Jason Damato

Jason Damato

Jason Damato’s story begins May 2, 1984 on Wilshire Boulevard. The City of Angels brought forth into a disruptive home a child who, by the age of four was taken by his mother into exile on the Quichan Reservation in Yuma, Arizona. The open sky of the reservation gave way to the seashore of San Diego when his mother married a Pentecostal Preacher, young Jason was barely eight years old.

Indifferent to the charismatic theology, the precocious prodigy immersed himself in the sanctuary piano teaching himself hymns. Young Jason was forbidden to play secular music! A birthday gift of a guitar at age 13 opened new doors in his evolving musical mind. Refusing to be saved and baptized into the Faith wrought a six-month grounding for Jason. The punishment was damning and the only respite from the ritualistic teaching, for his tortured soul, were school and his guitar.

School gave him knowledge, and the guitar provided freedoms; sinful freedoms that haunted the pubescent driving him to dream, dream wildly of escape. Escape came to be wrapped in notes, musical journeys taking him to places, places of pleasure, pleasure of the flesh and pleasures of the mind. The walls of his room could be taken down in song, and he was free to fly, fly high above the doctrinal restrictions of what he now realized was a cult.

Six months became six years; barely a man and confined by believers, escape became his only reality. The reality was very real; with $3 and his guitar, young Jason left the rectory to “entertain friends at a party.” The party became Pacific Coast Highway and a thumb ride to Hollywood. Playing for dinner down on Ventura Boulevard at the Panera Bread Restaurant, Jason caught the ear of a local music industry veteran. Full circle, the City of Angels receives its native son, welcome home Jason Damato, the story begins— Again!