Hello Steemit community, I'm Jonas and I'm musician from the UK living in Canada

Hello everyone! I'm pretty new to this platform so I figured I'd introduce myself. I've made a few posts already but I want to say hello and tell you all a bit about me!

I grew up in the beautiful town of Canterbury in South East England. Here are some pictures!

Canterbury is an amazing and incredibly vibrant yet very small city. It was such a wonderful place to grow up and I'm so luckily to have been able to grow up in such a beautiful place. From a very young age I was fascinated in music and on my many trips through town I'd always see people playing music on the street. I decided it was a cool thing to do and so at the age of 12, took to the streets around christmas and began busking. I was terrible and only knew a few songs, however, I totally fell in love with performing and have been busking ever since. Fast forward 11 years and my life is totally consumed by music. By age 17 I was playing more than I was studying. In the picture below I had skipped school one day to go busking. This picture got me in a lot of trouble!

When I was 18 I was playing in a folk/rock band called The Four Roads and miraculously we got booked for a festival in Canada. Off we went and had an amazing summer playing shows here and there after the festival. The following year we returned to Canada and I made fairly last minute, very heartbreaking decision to stay in North America. It was a very sad day but I had a feeling it was something I needed to do. I spent 3 months in DC/Virginia before returning to Canada, specifically, Kingston, Ontario where we had taken part in the festival.

I struggled getting settled in, making new friends and adjusting to a Canadian winter. I missed my bandmates from home and really hated playing without them. However, I was incredibly fortunate to meet my (now) girlfriend of almost 4 years at a solo show I found myself doing one night. This picture is from one of our first dates when I said "HEY I KNOW WE BARELY KNOW EACH OTHER BUT LETS GO TO OTTAWA FOR A WEEKEND"

Brittany is the best thing that's ever happened to me and I am so fortunate to have her in my life. Through Brittany I met Sacha a friend of hers from University who she invited over to her place to jam with me one night. We played guitar together every now and then until one night him and some of his friends came into a cafe where I was running the open mic.

This was the first picture of what turned into the most incredible passion project I've ever been a part of, my band The Wilderness. After this night, I begged these guys to start a band with me and so we started practicing almost immediately after. 3 years later, this band is my full time job (that we make almost no money from). The guys are my best pals and the music is the best I've ever made. We just released our full length album that I mixed and mastered and completed our 3rd tour. The tour took us through 28 states covering over 11,000 miles in our bus Bonda. By some miracle I've become a full time musician and it's all I've ever dreamed of doing!

You can listen to my band's debut album here:
https://thewildernesskingston.bandcamp.com/album/saxtons-river

I'm very excited to see what's in store for my music career and will be sharing lots of stories from the road here on my blog! Can't wait to start contributing to the Steemit Community!

Jonas