John Vesely formed Secondhand Serenade in his hometown of Menlo Park in California, 2004. Vesely was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area as the son of a jazz musician and Czech immigrant. He got into music at the age of 12 and spent 8 years playing bass in local bands featuring a number of acts ranging in style from ska and hardcore to rock and pop. One of the bands he played in, Sounds Like Knife, included fellow Bay Area artist Ronnie Day. After years of playing bass, he opted for an acoustic guitar. Following in the tradition of John Ondrasik’s Five for Fighting, Vesely found success as Secondhand Serenade.

Before the explosion of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, the music industry had not yet seen a forward-thinking artist rise from the internet to find success in the mainstream. All of that changed in the form of a lone man and his guitar. the year was 2007 when the #1 Myspace artist took the leap from early social networking to the world of big box retail, releasing his first album commercially though a brand new record label. The artist was Secondhand Serenade, the label was Glassnote Records, and the album was titled “Awake”.