to earth musicians I had ever met. My upbringing in music was the Sunset Strip heavy metal days, and although that scene had its advantages, and good points, when it came to the guys in those bands….it was ALL about them. With Jump, it really felt like it was all about everything BUT them, and frankly, maybe a little too much so at first.


Still, the bonding I did with those guys in Winston-Salem (meeting a couple families really helped my perception of them), Asheville, and I believe Knoxville sent me down a path that would (and will continue to) influence the rest of my life, and would dominate the next eight years of my life.


Back to Mr A&R. We had negotiated, and came to the point where we needed some dough from the mothership, and so Mr A&R was going to fly down to Athens, and decided if this band was, frankly, worth it.

The plan was for me to pick Mr A&R up in Atlanta, and drive him to Athens. I would ‘prep’ him in the car on the way to Athens, and get him up to speed (I had sent him a tape, and it turned out he never listened to it). Mr A&R (who was, by then co-president of the label) was the first person off the plane, and simply looked at me without saying hello, stuck his hand out, and said ‘cell phone’. I assumed this meant he needed my cell phone which I handed to him. I figured, OK, I still have an hour (we were cutting it really close to meet the band before the show). Mr A&R proceeded to ‘run calls’ through his assistant from the time I handed him the cell phone to the time we were parked outside the coffee place we were meeting the band. Finally, (we were already 10 minutes late) I said “G****** it, Mr A&R, get the F***off the phone, and focus for a few minutes”. Annoyed (but not nearly as much as I was), he wrapped up his call.


Before I had a chance to speak to him, he simply said “Give me the names of their three best songs, the ones that might be singles”. I did, and he wrote those on the inside of his left hand (I found this odd, cause he was left handed). Then he said “what is the singers name?” “the Swishy ones name?”, and on and on…and wrote those on his right hand (I knew at this point he had at least looked at the press photo I gave him where I wrote in what each band member does below their names). The next words out of his mouth were “don’t worry….the Captain America speech….I do it all the time”, and he got out of the car.

We went inside, and I must say….He did his Captain America speech, and did it well. You would have thought he knew the band inside and out. All the time my stomach was turning with disgust, but I knew I wanted this band, and it would be a coup for me, and our little label if I could succeed where many others had not.

After the meeting, we went to the show, which Mr A&R spent about the last 75% of sleeping in one of the chairs upstairs at the Georgia Theatre. I didn’t bother waking him up, I knew the moment he walked in, and saw the place packed to the gills with 800 or 900 people….we were home free.

Sure enough, on December 14th, 1997, in the basement of a dump called the Lion’s Den in NYC…I signed Jump, Little Children. I say I signed because even though it was a team effort in a sense, no one cared 1/10th as much as I did, and I think everyone involved knew that.

That night at the Lion’s Den, I heard for the first time a song called ‘Cathedrals’. “Well, I thought, we have at least one single….let’s make a record”

And make a record we did. Ironically, even though the deal was pretty healthy, we didn’t have a ton of money to make the record with. We decided on a fellow named Brad Jones to produce. Brad had done some very cool pop records, and decided we would mostly work at his studio called ‘Alex the Great’ in Nashville. As one of the band put it on the first day “Alex the Dump” was more like it. But, as we became endeared with it, and mostly with Brad himself, the sessions started to take shape.

Brad & Jay in particular really clicked. Both were ‘muse-o’ types, who had a great work ethic, and indeed at one point we had to kick Jay out of the studio after about 72 hours straight without sleep (or a shower, I might point out). We also did some sessions at a great studio in Memphis with a lot of character called Ardent.

We all make mistakes, and I can think of two significant ones I made with Jump, and this was the first one. We made a great record with Magazine. But, we had staple songs like ‘Dancing Virginia’ and ‘Quiet’ that we chose to leave off the record. Although they wouldn’t have fit the vibe of the record, we at least knew they were fan favorites. I’m not a person with many regrets, I believe strongly that you always make the best decision you can at the time, and move forward, and live with, and adjust to the consequences. I now acknowledge this was a mistake, but I have no regrets.

This left us with a whole new Jump, Little Children. We now had a band most people considered to be a granola, ‘hippie’ (some would say) band that went out, and made a pretty damn good guitar pop record. The suits at Atlantic were puzzled, but acted as if they were committed.

‘Magazine’ was released on September 1st, 1998, and I must say….everyone in this organization did a damn fine job of creating the biggest buzz possible. Sales records were shattered everywhere we did instores (in fact, the 550 copies of Magazine we sold on September 2nd, 1998 is to this day the biggest single day, single store total in the history of Manifest Discs, {now essentially defunct} breaking the record set by some guy called Dave Matthews).

We were selling records all over the South, and it was the only thing people in NYC at the label could talk about. “how can a band with no radio sell that many? There must be a mistake, or some kind of fraud”….until we did it again the next day. No matter how many times I jumped up and down screaming and yelling…NO one at Atlantic could believe the passion of this band’s fans until the photos, and sales started pouring in. Ironic that no one in NYC was buying it, considering they had seen the EXACT same thing 3 years prior with Hootie, and the Blowfish.

The radio started to build, but two things were clear. #1, the only radio we were getting was radio that I, or the band’s reputation was getting. #2, the first single ‘Come out Clean’ was not a hit. ALL labels care about are hits, and to be fair, they are correct in doing so. The records that were being sold were mostly on the buzz, and the band’s rep, rather than on the “I love that song, where can I get the album?” reaction that has made many a person very successful, and wealthy.

The buzz eventually faded, and it was time to move on to a second single. ‘Cathedrals’ was the obvious choice, and so off we went.

Almost immediately, one thing was clear about Cathedrals. It did create a reaction. If you played it, you got phone calls, and requests….if you put records in stores, people bought them.

Again, though, with the notable exception of Boston, where four stations were on it at once, our action was only in the South….created by us. Make no mistake – there were people at Atlantic that busted their asses for us, and they are friends of mine, and friends of this band to this day.

But, there were also people at Atlantic, unfortunately the people in power, who weren’t convinced, and didn’t commit resources the way they should have. Plus, by this stage my partners in the label were well out of favor in the public’s eye, and the label had specifically had enough of their manager, who wasn’t exactly taking his client’s fall from grace, um, gracefully.

So, for the first time, I will say this publicly. Shame on Atlantic Records for letting ego, and politics get in the way of this band’s career. Its long been water under the bridge at this point, but we had a chance, a chance that was essentially quashed because our organization was out of favor, and the powers that be did not want to deal with us any longer. These aren’t the ramblings of a bitter former manager – indeed said manager is probably at the highest point in his life right now. These are simply facts, which have been reconfirmed for me by the friends mentioned above, and other people who have since left the company, and for some reason felt compelled to discuss it with me.

So, ‘Magazine’ fell apart, and we entered what I like to call the ‘dark age’ of Jump. Everyone was so emotionally spent from the drama, and the songs weren’t really coming. The band’s touring base was probably at an all time low, and basically everyone was pretty damn burned out with being in Jump. Honestly, looking back we probably all should have packed it in then.

But, we didn’t. After nearly 18 months, some songs were starting to flow, and there was at least some creative energy flowing, and that felt good.

In the meantime, I had quit the sinking ship that was my formerly potential filled label, and left the South for the more familiar confines of Los Angeles. This place has many bad qualities, but like it or not….it is home to me.

Another thing that took place in this 18 months, was the formalizing of my relationship with the band. I had essentially been acting as the band’s manager for a long time prior to this, but now the acting could stop, and I officially became Jump, Little number 6.

Out of guilt, Atlantic funded record II. Not only did they fund it, we spent a fortune on it, essentially fired the producer, and made two records (or, did we make the same record twice?). As much as Jay, and the band clicked with Brad # 1 (Jones), they decidedly did NOT click with Brad # 2 (Wood). Brad Wood was a really great guy, with stories until your ears were bleeding, and your stomach hurt from laughing. But, in work ethic, he just did not see eye to eye with the band. The making of what would become ‘Vertigo’ was filled with emotional highs and lows.


Eventually, we could no longer handle the dysfunction that was the making of the first Vertigo, and had to sack Brad, and go to David Leonard, a wonderful guy, and really underrated producer who Jay and the band clicked with immediately. We finished Vertigo in a posh studio in Nashville, and I was happy that for once in their lives (maybe the only time – who knows?) the band could ply their craft in a studio environment befitting the level of their talent.

Vertigo was finally finished in the early part of 2001. For a moment, I will stop, and look directly into the camera, and say something I have always wanted to say. For many fans, this band came and went with ‘Licorice Tea Demos’, still for others, the simplicity of ‘Magazine’ was what Jump meant to them. For me personally, give me Vertigo. In my record collection, Vertigo stands out as one of the 10 best pieces of music ever made. Yeah, you can’t always understand what Clifford is saying, and yeah, there are much better pop songs on Magazine, and for that matter on ‘Dim and the Dark’, but in my opinion, Vertigo is a masterpiece. For the rest of my life, if anyone asks me to play them one album I worked on to define my time in the music business, I wouldn’t play them an STP, or any other record. For me – it is, and always will be Vertigo.

Unfortunately, Atlantic didn’t feel the same way about Vertigo that I did. When I played them the mixes, jaws dropped, and eyes shut. Not because they were enthralled, because they couldn’t believe they’d spent that much money on an album with “no single”.

One of the two, or three defining moments of my life came on the next trip up to Atlantic, to talk about what to do with this masterpiece. Atlantic had sent a song out to some key decision makers at radio to see what they thought. I walked into a meeting, and less than 5 minutes later walked out. Jump, Little Children would no longer be part of the Atlantic Records family. The fact that Atlantic were honest, and the band were dropped wasn’t really what crushed me. The fact that I knew we were going to have to fight Hootie for the rights did crush me.

One of, if not the worst nights of my life came when I left that building. I went to a movie theatre, to see ‘Almost Famous’…I had seen it (twice, actually) before, but it was in the $3 theatre, and I needed some ‘me’ time. I sat through the film twice more that night, to be honest most of the time crying (the attendant just left me in there between showings when she saw the shape I was in), and knew I would fly to New Orleans the next morning to tell the five guys that meant the most to me in the world that, talent not withstanding, they probably weren’t going to be rock stars….ever.

The bomb was dropped by me in a Hotel room in New Orleans, and the feeling in the room was consistent, and palpable. We had all just been kicked in the emotional nuts for about the 5th time in 18 months, and we were all kind of over it. Honestly, looking back we probably all should have packed it in then. (By the way – big props go to Bobo Mcnabb, who while we were all ready to stick our heads in the oven in that hotel room, had as positive an attitude as you can have in a situation like that, and even though it was falling on deaf ears, was trying to make a strategy on how to move forward.)

Next came what I like to call the Dark Ages, part Two. The six months following the dropping from Atlantic were the worst of my life. A broke rock band had to battle a rich rock band over the rights to a record that, even in a best-case scenario, wouldn’t sell 50,000 copies….and everyone involved knew it. As badly as I want to write a 10 page diatribe on the goings on of that next year, I will not. Suffice it to say, shame on the five humans who crushed the lives of people who supposedly were their friends, and if nothing else fellow musicians. Although I do not believe in church, I very much believe in God. I truly believe there is one human being involved in the “negotiations” around Vertigo who will be punished in the afterlife for his actions. Call me bitter….call me a cab….whatever. I believe this to the core of my soul.

Finally, mercifully, and probably too late….We got the rights to Vertigo back.


We released Vertigo on September 25th, 2001. We did it all ourselves. To this day I really believe my best accomplishment in the music business was not the 60,000 copies of Magazine, and not anything to do with Stone Temple Pilots. The 18,500 copies we sold of Vertigo, 100% with our own sweat and effort is my proudest moment of my nearly ten years with this rock band.

The band experienced a sort of re-birth with Vertigo. Attendance at shows was way up, and there was an energy not completely unlike what the band had experienced in the early days…Maybe not to the same degree, but there was an energy from the fans that had returned, and it reinvigorated us all. I credit this to the rise of the internet, and our ability to connect with the fans. Big ups go to saucy Mattie B for bringing an old, and very non tech-savvy man kicking and screaming into the internet age. Oh, the irony of what I do now (you’ll have to wait for that).


We had a whole new army of fans, and we could get to them. They would do things for us, like put up posters, and promote, promote, promote. And, it actually worked. The band’s tour base was growing, albeit slowly, and we felt like maybe we could rise from the ashes.

The Vertigo legal debacle had put us all in a big hole. The next year was spent slowly digging ourselves out of that hole. But, we couldn’t see the number of the truck that hit us, but we knew it was a park n fly. Yes, the beloved vehicle that had gotten the band so many places, failed us in the fall of 2003. We could have bought a new Park N Fly with the money we had to put into repairs during that tour, but we always had to get to another show next week (or the next day)…and that meant finding $3,000, or $5,000, or even $8,000 to fix that beast….nearly every week. Alas, it seemed that we were finally beaten. Honestly, looking back we probably all should have packed it in then.

We didn’t think the band could afford to tour anymore, and there weren’t enough songs to make a record, so we really did think about packing it in then. But, along came two angels, that, at least for a while, saved this band.

Back afloat, and with more songs, in the winter of 2003-04, we made another record. This was more of a ‘pre-fabricated’ solution than the other records had been. We had just enough money, just enough time, and just enough energy to make it, and to put it out.

The making of the next record was amusing, even fun, and oddly enough, relatively drama-free. Producer Rick Beato, who was quite hot at the time, took a chance, and decided to produce the record. Despite Rick giving the band fits here and there, I believe ‘Dim & Dark’ is a damn fine piece of music. That’s one of the things that is so great about being around this band – every piece of music is so good, and I am so proud of it. There is nothing (well, OK….maybe the DVD, but that’s not a piece of music….oh, by the way….that was my idea) about this band that I am not incredibly proud of. What we accomplished, yes…but the music, especially.

‘Between the Dim & the Dark’ hit shelves on April 20, 2004, and right away it just felt different. The fans, who so arduously had supported us throughout the early stages of ‘Vertigo’ were to a great degree, gone, and it (at least to me) just felt like it was truly an effort on its last leg. We had a small, and very committed label, but the business had changed a lot since the time we released ‘Vertigo’, and ‘Dim and Dark’ was simply over matched in a market that didn’t know where to put it, and an industry that never knew where to put this band.


We toured ‘Dim & Dark’ through the fall of ’04, and the Spring of ’05. Some of you know, but many of you don’t. I left the organization after the Spring ’05 tour. Mr ‘wah-wah I hate computers’ started a dopey little website that had grown into one of the worlds top portals in its genre, and I could no longer do both jobs. I can honestly say 2005 has been the best year of my life. A woman I love, a successful business, my health….I really couldn’t ask for any more.

Ironic then, that for the last six months, I have felt a bit of a empty spot in my heart. Maybe even in my soul. There is a kind of bond you develop with people when you go through good times, and bad…when your emotions, and mental well being are pushed to the edge, many times by things you have no control over. I went to war for the better part of eight years with five human beings, and I can honestly say I will never know five better people. I’m so glad we never packed it in.


Thank You to Jay, Jonathan, Matt, Evan, and Ward. To this day, I believe in your talents, as well as your hearts. No matter where our lives take us, I will always be your brother.

John Caldwell.