The Renegade Jason Ray Welsh

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WPDE) — Local musician Jason Ray Welsh is releasing his first album.

He joined the Good Morning Carolinas crew on November 6, 2019 to talk about his musical journey.

He calls himself "The Renegade" and has a guitar named Grace because he says music was his saving grace.

Learn more about his album here. - WPDE ABC 15

PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. (WPDE) — The notes vibrated out of Jason Welsh's guitar and into the darkened control room of Mission Control Studios.

"Broken pieces scattered on the ground of a love so true," he crooned, eyes closed while he felt the rhythm of the guitar. They were delicate, sad words that stood in contrast to the burly, tattooed musician.

He strummed softly as if the three other people in the room didn't exist. As if the camera whirring quietly in the background wasn't there either.

The performance ended.

"It's a rush," he described. Better, he said, than the ones he used to rely on to survive.

The year was 2008. Welsh was stationed with the Army in Iraq, round-faced and clean-shaven back then. Pictures showed him posing with his brothers in arms, smiling.

Until an IED hit, sending a fragment into Welsh's skull. Emergency surgery saved his life.

“So the military, of course, put me on opiates," to deal with the pain, he recalled.

The drugs would cause even more destruction to Welsh's life, sending him spiraling down a path that seemed to get longer and longer. As he ran out of money to pay for the prescriptions, he turned to a cheaper alternative: heroin.

"I've lost everything, everyone, and every place that I've ever lived," he said.

Welsh left his home and three kids in Indiana for the mountains of Colorado, settling in Boulder County. He lived on the streets, trying to get his hands on whatever would relieve him of the pain of everyday life.

“I lived under bridges, slept on park benches, in cemeteries, tent cities, in dumpsters," he said. "It seems like that rock bottom is movable. You reach what you think is the very bottom that you think you can go, and then something happens. Oops, it goes down further."

The bottom finally came when Welsh lost contact with his children. A friend bought him a one-way bus ticket to Myrtle Beach to try to turn his life around.

"She said, 'I know you used to play music,' he recalled, gripping his guitar. 'So here you go. Here's a guitar for you. Keep you nice and clean."

When the drugs and money finally ran out, it was just Welsh and that guitar in a Myrtle Beach motel room.

“I looked over and I seen this guitar there and I picked it up," he said. "I started playing some music and the feeling of wanting to use started going away from me."

He named the guitar Grace, because, he said, music was his saving grace.

Welsh has lived clean for 19 months, reconnecting with family and kids and working on his first album. Some of his work has already won songwriting awards from the International Singer-Songwriter's Association.

"It’s got to be the whole package," Karl Bingle, owner of Mission Control Studios where Welsh records, explained. "I see him walking up the stage of the Grammy awards within the next few years.”

As for Welsh?

“I’ve come from where I thought I had no hope, no existence left and now... I wouldn’t trade it for the world," he grinned.

Click on the video to watch Welsh's transformation in the ABC 15 special report, "Renegade Reborn." - WPDE ABC 15

An organization is looking to support a Myrtle Beach family, who is raising children whose parents have died from drug and alcohol addictions, through an event this fall.

World Sober Music Day — an organization originating in Florida that hosts annual events to help support grandparents and family members raising children whose parents have died from addiction — will be celebrated in Myrtle Beach for the second year with an event at Fresh Brewed Coffee House from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sept. 14.

Event hosts hope to raise money to give to one family in Myrtle Beach. Families interested in applying must fill out the organization’s application and go through a screening process, said Debbie Cooper, a co-host for the Myrtle Beach event.

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Cooper said there are many families in the Myrtle Beach area raising children whose parents have died or are not present due to addiction.

“If we can ease the burden for one family through donations, it will be a blessing fulfilled,” Cooper said.

In 2018, the organization raised $3,000 for a local family, Cooper said. Hosts are asking for a $5 donation at the door.

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Founded my Paul Stephen Wilson, a Lakeland, Florida resident, World Sober Music Day is celebrated in September at events in Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina and New York.

Wilson said events are held to acknowledge and appreciate the impact of music as part of recovery.

Some musicians performing at the event, both local and from out of state, are recovering from addiction, Cooper said.

To submit contact information to receive an application or donate to the organization, visit www.worldsobermusicday.org/contact/. - Myrtle Beach Online

The Renegade Jason Ray Welsh Shares His Story Of Music Being His Saving Grace From A Life Of Drug Addiction. - Virtuosity Magazine