Jonathan Michael Comras, aka Jonny Legs, was one of the great heroes of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Back when music was not free, before the Web and file sharing, Jonny wanted people to have access to the music. One of the last things he did before he died was to ask his brother to buy musicforthepeople.com for him.
This site is a tribute to Jonny, to the music he loved, the musicians that made it, and the rebel he was. We miss you Jonny, but you ain’t dead. Not by a long shot.
On a separate note (and this has nothing to do with the gigs), I just want to take a minute to tell you that all you true music lovers out there lost a brother today, and Immy and I lost a really good friend.
My friend Jonny Comras was an outlaw. He loved bootleg rock ‘n’ roll music. He loved to listen to them. He loved to make ’em. He loved to…well, I’m not gonna lie and say it was all legal 24/7 but he loved to spread the music around. I learned more about music history and the great live performance history of rock ‘n’ roll from Jonny and Immy than from anyone else in my life. Thanks to Jonny, I’ve heard Bruce play Winterland in 1978 just like I was there. I’ve spent hours with my eyes closed at Led Zeppelin shows I was too young to really attend. I’ve heard White Stripes concerts all over the world and I’ve heard every last minute of the Basement Tapes recordings just as if I was sitting in the corner of the room while Bob and The Band played. Hell, I heard every concert on the ’66 tour when Dylan went electric just as if I’d packed up my VW bus at the age of 2 and somehow followed them all over America, England, Australia, and everywhere else they went. I could go on and on. In my imagination, thanks to Jonny Legs, I’ve been to almost every great rock concert ever played because he made it so all I had to do was close my eyes and listen.
Jonny filled my life with music. For a guy like me, that’s all I ever wanted and he made it happen.
He wasn’t the kind of guy who spread band’s new albums all over the internet. He would never have done that. He loved music and he loved the people who made it. He didn’t resent musicians. He wasn’t some fucking scumbag like those guys who started Napster who helped ruin modern bands careers. He liked the live bootlegs and he taught me to love them too. You wanna know why I’ve always wanted you all to record our shows. Because it made me proud to think that somebody cared enough to record ME. I got that from Jonny. The son of a bitch even snuck out some Counting Crows bootlegs and probably made some good money selling them. I know he did. You could always tell when a bootleg was one of Jonny’s creations because they were beautiful. He made them so lovingly
and he made them of such quality.
Maybe you think I’m a hypocrite because I think the guys who started Napster were scumbags and I think Jonny was a hero. But Jonny had respect for the music and the musicians. He was an outlaw because he said “Fuck the record companies! Here’s all the live music you could ever want! Here’s the entire glorious live-in-concert history of rock ‘n’ roll! Everybody should hear what great musicians we used to be back when people actually sang and played. And everybody should listen to all the bands today who still hit the stage and do it like it’s supposed to be done.” Those other guys despised musicians and they just decided to take what they could take. I’ll never forget how they treated Lars Ullrich when he had the courage to stand up and call them out for the thieving little businessmen they were. Jonny wasn’t that kind of guy. Lars would’ve dug Jonny.
Jonny offered a little while ago to take every live recording Counting Crows ever made (which amounts to every live show we ever played), listen to them, catalog them, and convert them to hard drives so we could always easily find everything we ever needed. And he offered to do it all for free. Several times on this tour when we wanted to re-learn live versions of some of our songs, we just called Jonny and he found copies and sent them to us. We expanded a ton of our Summer repertoire thanks to his help.
He was my friend. He was Immy’s friend. He loved having a laminate and the fact that it made him feel like he was one of the band. He’d been a fixture among us for years and seeing him always made a gig more fun.
I was informed about a hour ago that Jonathan “Jonny Legs” Comras passed away. His brother told me he was found dead in his home. I’m not sure how it happened. This came totally out of the blue. Jonny wasn’t the healthiest guy in the world to be sure but he was young, somewhere between my age and Immy’s. He was coming back from a trip to Mexico and his brother asked him to stop by but he said the stuff from Counting Crows had arrived and he was so excited to get started that he just went straight home. When nobody heard from him for a couple days, they just figured he was absorbed in the archiving work. Typical Jonny. When he didn’t answer his phone, someone went over to check on him and found him there.
I’m not sure what happened. I just know he’s gone and that’s a huge loss. It’s a huge loss for Immy and me but, in this world where we get spoon fed our music by a bunch of corporations who don’t give a shit about anything except the bottom line, maybe even a bigger loss for rock ‘n’ roll. Not all the outlaws play guitar.
Jonny Legs wasn’t even one in a million.
Jonny Legs was one of a kind.
I’m sorry about everything else that happened this week. I promise you I’ll see you tomorrow night in New Jersey. Bring your tape recorders. With Jonny gone, there’s nobody left but you.
ad