Jason Ricci is one of the ten greatest blues harmonica players of all time, according to blues historian and leading musician Adam Gussow. He played on Johnny Winter’s Grammy-winning album Step Back. With the Paul Shaffer Band, Tom Morello and Zac Brown, he helped to induct the Paul Butterfield Blues Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On September 29, Gulf Coast Records released Behind the Veil by Jason and his band, The Bad Kind.
In 2011, some poor choices landed Jason in jail. However, what began as a nightmare became a gift, as he told me recently via the app Riverside. Here are eight lessons Jason learned the hard way, but you don’t have to.
At the end of each insight is a related question to reflect upon.
1. The worst thing to happen to you may be a gift.
For the first ninety days of imprisonment, Jason refused to have anything to do with anyone. He seethed with anger, in part because the felony he pleaded guilty to “was for something I didn’t do”—hitting a police officer. “I deserved to be in there,” he told the audience at the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica annual conference in August. Just not for that offense. (There were two others that Jason did acknowledge as legitimate charges under the law.)
Eventually, he decided to join some fellow inmates in daily exercise. He went to yoga classes. He began reading books offered to him by the jail’s library. One in particular, Freedom on the Inside, suggested that people can find freedom even in places where others control everything they do. Being free in this context means rethinking how one sees oneself and one’s place in the world. Several months after he went to jail, he thought, “I am finding a new freedom that I have never experienced before….So there’s a sense of peace.”
By the time Jason left jail, “I was in the best physical, mental, and spiritual shape of my entire life.” He says that none of this would have happened had he not spent those eight months behind bars.
What does freedom mean to you? How do you make the most of the freedom you have?
2. Taking responsibility for your mistakes is the first step toward overcoming them.
When Jason landed in jail, he blamed everything and everyone but himself. “Society, the world, the cop, Mom and Dad, my brother, the job, the music industry—[it was] everybody’s fault but mine.”
As he became physically and spiritually fit, Jason saw that the root of the problem was Jason himself. Several months in, “I’m starting to let go completely of the question, ‘Why did I land in this situation?’ Through yoga, meditation and prayer, I started to realize that my life was a mess before coming in here.” This realization led to, as he puts it, “taking accountability in action.”
It was only when he accepted the role that he had played in winding up in jail that Jason Ricci’s life started to turn around.
What mistakes are you blaming on others? How might you find peace by facing your mistakes head-on, as Jason did?
3. It’s worth taking the time to appreciate life’s simple pleasures.
Jason Ricci’s loss of freedom gave him a newfound appreciation for things we take for granted. Once he left jail, he found joy in simple things. “I’ve never taken a bath since that year without thinking about the fact that I have a bath,” because in jail he had access only to showers, which often were shared.
He values time alone “more than I’ve ever valued it before.” And “every single time I put ice into a glass, I think this is something I was not allowed to do.” More than ever, he appreciates the time he spends playing harmonica because “contrary to Hollywood, they don’t allow harmonicas in jail.”
What are some of the simple pleasures in life for you? How often do you appreciate having the freedom to enjoy them?
4. Reflecting on where your life is going yields a high return on investment.
During his months in jail, one thing Jason had plenty of was time. Once he got past his anger and resentment for being there, he began to see the vast expanse of time before him as a benefit, not a burden. “How many people get an entire year to see how their life is gonna go?,” he asked me.
After he was arrested, Jason was forced to dwell in a vast expanse of time. He looked at this as a valuable opportunity to improve himself.
During the pandemic, many of us had more time to reflect on where our careers were heading and what we wanted out of life. Now that we’re in a post-pandemic world and our busy lives have returned, we must make the time for serious reflection.
How might your physical, mental, and spiritual health benefit if you regularly reflect on your life and what you need to do to improve it? What would it take for you to do this?
5. Doing more with less and being grateful for what you have are the gateways to happiness.
In jail Jason learned to do more with less. “I want things, and I desire things,” he told me. “And our Western society in particular sells me on this idea daily, that having the perfect body or the bank account or the harp gear amplifier with the Lone Wolf pedals and the Jason Ricci custom microphone and Jason Ricci customized harmonica from Blue Moon harmonicas” will bring happiness.
When the possibility of achieving those things is taken away, it’s pointless to desire them. Then the question becomes, “How many different ways can I rearrange these few things [that I do have] to do multiple things?”
Jason’s found himself asking why he wanted the things he wanted in the first place. “Anytime I reach for something external, thinking it’s going to bring me happiness,” he says, he is guaranteed to wind up miserable. “I realized I have no way of enjoying the happiness that it’s going to give me until I can be grateful for where I am now.”
The next time you find yourself pining for something you think will bring you happiness, might you find more satisfaction in simply enjoying what you already have?
6. The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.
Jason Ricci quotes this saying when he tells people about the transformative role that jail played in his life. Commonly attributed to Mark Twain, the quotation may have originated in a sermon that Minister Ernest T. Campbell on January 25, 1970 at New York City’s Riverside Church. The great thing about what Minister Campbell said is that it applies to believers and nonbelievers alike.
For Jason, who always considered himself a religious or spiritual person, it took going to jail to find out why he was born. “It was no fun to care about me and watch me go out and smoke crack and shoot heroin and be gone for days at a time, sabotage my career, sabotage your career if you’re in the band with me— none of those things are fun,” he laments.
Upon his release, Jason began mentoring others in 12-step programs who had done some of the things he did and felt worthless. They felt “they are not worthy of success. What’s important to know is that success is not what we achieve.”
Jason now sees that the purpose of his life is to use the mistakes he made “to reach people that have made those same mistakes or maybe won’t make them as a result of yours.”
Do you know your purpose in life? If so, what do you do to serve that purpose? If not, how might it be beneficial to discover what that is?
7. Your most overlooked career asset is your mind.
Jason’s conviction took away his ability to play music. For a professional musician, this was a severe blow. How could he maintain his skill while he was prevented from playing the harmonica?
The solution was an unusual one: he practiced in his mind. He ran “scales and arpeggios in my head, which is just as effective as playing them, maybe more.” (Arpeggios are a musical form in which notes in a chord are played in sequence, one after the other, rather than simultaneously.) Jason’s mental work was structured, focused, and rigorous.
Jason says he emerged from jail a better player, even though he hadn’t played for eight months. “The muscles in my cheeks were gone, so it took a few weeks to get that back,” he says, but the intense mental work he had done behind bars enriched his playing.
If you devoted a portion of each week to thinking intensively about what you do in your career instead of doing it, how might this enhance your work? What would it take for you to achieve such deep focus?
8. You are not your career.
The most valuable takeaway from Jason’s experience in jail is that what you do is not who you are. “Having my identity tied to being a musician was a potentially deadly mistake that I made for many years and fortunately lived through, through grace alone,” he wrote to me in a text. “Identity and occupation need to remain separate for my health and well-being spirituality, mentally, emotionally and physically.” As much as Jason values being a professional musician, he finds more profound meaning in being a good person.
It might seem odd for a professional musician to value character above career, but it is because he views his life this way that Jason Ricci is more successful and happy than ever. In the past, when he was doing well financially in his career, he sometimes “felt miserable and purposeless. Conversely, when my career was in the gutter, like [when I was] in jail, I felt centered and full of worth and purpose.”
If you look at Jason’s social media presence, you’ll see a man constantly thanking his fans and friends worldwide for their support and belief in him. In his popular YouTube videos, he frequently acknowledges the role that band members, producers, agents, and technicians play in his formidable accomplishments. He is passionately loyal to the people who have helped him succeed, and they respond with unwavering dedication.
Jason Ricci demonstrates high-character leadership through accountability, gratitude, humility, and loyalty. We will be enriched professionally and personally by following his lead. His music is smoking hot, too.
Do you define yourself by your career? If so, how might you be better off if you challenged this idea of who you are?
Book recommendation
If you found Jason’s story inspiring, you’ll like a new book called When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America by Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes, with Amanda Banh and Andrijana Bilbija, coming November 7 from North Atlantic Books.
“You don’t need to teach me about social distancing,” says one of the people quoted in the book. “That’s my life already.” What could be an unbearably heartbreaking work becomes something much more in the final section, which is devoted to detailing solutions in which, as Adler and Burnes put it, “homelessness truly becomes rare, brief, and nonrecurring, in which no one experiences homelessness alone, and in which no one feels helpless about this issue.”
Read the full article here