Secondhand Serenade

Secondhand Serenade is the solo project of American rock musician John Vesely. Vesely has released four studio albums to date under the name Secondhand Serenade. His debut album used multitrack recording to create the sound of a band using technology, while his second album took a different path, using a proper band and synthesizers.

Secondhand Serenade's early releases are now considered classics in the 2000s emo scene. Kerrang! classified Secondhand Serenade as a "MySpace band".

John Vesely (born February 5, 1982) started performing as Secondhand Serenade in his home town of Menlo Park in California in 2004. Vesely was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area as the son of a jazz musician. He started getting into music at the age of 12. He spent 8 years playing bass in local bands, featuring in a number of acts ranging in style from ska and hardcore to rock and pop. One of the bands he played in, Sounds Like Life, included Ronnie Day. After years of playing bass, he opted for acoustic guitar. Vesely follows in the tradition of John Ondrasik's Five for Fighting. Vesely was also the son of a Czech immigrant. Vesely found success as Secondhand Serenade.

Vesely once said "in some ways a band is more powerful, but in other ways there are things you can do with one voice and one acoustic guitar that you couldn't do with an army of musicians behind you."

In late 2005, Vesely released his debut studio album titled Awake. It was recorded as a demo, after booking a few days at a San Francisco studio earlier in 2005, "using just an acoustic guitar and his multi-tracked vocals." The album was promoted through the Secondhand Serenade MySpace page and by playing local shows. The CDs were originally sold through mail order with a PayPal account by Vesely, eventually he signed up with distributor TuneCore, making Secondhand Serenade's songs available on music portals including iTunes. The album experienced tremendous online support, and by the end of 2006 Secondhand Serenade had received millions of plays on MySpace and had been the social-networking site's No. 1 Independent Artist for months. Financially, he was said to be bringing in up to $20,000 a month from downloads and merchandise sales out of his home. He sold over 15,000 copies of the album on his own, and on the strength of these sales and the support, the labels became interested in him. Secondhand Serenade was signed by longtime label executive Daniel Glass, on his new label Glassnote Records, which is distributed through Warner's Independent Label Group. In 2006, Rolling Stone announced Secondhand Serenade as No. 3 in the magazine's reader's poll for Best MySpace Artist.

In early 2007, Awake was reissued by Glassnote Records with an additional two songs. It was released on February 6 and gave Vesely his first chartings, debuting at number 16 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart. Added success led to it peaking at number 164 on the Billboard 200, number 3 on the Top Heatseekers and number 19 on the Independent Albums chart.

In support of his first label release, Vesely was featured on MTV's You Hear It First, AOL Music's Breakers Yahoo! Music's Who's Next? and appeared on talk show Late Night with Conan O'Brien. He also played numerous shows, including tours with Hawthorne Heights and The All-American Rejects and at music festivals South by Southwest and alongside My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park at The Bamboozle.

Secondhand Serenade released only one song as a single from the debut album, "Vulnerable". The song spawned a music video, which was created by Frank Borin, who was responsible for the Red Hot Chili Peppers video for hit single "Dani California". "Vulnerable" peaked at No. 83 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 64 on the Pop 100 and No. 56 on the Hot Digital Songs charts.