Finding harmony: Montclair’s Jason Didner encourages mental health through rock music

By GRACE L. WILLIAMS
For the local Montclair

Last year, Jason Didner was the man with a rock video on YouTube. who sang “Run with My Troubles”, a tribute to a technique he had found to preserve his sanity. This year, he will release a full album to encourage healthy coping strategies.

Entitled “Salt and sand: rock songs to heal the mind”, the 11-song album from the Montclair resident is divided into three parts: “Seeing the Obstacles”, “We’re on This Road Together” and “Caring for You”. While Didner released a few singles and videos before the album’s release, “Salt and Sand” brings them all together in one place.

Didner draws inspiration for his sound from a variety of genres, including hard rock, reggae and folk singer-songwriter style. His love for the music of artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen and James Taylor also influences his work, which he seeks to inspire as well as entertain.

“I had learned a lot on the subject of coping skills,” he said. “All this knowledge that I had accumulated and put to work in my own life came out of me in the form of songs.”

Although the songs come together in one place for the first time this year, some have been with him for more than a decade. “Salt and Sand,” the album’s title track, dates back to 2004, when Didner and his wife, Amy, were dealing with a harsh winter.

“Amy was going to graduate school. We were a married couple and finances were tight,” she said. “I wrote a song to cheer us both through the fight until we came out the other side, [which has the line] “The salt and sand on this icy road will be the salt and sand on a summer beach.”

Didner’s call to action for listeners to look inward and find positive ways to cope is especially applicable these days, as we are nearly two years into a global pandemic and questions are being raised about what “back to normal” would mean. .

In your 2022 report, the nonprofit organization Mental Health America found that in 2019, before the pandemic hit, 19.86% of adults experienced some type of mental illness. That amounted to about 50 million Americans. the report says 4.58% of adults experienced suicidal thoughts, which represents an increase of 664,000 people from the previous year. And 5.08% of the young people surveyed said they had experienced major depressive episodes in the past year, which represents an increase of 1.24% from the previous year.

Citing a lack of resources, the report also says that more than half of all adults do not receive medical care for their mental health needs, and more than 60% of youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment.

Didner says that even small steps toward better personal and community mental health count.

“Occasionally, if I find ways to break superficial politeness, I talk to people about the fact that mental health is difficult right now,” he said. “They often respond with a story about themselves or a family member who is having a hard time.”

“Sal y Arena” calls for strength in numbers, through collaborations. Many of the songs are co-written with Didner’s wife. “Battle,” which contains a military-style drum beat, features Fred E. Jam, a drummer from Michigan. Author Nita Sweeney, who wrote the memoir “Depression hates a moving target: how running with my dog ​​brought me back from the brink” co-wrote the lyrics for “A Different Kind of Zen”.

A fortuitous collaboration on the album was with Didner’s father.

“I was quite amazed that my father had written a poem about cycling and had a concept for a music video about it,” he said, adding that at one point, neither Didner nor his father knew the other had turned to physical exercise. as a means. coping strategy, or that both had written about it. “I had a running song and he had a bike song. There’s a line in it that made it suitable for the album: ‘It cleanses my arteries and my mind. / It allows me to leave my worries behind.’”

“Salt and Sand” will be released on February 4 on streaming services and bandcamp.com. Didner will give an album launch concert in livestreamercafe.com at 7:30 p.m. on the same day, performing the songs in album order.

Although admission is free, the albums will be available for purchase and 20% of the evening’s proceeds will be donated to the National Association for Mental Health.