Jason Everman: Warrior Poet

What’s your dream job? We all have one. I’d like to be flying J-model P38 Lightnings over Europe circa 1944. With the crystalline clarity of hindsight, it’s just as well I didn’t get to do that. Some hotshot Luftwaffe fighter jock would most likely have blown me to pieces in the skies above France, and that would be that. However, there are plenty of other cool ways to make a living.

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I’ve known a few truly wealthy people. None of them seemed happy. Just sitting about being rich, therefore, wouldn’t be at the top of my list.

Being a movie star sounds pretty neat…on paper, at least. Realistically, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are literally slaves to their professions. The glitz and the glamor sound esoterically appealing, but I’d bet the newness would wear off pretty quickly once you realized you could never go out in public again. Despite the gilded cage, that seems a bit too close to prison for my tastes.

I bumped into Simon Pegg in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London some years back. He was bundled up with a hat and scarf, not so much because it was cold, but rather so he could just enjoy the museum in peace. We both smiled silently, and I left it at that. I hope he had a fun day.

What seems like it would be pretty epic would be to try my hand at being a rock star. I played the baritone in our high school band. There’s a reason there’s no such thing as a baritone solo. Three friends and I can move a piano, but that is really about the extent of my musical abilities. My mom sings like an angel, but I didn’t seem to inherit that. Regardless, if we’re just dreaming, it is indeed thought-provoking to imagine what it might be like to be a real-deal rock and roll superstar.

Jason Everman didn’t have to imagine that. Everman played guitar for the likes of Mind Funk and Nirvana. He rocked a bass for Soundgarden and OLD (Old Lady Drivers). However, he gave up the turbocharged life of rock and roll to enlist in the US Army and serve his country. Jason Everman is the archetypal warrior poet.

Jason Everman was born somewhere in Alaska. He’s not completely sure where. His birth certificate says Kodiak, but his parents, Dianne and Jerry, lived in a microscopic little village called Ouzinkie. Everman grew up in a two-room cabin alongside a pet ocelot named Kia.

I spent three years in the Alaskan interior back when I was a soldier. That is one seriously cool place. There were times I could take a helicopter up to 6,000 feet or so and do a pedal turn without seeing a manmade object to the horizon in all directions. Such unspoiled open space is pretty tough to find these days.

I also flew into a few of those tiny little Inuit villages. The people were invariably warm and welcoming. They enjoyed an intimacy with nature that normal folks simply cannot imagine. It was this intimacy that Jason Everman’s parents were seeking when they later moved to remote Spruce Island.

Despite the remote nature of his upbringing, Everman still got to know his maternal grandfather. The man had served as a company commander during World War 2, and his stories of D-Day and combat in Europe left the young boy mesmerized. This planted a seed.

Sadly, Everman’s parents eventually split up, and he moved back to the continental US with his mom. She married a former sailor, and the young man spent the remainder of his formative years in Poulsbo across the Puget Sound from Seattle. Seattle, you might recall, is a bit of a music town.

Young Jason was fairly full of himself. That’s a euphemism. He was a genuine menace. After destroying a school toilet with an M-80, he found himself in therapy. His therapist was a musician and kept a couple of guitars in his office. The therapist encouraged Jason to try one of his instruments, and eventually they were playing side-by-side. This experience eventually landed Everman in a series of amateur bands during his time in High School.

By now, Everman’s Dad owned a fishing boat back in Alaska. Jason spent four seasons crewing the boat with him. This experience introduced the boy to deprivation and hardship. It also put $20k in his pocket. These were critical skills for what was coming later.

In February of 1989, Everman signed on with a Seattle grunge band called Nirvana. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? When the struggling band couldn’t cover the $600 studio fee for their album Bleach, Everman coughed it up from his Alaska fishing money. After playing alongside Kurt Cobain, the up-and-coming rocker did a KISS cover titled “Do You Love Me?” In the Fall of that year, Everman was playing with Soundgarden, having replaced Hiro Yamamoto on bass guitar.

In 1990, Everman left Soundgarden for OLD. By 1993, he was jamming with Mind Funk. Throughout it all, after having been let go from some of the biggest bands in the history of rock and roll music, he was still searching for something more. In retrospect, he likened himself to the titular character in the Wes Anderson classic, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. If you haven’t seen the film, you should. It is both thought-provoking and hilarious. Like so many wandering young men, he ultimately found what he was looking for at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Everman later admitted that his inspiration was 16th-century Italian artist Benvenuto Cellini. Cellini once opined that a well-rounded man should be an artist, a warrior, and a philosopher. As a result, in September of 1994, Jason Everman enlisted in the US Army as a grunt.

Not all grunts are created equal. I spent a year with a light infantry brigade myself. That’s a tough job. The day-to-day grind is physically demanding, and the optempo keeps you away from home a lot. However, for those young studs with a serious adrenaline addiction and a concomitant death wish, there is always the Ranger Regiment. After surviving RIP (the Ranger Indoctrination Program), Everman found himself serving alongside the hardest light infantry soldiers on Planet Earth.

No offense to any legit rock stars in the audience, but that’s all fake. Steve Tyler, David Lee Roth, and Mick Jagger look undeniably cool on stage. However, that’s not a healthy lifestyle. Over time, that world tends to take a toll. Have you seen a photograph of Keith Richards lately? I’m fairly sure he actually died some years ago and has been rocking on stage with the Rolling Stones as a certifiable undead zombie ever since. Jason Everman, by contrast, was the real freaking deal.

These were the late 1990s, and Jason Everman was a peacetime Ranger. He traveled as far afield as Panama and the UK, but he never went to war. Once his enlistment was complete, Everman left the Army and moved back to New York City. While there, he paid his way as a bike messenger. Eventually, true to his philosopher roots, he trekked to Tibet and studied in a Buddhist monastery for six months. When he came back to the States, he found himself refreshed and ready for a new challenge. That’s when he reenlisted, this time for the Special Forces.

You don’t just fall off the turnip truck and find yourself wearing a green beret. On the last day of language school, he and his classmates watched dumbstruck as the planes hit the towers. This was no longer a game.

After all of the obligatory grueling training, Everman headed downrange, this time to win hearts and minds in Iraq and Afghanistan. When that didn’t work out, his job inevitably got a good bit messier. In 2006, he left the military for good to go back to school. When he applied to enter Columbia University, General Stanley McChrystal penned his letter of recommendation.

Everman earned his BA in Philosophy from Columbia in 2013. Four years later, he had also earned a Master’s Degree in Military History from Norwich University. Throughout it all, he made appearances with former bandmates while still working overseas on occasion as a private military contractor. He was invited to attend Nirvana’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 2017, Everman joined up with fellow vet Brad Thomas to found Silence and Light, a rock and roll band comprised solely of military veterans. They released their first album in December of 2019. Profits from their music go to support members of the Special Operations Community, military veterans, and First Responders.

Having checked Cellini’s boxes refining his artist and warrior vibes, Jason Everman now concentrates on the philosophy bit. Nowadays, he devotes a great deal of his time to the mastery of cooking. He admits that he aspires to own a restaurant someday. However, before that, he naturally wants to sail around the world. He’s already bought the boat.

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Most of us burn through our days earning a living, loving a little, tasting a few things, and then passing on. However, now and then, a man arises who is not satisfied with simply existing. Those folks invest their lives vigorously and well. Such stuff is invariably risky, dangerous, and hard. However, what you have to show for that is an experience that eclipses that of most normal folk.

Jason Everman is the archetypal Renaissance Man. Dissatisfied with the ordinary and mundane, he has tasted fame, enjoyed the fellowship of warriors, dispensed death, and ardently studied life. Along the way, he has discovered what it means truly to live. He serves as an inspiration to those of us with lesser aspirations.

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