00:00:00
Speaker 1: Good everyone, welcome to conversations. We have a real rock star as a guest today. We've got to go back a little bit. In two thousand and five there was a reality program called Rockstar in Excess and j D Fortune entered it. Canadian singer knocked around singing songs and being in bands, so he ended it. It was to somebody who could front in Excess since Michael Hutchins had passed away. But fifty thousand other people we entered the competition as well, but j D Fortune won it and for seven years toured within Excess. He's coming back to Australia and he will be in Adelaide on the twenty second of October at the singing the Great in Excess songs. He joins us now from Canada. J D Fortune, how are you? Thanks for your time?
00:00:47
Speaker 2: Good here ground, how are you? This is a real treat for me, real trip for you to be here, So thank you, thank you.
00:00:52
Speaker 1: I look the first thing where but this is a zoom link so I can see you. You're looking fantastic. Thanks. You're not young anymore, no.
00:01:03
Speaker 2: Not by any means. I actually feel like I'm twenty five, but like what you know, But when I wake up in the morning, I realize I'm not twenty five. It's a bit, you know, got to go through the routines. But no, I've been taking real good care of myself for the last decade or so, and and just trying not to stress, you know, at all. I mean, but you can't avoid stresses in life. But I mean, you know, just trying to live and be grateful for everything and no matter what it is, you know, and that's gratitude has been my attitude. I know that sounds a little cheesy to say, but it really, it really does affect how you move forward in life when you just become grateful. You know, I don't take my audiences or the music or any success I've had for granted, so whereas before maybe when I was younger, that I probably did. And then, you know, you get older and you realize that it's not your time, it's the audience's time. And now that's why I think the shows are so much more powerful now and I'm I'm really into it now because I'm there for the audience and I love looking everybody in the eyes and getting to know everybody, you know, in that two hours that I'm on stage. So it's been a blessing.
00:02:07
Speaker 1: Tell us about the show. I mean, obviously in excess songs and we all most people know your history with the band, and we'll I want to go back. I want to go back to the early days. And when you're right, I'm kind of even decided the name of the town miss Mississauga. But it's a full inexcess show that you're doing.
00:02:25
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's uh. I have one or two originals in there, but I do some of the stuff that I wrote with in excess and record it and then you know, all the hits I and there are some cool stuff from the back catalog. You know that only like well like true fans will go, oh wow, they're doing that. Okay, I haven't heard that song played live in twenty years, you know. So yeah, that's I'm getting really excited. I know it's like four months away, but I'm super super excited.
00:02:50
Speaker 1: Can we get back to this start. I mean, You're the more I rate about you, the more interesting it is. I mean the childhood must have been a little sad. I mean, yeah, we took, we took to you and you're in Canada and then that we should know more about Canada, striv and Canidians with allies and strong allies, all members of the British absolute at you other than it's cold.
00:03:18
Speaker 2: Well, that's ninety of the story. Let me tell you about the other ten percent. The other ten percent is the three weeks we get in August that are beautiful, which.
00:03:30
Speaker 1: Is where you grow up, where you grew up.
00:03:33
Speaker 2: I was born in Mississauga, but I grew up in a place called Salt Springs and Nova Scotia, and you know that's uh where I went to my elementary school and then you know a little bit of uh Junior High, and then moved back to Toronto, auditioned for a school of the arts called cowthr Park. When I was like fifteen, I got in there. Then I got cast on a TV show called My Secret Identity with Jerry O'Connell.
00:03:59
Speaker 1: You got going too fast, man, you gotta go.
00:04:03
Speaker 2: I'm only at fifteen years old. Wait, you gotta, I gotta way.
00:04:07
Speaker 1: Joe was about missus Agua.
00:04:09
Speaker 2: Well, my formative years were spent in in the Maritimes, and then we did move back to Mississauga.
00:04:16
Speaker 1: And when you sign Maritimes Maritimes, that's the four Maritimes.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: So we have Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. Those are our maritime.
00:04:27
Speaker 1: Provinces now on the east west, east coast, east.
00:04:32
Speaker 2: Coast at Atlantic Ocean. Yes, I'm on what they call Atlantic time right now. So other than Newfoundland, we're like the furthest time zone in Canada, like the late, like the sun rises here, right, so we're earlier than everybody else. So you know, when it's when it's nine o'clock here, it's eight o'clock in the next province over, and then it's six o'clock two provinces, and then you know, you can get up to the west coast and it's four o'clock in the morning. They're four hours behind, you know. So Mississauga was cool, big place, lots of opportunity, but I really felt my roots were in Nova Scotia. My grandparents are from here on my mom's side, and they helped raise my sister and I for years and just got to be a I got to live in the country. Basically it was a dirt road. We lived on a dirt road, and yeah, I had a Honda CR eighty. There's no cop the furthest. Police station was about an hour drive away. For this paved road was about thirty five minute drive away. So I'd be out there like all day on the dirt bike, like just all day. And I thought that's what life was going to be until.
00:05:42
Speaker 1: You know, your mom and dad broke up when you were young.
00:05:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did, Yeah, when I was six.
00:05:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always thought I thought the fortune Fortune was a stage night. But Fortune your mom's maiden knife.
00:05:56
Speaker 2: That's correct. Yeah, Fortune is my mom's maiden name.
00:05:59
Speaker 1: It's pretty good.
00:05:59
Speaker 2: And yeah, some people they don't. They think it's made up. And then you know, some family will come see me and I'll go, that's my cousin, Adam Fortune. That's my cousin, Matthew Fortune, that's my other cousin, And they go, oh, that's your real last name, and I like, it's a real last name. Yeah, real last name.
00:06:16
Speaker 1: Did you have a relationship with your dad once? Once I split out.
00:06:20
Speaker 2: We were strange for a little bit. I didn't see him for eleven years at one point, and then the next time I saw him he was in a casket and that wasn't fun. And I hadn't seen him in eleven years and then I went, you know, to his funeral, but I talked to him and stuff, but just not physically seen him. But so that was kind of hard. But you know, it was one of those things. He passed suddenly.
00:06:44
Speaker 1: And where did the talent come from? You've got to You've definitely got a talent.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much, thank you coming from you man. Well, my grandfather used to sing all the time when he was you know, when I was in the car as a kid, he'd be singing all the time, from everything from John Denver to Elvis Presley to Dean Martin. He had this beautiful baritone, bo boom kind of voice, right, and so I would start singing with him. And that's really where I got it. From six years old, I had my first stage experience in front of all these maybe two three hundred people, and as my mom says, she said, you weren't nervous. You got up there and you sang, and as soon as you heard that, those people applaud You came off stage and she said, do you remember what you said to me? And I said no. And apparently I said to my mother, I want to do this for the rest of my life. And so I've been very blessed that I'm in this position now that I still get to go on stage and sing. So it's been you know, along a long road.
00:07:47
Speaker 1: My friend, and it's Ted Bumpson. It well, not sure we can chat about dies. There's always somebody though, when in those early years those formenty views, and normally it's a teacher who encourage you, you and spy with the fact you have got talent. But there was the old teacher that told you you couldn't sing what's in.
00:08:07
Speaker 2: On, Yeah, you're never gonna make it as a singer, and put salt in the wound. Then said, and by the way, you can't use this word anymore because it's the our word. I don't want to say, but you look our word when you close your eyes and sing. And I was like, so then I spent my whole career like like just not blinking, just like, don't close your eyes. And then someone said why why are you not blinking? And I was like because my music teacher said I look, I got news for you, mate. You look pretty, you look pretty weird right now. And I'm like, oh god, so yeah.
00:08:43
Speaker 1: I never say that teacher again.
00:08:45
Speaker 2: I did. I did, and she was just as crass, just as like, oh she had not matured. I was at a liquor store. I was buying some wine and I saw her there. One of the people said, oh, hey JD, and I you know, kinging. I went through the door, Hey JD. And this lady turned around and she came up to me. She said, are you still being a little jerk? Excuse me? I had no idea who she was. I didn't recognize her. And she's like, oh, you were always a little jerk in my class, and then sous she said that. I went, Uh. It was like it all came back, and I was like, excuse me while I go throw up out. So I or whatever, because yeah.
00:09:28
Speaker 1: I give you a callest for self reflection. I mean, were you a little jerke?
00:09:32
Speaker 2: No? No, I just was poor and she didn't like poor kids.
00:09:37
Speaker 1: So yeah, I had a poverty impact on you. Obviously this stuyed with you.
00:09:42
Speaker 2: That thought, Well, it just made me not want to ever be there again. And I'm doing okay, but I more money, more problems, you know, So I have it had a nice even even balance. I don't spoil myself. I bought my first brand new piece of furniture in ten years yesterday. So it was like small victory, you know what I mean, what was it about a recliner?
00:10:04
Speaker 1: I know, Oh you are getting old. JD's Fortune is my guest, folks. He was twenty second walked over at the GOV with his full band doing all those great inexcess songs back after the break. My guest on conversations is JD. Fortune. That's his real name, his mum's name. It's not a stage name. Mum and dad separated when he's only five, raised by his mom and his grand grandparents, and his grandfather sort of inspired him to sing love being on stage. I don't think school really agreed with you though, I mean, what ambitions did you.
00:10:38
Speaker 2: Have in a rock band? I think really that was it. It was so I was so laser focused. It was just anything to do with music. I was in it. At one point. I was in three or four different bands as a young teen and then you know all the stuff. But like it was, I was in a different school every year until I left school. So for eleven and a half years, I was in a different school every year. So think about that for a second.
00:11:08
Speaker 1: Was that because of your mom moving around?
00:11:10
Speaker 2: Financial Yeah, having to move and having to leave one town and go to another town or one part of the of an area. Yeah, my mom had two kids and was working three jobs. And I never and it was just normal. By the time I was on my like fifth or sixth school, it was just like, okay, just another school. I was always the new guy. I was always getting picked on. I was always being analyzed, always being judged my whole life. And so you know, it's kind of like it's like I got used to it as a beast of burden, would you know. I just was like, whatever, it's always going to be there, and it's really nice now that, hey, I don't have to go sit in a classroom, but be that I can. I see it now that it actually made me who I am. And I wouldn't change it for anything. I wouldn't like change it. I wouldn't because is you know, even though I don't have like I have friends of twenty thirty years, but I didn't meet them at school, if that makes sense. You know, I don't have a lot of school chums. You know.
00:12:10
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask that school reunions would be a thing that you really couldn't attend.
00:12:16
Speaker 2: Which well, which one do I get invited to? I was never there long enough to you know like that.
00:12:21
Speaker 1: So you lay school and there's a few jobs on your resume. There's no down the bathroo. Yeah. Yeah, but music was not wise the ambition.
00:12:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, music was always the goal. Everything else was just to subsidized music. You know, everything that I did for work, even you know, joining the army and stuff, which I thought was going to be a career for me. But you know, after my two or three years were kind of up, it was like, okay, what am I going to do? Because the next contract they wanted to sign is fourteen years, and that's called your IE, your intermediate engagement. Your first one's your BE your basic engagement that's three years. Then your IE is fourteen, which is the big chunk of it, right, And I was I really had to go think long and hard, and I just decided not.
00:13:03
Speaker 1: To Why the army? Initially, well what in spot.
00:13:06
Speaker 2: Did you My grandfather, you know, he was he was a vet, you know, World War Two, and he he was on his deathbed and he I went to see him and he said, it's too bad your dad didn't carry on the military tradition in our family, and I was like, Pop, I'm going to I love you so much, I'm gonna go en list right now. And I did, like the next day, I went and listed, never thinking I was going to get in. And a couple months later I got a call from Captain Narozembski who asked me if I was still keen on becoming a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, and I said yes, And then my grandfather made a full recovery while I was in basic training. What it was, Yeah, you know in the movie when they're standing on your on a rifle in the rain, and that the sergeant standing on the rifle in your hands and you're doing push ups. That looks really cool in the movies. In reality it is horrible.
00:14:02
Speaker 1: So no, you have to experience that. I was. We have We had a national draft here in Australia during the Vietnam War, so I got I got drafted. So it was it was exciting.
00:14:12
Speaker 2: It was.
00:14:13
Speaker 1: It was exciting for the first two days and then my gosh, anyway, is it true you got into some trouble in the army that was that urban.
00:14:22
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say trouble, it was just it was just stupid like just young, twenty two year old bunch of us kids, stuff fights and just trouble making. And yeah, it was it was not I thought, you know, I was making the right move. And you know, I still have some military friends I talk to every day, and I have a guy that I went through training with who's retiring this year with a full pension. With a full pension, you are.
00:14:50
Speaker 1: It's find to believe looking at you as we are observe that you that he would be a retiring age I mean you you are.
00:14:57
Speaker 2: It's like a year older than me. Yeah, and that's it. He enlisted when he was eighteen, and he's done. He's done, And like that's so cool because he technically could go out and work in the private sector, but he's not. He's not going to. But but then there's like I'm a musician, so I chose, I chose this. I have no retirement plan. I have I have no I have to have health insurance when I'm touring. But other than that, well, we have pretty good healthcare here in Canada. So you know, if I ever get pregnant, I'm all right, you know, but.
00:15:26
Speaker 1: But that's that's a serious issue even here in Australia.
00:15:29
Speaker 2: We have healthcare in Adelaide.
00:15:32
Speaker 1: Here we have a group called Support Act and their role is just to support musicians who don't earn that that much anymore because very few of them had their superanuation plans. Right. Yeah, anyway, so you're out, You're out of the army. Is it a brave new world? What are you? What are you confronted with? What are you going to do?
00:15:51
Speaker 2: It was definitely brave because I when I end listened in the army, I bought a new truck. So now I had truck payments and no job. So I had to do everything and anything I could to keep that truck and I went landscaping to security too. I opened up my own martial arts school too. You know. It was really cool and got to meet a lot of fantastic people that way.
00:16:13
Speaker 1: Wait, did the martial arts You just sort of slipped that one in the martial arts?
00:16:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mississauga, I had. It was called maximum Security, Self Protection and Unarmed Combat. That's a bit of a mouthful, but maximum security was the name of my I didn't want to call it marshal art. There was it was a time when you couldn't use the the aggressive phrases, so you needed to do like unarmed protection instead of like I'm going to teach you how to break some both. So because I had a lot of from all ages, from you know ten to you know, sixty five students, and you know, yeah, well that was a And I just love working with people, I really do. I love performing for people. I'm a real people person.
00:17:02
Speaker 1: Pretty obvious the trick.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and it's just something new that's come out. I never used to be. I used to have to pretend to be you know, hey, oh golly gee, yeah we're But then it's because I was so angry and I just went, well, no one needs me to be angry. And then I, like I said, I became grateful and it just changed like that, like overnight. I woke up and I went, I feel like a weight'spin lifted off my back, like off my shoulders. And I've been loving my life ever since.
00:17:31
Speaker 1: The track You mentioned the truck that almost ended tragically though, didn't it.
00:17:35
Speaker 2: Well, I drove tractor trailer for a couple of years. I went to humber College and got my AZ license, so I was driving you know, fifty three foot trailers gross vehicle weighed a hundred thousand pounds hauling class eight corrosives like developing fluid. This is back in like the nineties when you still had to take developing fluid to a Kodak. So I would do a pin to pin. I'd pick up the chemical in Toronto, which would be Sydney, and drive them all the way out to Perth. That's how far, you know. And I ran in a tandem team. I had a team. It was me and another driver, so the truck never stopped moving while you're sleeping. The other guy's driving for ten hours and then vice versa. Takes about, you know, four and a half four days to get out there. Yeah, that was something. And then I it was the winter. There had to be I don't know, thirty centimeters of snow on this highway. And thank god I had a police officer behind me. He was off duty. But the scariest thing you can that can happen to you when you're driving a tractor trailer is you see your trailer in the rear view mirrors and it's centered and then when you see the trailer start going like this. And I saw that trailer go from my left mirror and it went out, and then it disappeared behind the truck, and then it just came around the other side like this. The whole trail I just and I and the whole truck went up. We went into the ditch. I tried to hold onto it. The tractor was in the ditch and the trailer was up, and I got out and I was, you know, this is before I joined the Army. Yeah, I'm eighteen at this point. And I got out and this off duty police officer was like, you're a kid. Yeah, I'm the kid. He's like, dude, what are you doing driving this day? When I you know, I went to humber here's my is a license. He went, I've been following you for an hour. You did a really good job. And then he said until you crashed it. Yeah, well so that was before.
00:19:31
Speaker 1: That was before the Army. I was on the impression.
00:19:34
Speaker 2: So when I went through basic training, I already knew about you know, uh, diesel shifting and tense speed and all that stuff. So I was very h I had some skills when I went in, which was you know.
00:19:44
Speaker 1: Was kid, you should have gone to transport instead of communications.
00:19:48
Speaker 2: I know, I know, well, I know, you know what you're right, I should have. I really enjoyed driving. Really.
00:19:54
Speaker 1: J Id Fortune is my guest, folks, front of Inaccess for six or seven years. He back on the twenty second of October at the GOV doing all those great inexcess songs and plus his own stage presence. Yeah, you're amazing. Back after the break, Welcome back to the conversations. Everybody. Look, if you just turned in, we're chatting to j D Fortune. JD is these initials. He's waving to you as though you can see, but this is radio JD. Nobody can see us. We're on zoom late.
00:20:23
Speaker 2: Jeezte what you say?
00:20:25
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're out of the army. You're doing all these different things. I guess you're singing though, in pick up bands and your own bands and along the way.
00:20:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would leave. We have open bases in Canada, so I could leave the bass and go play with the band. Yeah, and I invited some of my friends out, some of my fellow soldiers that came out, and there were always it was always a support system there. You know, we're comrades, you know, So that was fun. What isn't fun is like doing a gig in the middle of the winter and you got to make it back to the bass and you get snowed in somewhere and you're like, it's a big deal if you don't report for duty.
00:21:04
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, I went once and you did. I got away, go away with it. It was only twenty four hours. But nobody is it true? You were living in your car and you heard about this reality show rock Star and they were auditioning somebody to to front Inexcess. Can you can you take us back to that if you get in the car with your dog and your and your Kick album?
00:21:33
Speaker 2: Yeah? How you know about that? It was absolutely and that was stuck in my CD player. It was the only only CD in the car because the CD player didn't work because it had Kick from in Excess stuck in it. And I had like a whole summer before I heard about the audition for the show. I was the guy that was like, do you want to hear some music on a date? And they were like what, They're like, what is the way some success? They're like, oh wow, okay, anything else. I'm like, uh, nope, this or the radio. And so that was really strange. It was almost like I was manifesting it because I've been listening to.
00:22:11
Speaker 1: It for so long.
00:22:11
Speaker 2: And then I heard on that same radio in my car the advertisement to be that they were looking for a new singer. So I turned to my dog, Presley, and I said, I'm going to win this thing, and he just looked at me, and even he looked at me like what and like like, dude, you live out of your car and you can barely afford to feed me. How are you going to be the lead singer for one of the world's greatest rock bands?
00:22:39
Speaker 1: And I was like, how did it come to be? How did it come to that point that you're out.
00:22:43
Speaker 2: Of un I was staying with a musician friend of mine, and one day I came back. He said I could stay there for you know, a couple of weeks whatever, and all of my stuff was on his porch and he've found out that I was going to audition for this, and he basically said, I hope you lose. You're not a nice And the funny thing is I just played a show and this dude showed up.
00:23:13
Speaker 1: To the show.
00:23:14
Speaker 2: Heybody, how's it gold? I went, oh, okay, yeah, everything smells sweeter with a number one hit, you know, like, come on, man. So yeah, so that's how I ended up out of my car because of his good graces. And then but it didn't bother me. I mean, like, dude, I could live, I could live anywhere.
00:23:33
Speaker 1: What's the audition? I mean, there's all these other people. How do they know?
00:23:36
Speaker 2: It's just narrow throw out. Yeah, it's cutthroat business. Might that's what it is. And it went from fifty thousand down to five hundred, down to twenty five down to the fifteen of us that were on the show. They sequestered us into the Double Tree Hotel in Los Angeles, and we weren't allowed to talk to anybody. If you had if you wanted to work out, you had to go down in groups, and they had a producer that would make sure that nobody spoke to anybody. And you know, it's in retrospect. They were doing that because they want everybody that was going to be on that TV show to have been to meet for the first time on the show. So there's no like already cliques or all these two people who became friends, do you know what I mean? And so I really didn't get a chance to talk to anybody there. And then when I and you don't really even know who's on it. And then when they announced who was going to be on the show, I think they put it in every major publication across Canada. They had all of the other people, and I went, oh, I did see that guy and I saw her there, so this is cool, okay cool, And then we got there to the Paramore. It's called the Paramore Mansion. It's beautiful. The rumor is I think Houdini had it built or something like that. So back in like the twenties or something like that, or it was very lots of lots of pre Art Deco, like pre Art deck Go stuff like the It was really beautiful, but haunted.
00:25:03
Speaker 1: So one night I'm there, Oh, hanted, what do you mean haunted?
00:25:07
Speaker 2: One night I'm there and it's I think there's about six people left. It makes the house really empty at night, like it's a massive place. It's the size of a hotel. And I get out of bed. I'm gonna go to the fridge and I'm going to get some gatorade or something like that. And as I'm walking down the hallway right in my right ear, all I all I heard was Jason, like that's my name, and it was like, it's like somebody was standing there and whispered it in my ear and I went no, no, no, no no, and I started walking out of the like I could feel the breath on my ear. I'm not joking. So I go out and there's two security guards at the front of the you know thing at the front of the house. And I'm now wide awake because this just happened to me. And I said, hey, there's nobody else in the house right except for the six of us. They're like, yeah, affirmative, and I'm like, okay because this just happened to me. And one of the security girls like, oh, you met the ghost. That's the ghost, Like, oh yeah, he said.
00:26:11
Speaker 1: He told me.
00:26:12
Speaker 2: The Red Hot Chili Peppers were shooting a video there and they were supposed to stay overnight, but because something had spooked two of the members from the Chili Peppers, they were not good. They didn't stay there. They went to a hotel. And I mean, it's real. I wasn't the only one, let's put it that way. I wasn't the only one. I wasn't scared. It just really threw me because it was like two in the morning, and I thought maybe because it was TV. I thought maybe this was like part of the show that they were gonna prank us or something like they had a speaker somewhere that was just gonna go wake up, you know, like are something that that you couldn't you know? But it wasn't right. Yeah, well yeah, it was pretty much big. That was the funny thing. So even in the bedrooms you have cameras, right, so when you're sleeping at night and you change your body position in the camera goes because it's trying to focus on your movement. So as you're sleeping, every time you move, you're getting woken up by in the room. And it was like, oh my god, you're this is not real. This is this is so surreal.
00:27:16
Speaker 1: That sounds a little bit advisive.
00:27:19
Speaker 2: Well that's why we started to contract that thick right, because it even says stuff like you will not hold us responsible if a terrorist attack occurs, if there's a tsunami, if there's an earthquake, if you die of this, if you die of that. It was just like, sign your life away and we are not responsible.
00:27:36
Speaker 1: So what's it about me? You're announced as the winner, what's the emotion?
00:27:43
Speaker 2: Like I said, there's a hundred Christmas mornings all at once. It was just every Christmas morning and ones I'd never had that I dreamed of. All came true and my mom was in. My mom was in the audience and my sister, so I felt really proud that she was there. My mom's been my biggest supporter, hence why I took her last name, you know, or to honor her, because she's been the one that's been by my side my whole life and just supported me. And my grandparents, but they're no longer here, had that same thing. They supported me as best as they could. You know. My grandfather used to sneak me in like he on one day, my grandfather heard me singing and he said, I got an idea and we went to this bar and I was sixteen, and he paid the bouncer because there was a band in there. This my grandfather didn't know how it worked, but he's like, my grandson sings, let me give you some cash. And he's like, okay, go ahead. And I think he lied to him and said he's going to be singing with the band. And then he went and talked to the band and said, can you he does some Elvis songs, you know, can you get him up there to do some Elvis songs? And by the end of the night, I was up there in a bar rocking with this band singing Elvis songs and it was you know, that was pretty cool.
00:28:57
Speaker 1: You know. So now you got at you're going to front in Excess. That's when the excitement we need to take a break. JD. Fortune is my guest. Folks back after the break. JD. Fortune joins us on conversations. He will be here with his band on the twenty second of October at the GOV doing all those great Inexcess songs. But if you just tuned in, he's just won the competition to front in Excess in the since the tragic departure of Michael Hutchins. What's it like trying to get to the dynamics of bands are complicated? You would know that anybody. So you've got to get to know these guys. You've got a tour with them, and how easy was it to do that? Well?
00:29:38
Speaker 2: You know, I think, like I said, from my past of just being transient as a youth, that helped, because you know, you develop I can read a room pretty quickly, you know, and but joining a band that had already been together for twenty nine years before I joined them. Yeah, mate, Yeah, they spoke their own language. And I don't mean I was. I mean like they had inside jokes that if you didn't know, you'd think they were upset with each other. But that's just an inside joke.
00:30:08
Speaker 1: But that's a straighted humor. Though we take the right exactly.
00:30:11
Speaker 2: So here I am the mediator. Yeah, I'm the mediator not knowing this stuff, going like, hey, is everything okay? Between Is it okay?
00:30:20
Speaker 1: Mike?
00:30:20
Speaker 2: You have a freaking been better? And I'm like, oh okay, because you guys sounded like you wanted to kill each other yesterday. Like it's just tim you know what I mean.
00:30:30
Speaker 1: I sort of quite from Chris Chris Murphy who was the manager about the Faris Boys and Kick Pingiley the other members of and he said they're the nicest people on the planet. Did you find that to be the case? Yeah?
00:30:44
Speaker 2: I really did.
00:30:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:30:45
Speaker 2: I think that they're special. They're very special. I mean there was a magic there with them and Michael, and that was a magic that we probably won't see for another forty years, maybe thirty years.
00:30:57
Speaker 1: In a band you're fronting the band. Do you feel as you have to live up to the religion that's Michael Hutchins. What sort of appreciate does that bring?
00:31:06
Speaker 2: There was a lot of pressure, Grant, but the positive thing that I have always been able to do as a kid is just look at I don't. I don't know. Maybe I've got an issue mentally, but I don't. It was pressure, but the only time I felt like I had to live up to Michael's legacy was when we excuse me doing some shows and a lot of his family and close friends would show up. Yeah, and you want to really yeah. So I didn't try to fill his shoes. I just tried to create my own as best as I could with that band, and they helped me so much. You know, I've laughed with each of them. I've cried with each of them. We've had arguments as a family. You know, that's what happens after, you know, almost a decade together, especially writing original music. And I got to tell you they are lovely lads. They are really lovely lads. And I saw Kirk last time I was there, Kirk and Lane, and I'll probably see them again this year. I think Gary lives in La so I won't be seeing him, but I text Kirk, I text Gary. The Fairest Boys are always busy because when I was there, I think Andrew was in Nashville, so like, they're just always crazy busy. So but it would be nice, like if they were going to do some shows, you know. I hope they'd give me a call and we could do a little Thanks everyone. I think we'd like to see.
00:32:25
Speaker 1: That you've been very open about your drug use. Was that an issue with the final I mean, it's odd to mind time dynamics within in a band, but there's been various versions of your departure from the band, which I.
00:32:43
Speaker 2: Was I learned not to talk to. So okay, here we go.
00:32:49
Speaker 1: You don't want to talk aboutins, well, no, I just want.
00:32:51
Speaker 2: To put it into perspective for your amazing listeners and you that there was never any bad blood. I would love to tell you everything, but I fear that I might be shot if I tell you. But no, let's just say it was. I wouldn't have ended my time in excess, and I think that they as you do, maybe you change your mind. I just know that that was the greatest experience of my life. That's all.
00:33:17
Speaker 1: How did you weigh yourself off the drugs? Kill kai Kin? You're doing bad coke?
00:33:21
Speaker 2: Pretty easily. I just stopped hanging out with people who were doing drugs. I didn't have a drug problem. I had a hanging out with people who were doing drugs problem. And that was everybody around me all the time. So, if you do the math, I wasn't out there before a show asking the fans like, you know, do you have any drugs? No, it didn't. It didn't work that way. So that's the irony of all this that I got pinned on this and I took it. I took it for the team, and uh yeah, here I am sober, no drugs and I just stopped hanging out. It was that easy. It was harder for me. I quit smoking last year two days before I flew. I'm on this vapor right now, no nicotine, and it just does a have bit. It's got zero It's just something to do with my hands, you know. I'm board. I quit smoking. I land in Australia and I told the promoter I'm like, I just quit smoking before I flew. He's like, are you crazy? My language, he said, are you crazy?
00:34:15
Speaker 1: Man?
00:34:15
Speaker 2: He said, You're never gonna last. He said, like, why would you do it before you? And you know what? And that was a year ago.
00:34:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've got a grd Australian accent.
00:34:25
Speaker 2: By the way, I sound a bit Chips Raffity to be smike.
00:34:29
Speaker 1: Do you even know who Chips Effi? He was?
00:34:32
Speaker 2: Of course I was on a tour bus with Australians for seven years. Yes, Tommy Kane over your town.
00:34:40
Speaker 1: You know, like, come on, weren't talking about Rolf Harris these days? All right? We used to? So it was it was it hard to make a living. I mean, has you had to go back to living in your counter after funding in excess? I mean is that an no?
00:34:55
Speaker 2: No? That was another another bad thing I had. Uh, entertainment tonight showed up. I was staying with my godparents. I was not homeless.
00:35:06
Speaker 1: Uh.
00:35:06
Speaker 2: They decided to put in that into the thing, and I had I got a call from my godfather who said they were in like Kowala and poor and they're like, how are you homeless when you're at our house doing doing the interview? And I'm like, that's what they said. I never said I was homeless. So they didn't bring that up. They were just like it was. It was the narration over top. It was like and he's homeless are good? And I was like, ah, so yeah, it's all about sound bites or whatever. It was to bring people to watch the show that night, and I I didn't like being in an experiment for them. And you know, like I I had a lawyer tell me your problem is you're too honest and you say honest stuff and that's what gets you into trouble.
00:35:46
Speaker 1: And I was like, I get that impression just talking to you.
00:35:49
Speaker 2: Now. Yeah, well, I mean that's what I was raised to tell the truth.
00:35:52
Speaker 1: Like you know, you you co write pretty vigus with We're gonna go out with that when we actually psychobot.
00:36:03
Speaker 2: Oh thanks Graham.
00:36:05
Speaker 1: So you have a tribute to Inexist. Do you get any resentment at all from the dot and the wool in Exists fans.
00:36:13
Speaker 2: I don't think, Well, it's not a tribute because I have original songs that I wrote. It'd be like saying that, you know, the saying like Don Henley is doing a tribute to the like it's I have DNA in the band. So it's more of it's more for the fans because I miss it. I miss that music live because it's really great live, like those songs are great. Is it a tribute yes? Is it an homage yes, But it's not like I don't have somebody that looks like Tim up there or dressed up like Gary or addressed up like not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying for me, the pushback is probably because it's not a tribute band, so there's a bit of more expectation like this better be the stuff.
00:37:02
Speaker 1: So among still less term excite men, drama, travel, What happens in your private laugh? Have you? Have you married? Have you in a relationship? You've got kids? I mean, do you talk about those things? What are you laughing again? No?
00:37:19
Speaker 2: Uh no, no, and no kidding. I don't have money with that much, hay anybody. I don't have any kids. I was fortunate ough to be with someone for a while and helped her raise her son, and he's awesome and she's awesome, and uh but other than that, no, I really dedicated myself to getting this back up off the ground, getting the music out there. You know, as you know, it's it's not an easy it's not an easy task to you know, I work with the band in in North America, and I'm working with a band in Australia, so I'm constantly globally. Just it's just whatever. So I'm really focused on that right now.
00:37:56
Speaker 1: And well, whatever you're doing, it's working. You're you're looking thirty years younger than you actually are. And we're going to go out with a song you co wrote with the boys from in Excess.
00:38:10
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Graham, thank you.
00:38:12
Speaker 1: Pretty Vegas because I really like the song. It's a good song and cracking video actually, so oh thanks buddy. All right, JD will come to the end. We're going to go out with Pretty Vegas. This is the song you co wrote with the boys in Excess. It's a I love the song, it's a cracking video. Good luck. You'll be here on twenty second of October at the GOV doing in Excess and other original material.
00:38:35
Speaker 2: J D.
00:38:36
Speaker 1: Fortune, thank you so much for your time.
00:38:38
Speaker 2: Thank you for your time. Gram. This has been This has been like my favorite interview so far, Like this is great.
00:38:43
Speaker 1: Cut it out, see you mate, good Luck on the twenty second of October. Thank you Graham, JD. Fortune, thank you so much for your time and folks, You can see JD and the Band on the twenty second of October at the Great Venue. Great Band, Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Good everyone, welcome to conversations. We have a real rock star as a guest today. We've got to go back a little bit. In two thousand and five there was a reality program called Rockstar in Excess and j D Fortune entered it. Canadian singer knocked around singing songs and being in bands, so he ended it. It was to somebody who could front in Excess since Michael Hutchins had passed away. But fifty thousand other people we entered the competition as well, but j D Fortune won it and for seven years toured within Excess. He's coming back to Australia and he will be in Adelaide on the twenty second of October at the singing the Great in Excess songs. He joins us now from Canada. J D Fortune, how are you? Thanks for your time?
00:00:47
Speaker 2: Good here ground, how are you? This is a real treat for me, real trip for you to be here, So thank you, thank you.
00:00:52
Speaker 1: I look the first thing where but this is a zoom link so I can see you. You're looking fantastic. Thanks. You're not young anymore, no.
00:01:03
Speaker 2: Not by any means. I actually feel like I'm twenty five, but like what you know, But when I wake up in the morning, I realize I'm not twenty five. It's a bit, you know, got to go through the routines. But no, I've been taking real good care of myself for the last decade or so, and and just trying not to stress, you know, at all. I mean, but you can't avoid stresses in life. But I mean, you know, just trying to live and be grateful for everything and no matter what it is, you know, and that's gratitude has been my attitude. I know that sounds a little cheesy to say, but it really, it really does affect how you move forward in life when you just become grateful. You know, I don't take my audiences or the music or any success I've had for granted, so whereas before maybe when I was younger, that I probably did. And then, you know, you get older and you realize that it's not your time, it's the audience's time. And now that's why I think the shows are so much more powerful now and I'm I'm really into it now because I'm there for the audience and I love looking everybody in the eyes and getting to know everybody, you know, in that two hours that I'm on stage. So it's been a blessing.
00:02:07
Speaker 1: Tell us about the show. I mean, obviously in excess songs and we all most people know your history with the band, and we'll I want to go back. I want to go back to the early days. And when you're right, I'm kind of even decided the name of the town miss Mississauga. But it's a full inexcess show that you're doing.
00:02:25
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's uh. I have one or two originals in there, but I do some of the stuff that I wrote with in excess and record it and then you know, all the hits I and there are some cool stuff from the back catalog. You know that only like well like true fans will go, oh wow, they're doing that. Okay, I haven't heard that song played live in twenty years, you know. So yeah, that's I'm getting really excited. I know it's like four months away, but I'm super super excited.
00:02:50
Speaker 1: Can we get back to this start. I mean, You're the more I rate about you, the more interesting it is. I mean the childhood must have been a little sad. I mean, yeah, we took, we took to you and you're in Canada and then that we should know more about Canada, striv and Canidians with allies and strong allies, all members of the British absolute at you other than it's cold.
00:03:18
Speaker 2: Well, that's ninety of the story. Let me tell you about the other ten percent. The other ten percent is the three weeks we get in August that are beautiful, which.
00:03:30
Speaker 1: Is where you grow up, where you grew up.
00:03:33
Speaker 2: I was born in Mississauga, but I grew up in a place called Salt Springs and Nova Scotia, and you know that's uh where I went to my elementary school and then you know a little bit of uh Junior High, and then moved back to Toronto, auditioned for a school of the arts called cowthr Park. When I was like fifteen, I got in there. Then I got cast on a TV show called My Secret Identity with Jerry O'Connell.
00:03:59
Speaker 1: You got going too fast, man, you gotta go.
00:04:03
Speaker 2: I'm only at fifteen years old. Wait, you gotta, I gotta way.
00:04:07
Speaker 1: Joe was about missus Agua.
00:04:09
Speaker 2: Well, my formative years were spent in in the Maritimes, and then we did move back to Mississauga.
00:04:16
Speaker 1: And when you sign Maritimes Maritimes, that's the four Maritimes.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: So we have Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. Those are our maritime.
00:04:27
Speaker 1: Provinces now on the east west, east coast, east.
00:04:32
Speaker 2: Coast at Atlantic Ocean. Yes, I'm on what they call Atlantic time right now. So other than Newfoundland, we're like the furthest time zone in Canada, like the late, like the sun rises here, right, so we're earlier than everybody else. So you know, when it's when it's nine o'clock here, it's eight o'clock in the next province over, and then it's six o'clock two provinces, and then you know, you can get up to the west coast and it's four o'clock in the morning. They're four hours behind, you know. So Mississauga was cool, big place, lots of opportunity, but I really felt my roots were in Nova Scotia. My grandparents are from here on my mom's side, and they helped raise my sister and I for years and just got to be a I got to live in the country. Basically it was a dirt road. We lived on a dirt road, and yeah, I had a Honda CR eighty. There's no cop the furthest. Police station was about an hour drive away. For this paved road was about thirty five minute drive away. So I'd be out there like all day on the dirt bike, like just all day. And I thought that's what life was going to be until.
00:05:42
Speaker 1: You know, your mom and dad broke up when you were young.
00:05:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did, Yeah, when I was six.
00:05:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always thought I thought the fortune Fortune was a stage night. But Fortune your mom's maiden knife.
00:05:56
Speaker 2: That's correct. Yeah, Fortune is my mom's maiden name.
00:05:59
Speaker 1: It's pretty good.
00:05:59
Speaker 2: And yeah, some people they don't. They think it's made up. And then you know, some family will come see me and I'll go, that's my cousin, Adam Fortune. That's my cousin, Matthew Fortune, that's my other cousin, And they go, oh, that's your real last name, and I like, it's a real last name. Yeah, real last name.
00:06:16
Speaker 1: Did you have a relationship with your dad once? Once I split out.
00:06:20
Speaker 2: We were strange for a little bit. I didn't see him for eleven years at one point, and then the next time I saw him he was in a casket and that wasn't fun. And I hadn't seen him in eleven years and then I went, you know, to his funeral, but I talked to him and stuff, but just not physically seen him. But so that was kind of hard. But you know, it was one of those things. He passed suddenly.
00:06:44
Speaker 1: And where did the talent come from? You've got to You've definitely got a talent.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much, thank you coming from you man. Well, my grandfather used to sing all the time when he was you know, when I was in the car as a kid, he'd be singing all the time, from everything from John Denver to Elvis Presley to Dean Martin. He had this beautiful baritone, bo boom kind of voice, right, and so I would start singing with him. And that's really where I got it. From six years old, I had my first stage experience in front of all these maybe two three hundred people, and as my mom says, she said, you weren't nervous. You got up there and you sang, and as soon as you heard that, those people applaud You came off stage and she said, do you remember what you said to me? And I said no. And apparently I said to my mother, I want to do this for the rest of my life. And so I've been very blessed that I'm in this position now that I still get to go on stage and sing. So it's been you know, along a long road.
00:07:47
Speaker 1: My friend, and it's Ted Bumpson. It well, not sure we can chat about dies. There's always somebody though, when in those early years those formenty views, and normally it's a teacher who encourage you, you and spy with the fact you have got talent. But there was the old teacher that told you you couldn't sing what's in.
00:08:07
Speaker 2: On, Yeah, you're never gonna make it as a singer, and put salt in the wound. Then said, and by the way, you can't use this word anymore because it's the our word. I don't want to say, but you look our word when you close your eyes and sing. And I was like, so then I spent my whole career like like just not blinking, just like, don't close your eyes. And then someone said why why are you not blinking? And I was like because my music teacher said I look, I got news for you, mate. You look pretty, you look pretty weird right now. And I'm like, oh god, so yeah.
00:08:43
Speaker 1: I never say that teacher again.
00:08:45
Speaker 2: I did. I did, and she was just as crass, just as like, oh she had not matured. I was at a liquor store. I was buying some wine and I saw her there. One of the people said, oh, hey JD, and I you know, kinging. I went through the door, Hey JD. And this lady turned around and she came up to me. She said, are you still being a little jerk? Excuse me? I had no idea who she was. I didn't recognize her. And she's like, oh, you were always a little jerk in my class, and then sous she said that. I went, Uh. It was like it all came back, and I was like, excuse me while I go throw up out. So I or whatever, because yeah.
00:09:28
Speaker 1: I give you a callest for self reflection. I mean, were you a little jerke?
00:09:32
Speaker 2: No? No, I just was poor and she didn't like poor kids.
00:09:37
Speaker 1: So yeah, I had a poverty impact on you. Obviously this stuyed with you.
00:09:42
Speaker 2: That thought, Well, it just made me not want to ever be there again. And I'm doing okay, but I more money, more problems, you know, So I have it had a nice even even balance. I don't spoil myself. I bought my first brand new piece of furniture in ten years yesterday. So it was like small victory, you know what I mean, what was it about a recliner?
00:10:04
Speaker 1: I know, Oh you are getting old. JD's Fortune is my guest, folks. He was twenty second walked over at the GOV with his full band doing all those great inexcess songs back after the break. My guest on conversations is JD. Fortune. That's his real name, his mum's name. It's not a stage name. Mum and dad separated when he's only five, raised by his mom and his grand grandparents, and his grandfather sort of inspired him to sing love being on stage. I don't think school really agreed with you though, I mean, what ambitions did you.
00:10:38
Speaker 2: Have in a rock band? I think really that was it. It was so I was so laser focused. It was just anything to do with music. I was in it. At one point. I was in three or four different bands as a young teen and then you know all the stuff. But like it was, I was in a different school every year until I left school. So for eleven and a half years, I was in a different school every year. So think about that for a second.
00:11:08
Speaker 1: Was that because of your mom moving around?
00:11:10
Speaker 2: Financial Yeah, having to move and having to leave one town and go to another town or one part of the of an area. Yeah, my mom had two kids and was working three jobs. And I never and it was just normal. By the time I was on my like fifth or sixth school, it was just like, okay, just another school. I was always the new guy. I was always getting picked on. I was always being analyzed, always being judged my whole life. And so you know, it's kind of like it's like I got used to it as a beast of burden, would you know. I just was like, whatever, it's always going to be there, and it's really nice now that, hey, I don't have to go sit in a classroom, but be that I can. I see it now that it actually made me who I am. And I wouldn't change it for anything. I wouldn't like change it. I wouldn't because is you know, even though I don't have like I have friends of twenty thirty years, but I didn't meet them at school, if that makes sense. You know, I don't have a lot of school chums. You know.
00:12:10
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask that school reunions would be a thing that you really couldn't attend.
00:12:16
Speaker 2: Which well, which one do I get invited to? I was never there long enough to you know like that.
00:12:21
Speaker 1: So you lay school and there's a few jobs on your resume. There's no down the bathroo. Yeah. Yeah, but music was not wise the ambition.
00:12:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, music was always the goal. Everything else was just to subsidized music. You know, everything that I did for work, even you know, joining the army and stuff, which I thought was going to be a career for me. But you know, after my two or three years were kind of up, it was like, okay, what am I going to do? Because the next contract they wanted to sign is fourteen years, and that's called your IE, your intermediate engagement. Your first one's your BE your basic engagement that's three years. Then your IE is fourteen, which is the big chunk of it, right, And I was I really had to go think long and hard, and I just decided not.
00:13:03
Speaker 1: To Why the army? Initially, well what in spot.
00:13:06
Speaker 2: Did you My grandfather, you know, he was he was a vet, you know, World War Two, and he he was on his deathbed and he I went to see him and he said, it's too bad your dad didn't carry on the military tradition in our family, and I was like, Pop, I'm going to I love you so much, I'm gonna go en list right now. And I did, like the next day, I went and listed, never thinking I was going to get in. And a couple months later I got a call from Captain Narozembski who asked me if I was still keen on becoming a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, and I said yes, And then my grandfather made a full recovery while I was in basic training. What it was, Yeah, you know in the movie when they're standing on your on a rifle in the rain, and that the sergeant standing on the rifle in your hands and you're doing push ups. That looks really cool in the movies. In reality it is horrible.
00:14:02
Speaker 1: So no, you have to experience that. I was. We have We had a national draft here in Australia during the Vietnam War, so I got I got drafted. So it was it was exciting.
00:14:12
Speaker 2: It was.
00:14:13
Speaker 1: It was exciting for the first two days and then my gosh, anyway, is it true you got into some trouble in the army that was that urban.
00:14:22
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say trouble, it was just it was just stupid like just young, twenty two year old bunch of us kids, stuff fights and just trouble making. And yeah, it was it was not I thought, you know, I was making the right move. And you know, I still have some military friends I talk to every day, and I have a guy that I went through training with who's retiring this year with a full pension. With a full pension, you are.
00:14:50
Speaker 1: It's find to believe looking at you as we are observe that you that he would be a retiring age I mean you you are.
00:14:57
Speaker 2: It's like a year older than me. Yeah, and that's it. He enlisted when he was eighteen, and he's done. He's done, And like that's so cool because he technically could go out and work in the private sector, but he's not. He's not going to. But but then there's like I'm a musician, so I chose, I chose this. I have no retirement plan. I have I have no I have to have health insurance when I'm touring. But other than that, well, we have pretty good healthcare here in Canada. So you know, if I ever get pregnant, I'm all right, you know, but.
00:15:26
Speaker 1: But that's that's a serious issue even here in Australia.
00:15:29
Speaker 2: We have healthcare in Adelaide.
00:15:32
Speaker 1: Here we have a group called Support Act and their role is just to support musicians who don't earn that that much anymore because very few of them had their superanuation plans. Right. Yeah, anyway, so you're out, You're out of the army. Is it a brave new world? What are you? What are you confronted with? What are you going to do?
00:15:51
Speaker 2: It was definitely brave because I when I end listened in the army, I bought a new truck. So now I had truck payments and no job. So I had to do everything and anything I could to keep that truck and I went landscaping to security too. I opened up my own martial arts school too. You know. It was really cool and got to meet a lot of fantastic people that way.
00:16:13
Speaker 1: Wait, did the martial arts You just sort of slipped that one in the martial arts?
00:16:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mississauga, I had. It was called maximum Security, Self Protection and Unarmed Combat. That's a bit of a mouthful, but maximum security was the name of my I didn't want to call it marshal art. There was it was a time when you couldn't use the the aggressive phrases, so you needed to do like unarmed protection instead of like I'm going to teach you how to break some both. So because I had a lot of from all ages, from you know ten to you know, sixty five students, and you know, yeah, well that was a And I just love working with people, I really do. I love performing for people. I'm a real people person.
00:17:02
Speaker 1: Pretty obvious the trick.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and it's just something new that's come out. I never used to be. I used to have to pretend to be you know, hey, oh golly gee, yeah we're But then it's because I was so angry and I just went, well, no one needs me to be angry. And then I, like I said, I became grateful and it just changed like that, like overnight. I woke up and I went, I feel like a weight'spin lifted off my back, like off my shoulders. And I've been loving my life ever since.
00:17:31
Speaker 1: The track You mentioned the truck that almost ended tragically though, didn't it.
00:17:35
Speaker 2: Well, I drove tractor trailer for a couple of years. I went to humber College and got my AZ license, so I was driving you know, fifty three foot trailers gross vehicle weighed a hundred thousand pounds hauling class eight corrosives like developing fluid. This is back in like the nineties when you still had to take developing fluid to a Kodak. So I would do a pin to pin. I'd pick up the chemical in Toronto, which would be Sydney, and drive them all the way out to Perth. That's how far, you know. And I ran in a tandem team. I had a team. It was me and another driver, so the truck never stopped moving while you're sleeping. The other guy's driving for ten hours and then vice versa. Takes about, you know, four and a half four days to get out there. Yeah, that was something. And then I it was the winter. There had to be I don't know, thirty centimeters of snow on this highway. And thank god I had a police officer behind me. He was off duty. But the scariest thing you can that can happen to you when you're driving a tractor trailer is you see your trailer in the rear view mirrors and it's centered and then when you see the trailer start going like this. And I saw that trailer go from my left mirror and it went out, and then it disappeared behind the truck, and then it just came around the other side like this. The whole trail I just and I and the whole truck went up. We went into the ditch. I tried to hold onto it. The tractor was in the ditch and the trailer was up, and I got out and I was, you know, this is before I joined the Army. Yeah, I'm eighteen at this point. And I got out and this off duty police officer was like, you're a kid. Yeah, I'm the kid. He's like, dude, what are you doing driving this day? When I you know, I went to humber here's my is a license. He went, I've been following you for an hour. You did a really good job. And then he said until you crashed it. Yeah, well so that was before.
00:19:31
Speaker 1: That was before the Army. I was on the impression.
00:19:34
Speaker 2: So when I went through basic training, I already knew about you know, uh, diesel shifting and tense speed and all that stuff. So I was very h I had some skills when I went in, which was you know.
00:19:44
Speaker 1: Was kid, you should have gone to transport instead of communications.
00:19:48
Speaker 2: I know, I know, well, I know, you know what you're right, I should have. I really enjoyed driving. Really.
00:19:54
Speaker 1: J Id Fortune is my guest, folks, front of Inaccess for six or seven years. He back on the twenty second of October at the GOV doing all those great inexcess songs and plus his own stage presence. Yeah, you're amazing. Back after the break, Welcome back to the conversations. Everybody. Look, if you just turned in, we're chatting to j D Fortune. JD is these initials. He's waving to you as though you can see, but this is radio JD. Nobody can see us. We're on zoom late.
00:20:23
Speaker 2: Jeezte what you say?
00:20:25
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're out of the army. You're doing all these different things. I guess you're singing though, in pick up bands and your own bands and along the way.
00:20:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would leave. We have open bases in Canada, so I could leave the bass and go play with the band. Yeah, and I invited some of my friends out, some of my fellow soldiers that came out, and there were always it was always a support system there. You know, we're comrades, you know, So that was fun. What isn't fun is like doing a gig in the middle of the winter and you got to make it back to the bass and you get snowed in somewhere and you're like, it's a big deal if you don't report for duty.
00:21:04
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, I went once and you did. I got away, go away with it. It was only twenty four hours. But nobody is it true? You were living in your car and you heard about this reality show rock Star and they were auditioning somebody to to front Inexcess. Can you can you take us back to that if you get in the car with your dog and your and your Kick album?
00:21:33
Speaker 2: Yeah? How you know about that? It was absolutely and that was stuck in my CD player. It was the only only CD in the car because the CD player didn't work because it had Kick from in Excess stuck in it. And I had like a whole summer before I heard about the audition for the show. I was the guy that was like, do you want to hear some music on a date? And they were like what, They're like, what is the way some success? They're like, oh wow, okay, anything else. I'm like, uh, nope, this or the radio. And so that was really strange. It was almost like I was manifesting it because I've been listening to.
00:22:11
Speaker 1: It for so long.
00:22:11
Speaker 2: And then I heard on that same radio in my car the advertisement to be that they were looking for a new singer. So I turned to my dog, Presley, and I said, I'm going to win this thing, and he just looked at me, and even he looked at me like what and like like, dude, you live out of your car and you can barely afford to feed me. How are you going to be the lead singer for one of the world's greatest rock bands?
00:22:39
Speaker 1: And I was like, how did it come to be? How did it come to that point that you're out.
00:22:43
Speaker 2: Of un I was staying with a musician friend of mine, and one day I came back. He said I could stay there for you know, a couple of weeks whatever, and all of my stuff was on his porch and he've found out that I was going to audition for this, and he basically said, I hope you lose. You're not a nice And the funny thing is I just played a show and this dude showed up.
00:23:13
Speaker 1: To the show.
00:23:14
Speaker 2: Heybody, how's it gold? I went, oh, okay, yeah, everything smells sweeter with a number one hit, you know, like, come on, man. So yeah, so that's how I ended up out of my car because of his good graces. And then but it didn't bother me. I mean, like, dude, I could live, I could live anywhere.
00:23:33
Speaker 1: What's the audition? I mean, there's all these other people. How do they know?
00:23:36
Speaker 2: It's just narrow throw out. Yeah, it's cutthroat business. Might that's what it is. And it went from fifty thousand down to five hundred, down to twenty five down to the fifteen of us that were on the show. They sequestered us into the Double Tree Hotel in Los Angeles, and we weren't allowed to talk to anybody. If you had if you wanted to work out, you had to go down in groups, and they had a producer that would make sure that nobody spoke to anybody. And you know, it's in retrospect. They were doing that because they want everybody that was going to be on that TV show to have been to meet for the first time on the show. So there's no like already cliques or all these two people who became friends, do you know what I mean? And so I really didn't get a chance to talk to anybody there. And then when I and you don't really even know who's on it. And then when they announced who was going to be on the show, I think they put it in every major publication across Canada. They had all of the other people, and I went, oh, I did see that guy and I saw her there, so this is cool, okay cool, And then we got there to the Paramore. It's called the Paramore Mansion. It's beautiful. The rumor is I think Houdini had it built or something like that. So back in like the twenties or something like that, or it was very lots of lots of pre Art Deco, like pre Art deck Go stuff like the It was really beautiful, but haunted.
00:25:03
Speaker 1: So one night I'm there, Oh, hanted, what do you mean haunted?
00:25:07
Speaker 2: One night I'm there and it's I think there's about six people left. It makes the house really empty at night, like it's a massive place. It's the size of a hotel. And I get out of bed. I'm gonna go to the fridge and I'm going to get some gatorade or something like that. And as I'm walking down the hallway right in my right ear, all I all I heard was Jason, like that's my name, and it was like, it's like somebody was standing there and whispered it in my ear and I went no, no, no, no no, and I started walking out of the like I could feel the breath on my ear. I'm not joking. So I go out and there's two security guards at the front of the you know thing at the front of the house. And I'm now wide awake because this just happened to me. And I said, hey, there's nobody else in the house right except for the six of us. They're like, yeah, affirmative, and I'm like, okay because this just happened to me. And one of the security girls like, oh, you met the ghost. That's the ghost, Like, oh yeah, he said.
00:26:11
Speaker 1: He told me.
00:26:12
Speaker 2: The Red Hot Chili Peppers were shooting a video there and they were supposed to stay overnight, but because something had spooked two of the members from the Chili Peppers, they were not good. They didn't stay there. They went to a hotel. And I mean, it's real. I wasn't the only one, let's put it that way. I wasn't the only one. I wasn't scared. It just really threw me because it was like two in the morning, and I thought maybe because it was TV. I thought maybe this was like part of the show that they were gonna prank us or something like they had a speaker somewhere that was just gonna go wake up, you know, like are something that that you couldn't you know? But it wasn't right. Yeah, well yeah, it was pretty much big. That was the funny thing. So even in the bedrooms you have cameras, right, so when you're sleeping at night and you change your body position in the camera goes because it's trying to focus on your movement. So as you're sleeping, every time you move, you're getting woken up by in the room. And it was like, oh my god, you're this is not real. This is this is so surreal.
00:27:16
Speaker 1: That sounds a little bit advisive.
00:27:19
Speaker 2: Well that's why we started to contract that thick right, because it even says stuff like you will not hold us responsible if a terrorist attack occurs, if there's a tsunami, if there's an earthquake, if you die of this, if you die of that. It was just like, sign your life away and we are not responsible.
00:27:36
Speaker 1: So what's it about me? You're announced as the winner, what's the emotion?
00:27:43
Speaker 2: Like I said, there's a hundred Christmas mornings all at once. It was just every Christmas morning and ones I'd never had that I dreamed of. All came true and my mom was in. My mom was in the audience and my sister, so I felt really proud that she was there. My mom's been my biggest supporter, hence why I took her last name, you know, or to honor her, because she's been the one that's been by my side my whole life and just supported me. And my grandparents, but they're no longer here, had that same thing. They supported me as best as they could. You know. My grandfather used to sneak me in like he on one day, my grandfather heard me singing and he said, I got an idea and we went to this bar and I was sixteen, and he paid the bouncer because there was a band in there. This my grandfather didn't know how it worked, but he's like, my grandson sings, let me give you some cash. And he's like, okay, go ahead. And I think he lied to him and said he's going to be singing with the band. And then he went and talked to the band and said, can you he does some Elvis songs, you know, can you get him up there to do some Elvis songs? And by the end of the night, I was up there in a bar rocking with this band singing Elvis songs and it was you know, that was pretty cool.
00:28:57
Speaker 1: You know. So now you got at you're going to front in Excess. That's when the excitement we need to take a break. JD. Fortune is my guest. Folks back after the break. JD. Fortune joins us on conversations. He will be here with his band on the twenty second of October at the GOV doing all those great Inexcess songs. But if you just tuned in, he's just won the competition to front in Excess in the since the tragic departure of Michael Hutchins. What's it like trying to get to the dynamics of bands are complicated? You would know that anybody. So you've got to get to know these guys. You've got a tour with them, and how easy was it to do that? Well?
00:29:38
Speaker 2: You know, I think, like I said, from my past of just being transient as a youth, that helped, because you know, you develop I can read a room pretty quickly, you know, and but joining a band that had already been together for twenty nine years before I joined them. Yeah, mate, Yeah, they spoke their own language. And I don't mean I was. I mean like they had inside jokes that if you didn't know, you'd think they were upset with each other. But that's just an inside joke.
00:30:08
Speaker 1: But that's a straighted humor. Though we take the right exactly.
00:30:11
Speaker 2: So here I am the mediator. Yeah, I'm the mediator not knowing this stuff, going like, hey, is everything okay? Between Is it okay?
00:30:20
Speaker 1: Mike?
00:30:20
Speaker 2: You have a freaking been better? And I'm like, oh okay, because you guys sounded like you wanted to kill each other yesterday. Like it's just tim you know what I mean.
00:30:30
Speaker 1: I sort of quite from Chris Chris Murphy who was the manager about the Faris Boys and Kick Pingiley the other members of and he said they're the nicest people on the planet. Did you find that to be the case? Yeah?
00:30:44
Speaker 2: I really did.
00:30:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:30:45
Speaker 2: I think that they're special. They're very special. I mean there was a magic there with them and Michael, and that was a magic that we probably won't see for another forty years, maybe thirty years.
00:30:57
Speaker 1: In a band you're fronting the band. Do you feel as you have to live up to the religion that's Michael Hutchins. What sort of appreciate does that bring?
00:31:06
Speaker 2: There was a lot of pressure, Grant, but the positive thing that I have always been able to do as a kid is just look at I don't. I don't know. Maybe I've got an issue mentally, but I don't. It was pressure, but the only time I felt like I had to live up to Michael's legacy was when we excuse me doing some shows and a lot of his family and close friends would show up. Yeah, and you want to really yeah. So I didn't try to fill his shoes. I just tried to create my own as best as I could with that band, and they helped me so much. You know, I've laughed with each of them. I've cried with each of them. We've had arguments as a family. You know, that's what happens after, you know, almost a decade together, especially writing original music. And I got to tell you they are lovely lads. They are really lovely lads. And I saw Kirk last time I was there, Kirk and Lane, and I'll probably see them again this year. I think Gary lives in La so I won't be seeing him, but I text Kirk, I text Gary. The Fairest Boys are always busy because when I was there, I think Andrew was in Nashville, so like, they're just always crazy busy. So but it would be nice, like if they were going to do some shows, you know. I hope they'd give me a call and we could do a little Thanks everyone. I think we'd like to see.
00:32:25
Speaker 1: That you've been very open about your drug use. Was that an issue with the final I mean, it's odd to mind time dynamics within in a band, but there's been various versions of your departure from the band, which I.
00:32:43
Speaker 2: Was I learned not to talk to. So okay, here we go.
00:32:49
Speaker 1: You don't want to talk aboutins, well, no, I just want.
00:32:51
Speaker 2: To put it into perspective for your amazing listeners and you that there was never any bad blood. I would love to tell you everything, but I fear that I might be shot if I tell you. But no, let's just say it was. I wouldn't have ended my time in excess, and I think that they as you do, maybe you change your mind. I just know that that was the greatest experience of my life. That's all.
00:33:17
Speaker 1: How did you weigh yourself off the drugs? Kill kai Kin? You're doing bad coke?
00:33:21
Speaker 2: Pretty easily. I just stopped hanging out with people who were doing drugs. I didn't have a drug problem. I had a hanging out with people who were doing drugs problem. And that was everybody around me all the time. So, if you do the math, I wasn't out there before a show asking the fans like, you know, do you have any drugs? No, it didn't. It didn't work that way. So that's the irony of all this that I got pinned on this and I took it. I took it for the team, and uh yeah, here I am sober, no drugs and I just stopped hanging out. It was that easy. It was harder for me. I quit smoking last year two days before I flew. I'm on this vapor right now, no nicotine, and it just does a have bit. It's got zero It's just something to do with my hands, you know. I'm board. I quit smoking. I land in Australia and I told the promoter I'm like, I just quit smoking before I flew. He's like, are you crazy? My language, he said, are you crazy?
00:34:15
Speaker 1: Man?
00:34:15
Speaker 2: He said, You're never gonna last. He said, like, why would you do it before you? And you know what? And that was a year ago.
00:34:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've got a grd Australian accent.
00:34:25
Speaker 2: By the way, I sound a bit Chips Raffity to be smike.
00:34:29
Speaker 1: Do you even know who Chips Effi? He was?
00:34:32
Speaker 2: Of course I was on a tour bus with Australians for seven years. Yes, Tommy Kane over your town.
00:34:40
Speaker 1: You know, like, come on, weren't talking about Rolf Harris these days? All right? We used to? So it was it was it hard to make a living. I mean, has you had to go back to living in your counter after funding in excess? I mean is that an no?
00:34:55
Speaker 2: No? That was another another bad thing I had. Uh, entertainment tonight showed up. I was staying with my godparents. I was not homeless.
00:35:06
Speaker 1: Uh.
00:35:06
Speaker 2: They decided to put in that into the thing, and I had I got a call from my godfather who said they were in like Kowala and poor and they're like, how are you homeless when you're at our house doing doing the interview? And I'm like, that's what they said. I never said I was homeless. So they didn't bring that up. They were just like it was. It was the narration over top. It was like and he's homeless are good? And I was like, ah, so yeah, it's all about sound bites or whatever. It was to bring people to watch the show that night, and I I didn't like being in an experiment for them. And you know, like I I had a lawyer tell me your problem is you're too honest and you say honest stuff and that's what gets you into trouble.
00:35:46
Speaker 1: And I was like, I get that impression just talking to you.
00:35:49
Speaker 2: Now. Yeah, well, I mean that's what I was raised to tell the truth.
00:35:52
Speaker 1: Like you know, you you co write pretty vigus with We're gonna go out with that when we actually psychobot.
00:36:03
Speaker 2: Oh thanks Graham.
00:36:05
Speaker 1: So you have a tribute to Inexist. Do you get any resentment at all from the dot and the wool in Exists fans.
00:36:13
Speaker 2: I don't think, Well, it's not a tribute because I have original songs that I wrote. It'd be like saying that, you know, the saying like Don Henley is doing a tribute to the like it's I have DNA in the band. So it's more of it's more for the fans because I miss it. I miss that music live because it's really great live, like those songs are great. Is it a tribute yes? Is it an homage yes, But it's not like I don't have somebody that looks like Tim up there or dressed up like Gary or addressed up like not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying for me, the pushback is probably because it's not a tribute band, so there's a bit of more expectation like this better be the stuff.
00:37:02
Speaker 1: So among still less term excite men, drama, travel, What happens in your private laugh? Have you? Have you married? Have you in a relationship? You've got kids? I mean, do you talk about those things? What are you laughing again? No?
00:37:19
Speaker 2: Uh no, no, and no kidding. I don't have money with that much, hay anybody. I don't have any kids. I was fortunate ough to be with someone for a while and helped her raise her son, and he's awesome and she's awesome, and uh but other than that, no, I really dedicated myself to getting this back up off the ground, getting the music out there. You know, as you know, it's it's not an easy it's not an easy task to you know, I work with the band in in North America, and I'm working with a band in Australia, so I'm constantly globally. Just it's just whatever. So I'm really focused on that right now.
00:37:56
Speaker 1: And well, whatever you're doing, it's working. You're you're looking thirty years younger than you actually are. And we're going to go out with a song you co wrote with the boys from in Excess.
00:38:10
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Graham, thank you.
00:38:12
Speaker 1: Pretty Vegas because I really like the song. It's a good song and cracking video actually, so oh thanks buddy. All right, JD will come to the end. We're going to go out with Pretty Vegas. This is the song you co wrote with the boys in Excess. It's a I love the song, it's a cracking video. Good luck. You'll be here on twenty second of October at the GOV doing in Excess and other original material.
00:38:35
Speaker 2: J D.
00:38:36
Speaker 1: Fortune, thank you so much for your time.
00:38:38
Speaker 2: Thank you for your time. Gram. This has been This has been like my favorite interview so far, Like this is great.
00:38:43
Speaker 1: Cut it out, see you mate, good Luck on the twenty second of October. Thank you Graham, JD. Fortune, thank you so much for your time and folks, You can see JD and the Band on the twenty second of October at the Great Venue. Great Band, Thank you so much for joining us.
