Up from the Basement

He's emerged from the basement and thrown into the landfill of biased media. Joe Dan Gorman is a conservative bulldozer. While scouring YouTube for patriotic, political music, I stumbled upon JoeDanMedia.com. These videos were exactly what I was looking for. Filled with flag-waving facts and contempt for the current administration, the videos provide original, rock music with informative yet entertaining video. But who is the man behind JoeDanMedia.com and how did he wind up making political videos from his basement?

After I became a fan, Mr. Gorman and I became friends. By the way, the name is, "Joe Dan". He does not answer to "Dan" and while he'll answer to Joe, he prefers that his friends call him "Joe Dan". He's too polite to correct you though. Joe Dan will tell you, no one ever called him by his full name except his mother; he knew he was in trouble when she did.  Attention feminists, please don't be offended if he calls you,"sweetheart" or another pet name. That is just part of Joe Dan's charm. He has the manners of the southern gentleman - unless you're a liberal.

Joseph Daniel Gorman grew up in a little town in Kentucky surrounded by the Appalachian mountains, called 'Hazard'. No relation to the Dukes of Hazard, Joe Dan graduated from Hazard High School. At age thirteen, he picked up his first guitar. By the age of fifteen, Joe Dan wrote his first, original song called, "Dreams Can't Last Forever". That is a ponderous title for a fifteen year old. Joe Dan worked in a recording studio for the first time when he was sixteen. As with most of us, those kinds of dreams get pushed to the wayside (much like the title of his song implied).

Joe Dan spent the next 15 years primarily writing music, working in and running recording studios from Arizona to Nashville. By 1991, following unsuccessful relationships with RCA Records and A&M Records, Joe Dan had become so frustrated with the music business, he closed his studio, put away his instruments and entered the business world.

By 1997, Joe Dan had worked his way up to Vice President of Tucson's largest real estate investment firm at the time. In his spare time, he became a Broker and a Certified Real Estate Instructor. Joe Dan had a beautiful home with a swimming pool in the foothills of Arizona.

Most of you can guess what happened next. The real estate market which had been booming, suddenly tanked. Joe Dan lost everything in 2007. Not only did he lose his material possessions, Joe Dan's beloved father passed away that year. And in a simultaneous painful twist of fate, the courts wrongfully took his son from him. 2007 was a very sad year for Joe Dan.

In 2008, all of his income and assets gone, Joe Dan and his German Shepherd, Lucy had no choice but to move to Kansas City. His loving Aunt Jean was kind enough to give him a place to stay until he could get back on his feet again. They started an e-commerce company together in early 2008. UncleFredsAttic.com actually enjoyed a nice run until March of 2009. By June of that year, Uncle Freds Attic sold it's last product.

Broke with very little to be optimistic about, Joe Dan sat down (and he still does not know why) with his HP laptop and opened up the Windows MovieMaker. For the first time in his life, he created the video, "I will follow Him". It was a musical parody about Obama and the star-struck media, using the music from the movie "Sister Act". To share the video with his friends, he needed a YouTube account so he came up with the first name that came to mind (since it was for personal use, after all). Little did he know that on July 2, 2009, JoeDanMedia was born.

Almost immediately, Joe Dan started having copyright issues with the songs he was using. It was clear he would need a free music source. So after not picking up his guitar for eighteen, long years, Joe Dan reached for it again. On August 19, 2009, Joe Dan uploaded his first original song in nearly two decades, "Silent No More". Since then, we have been enjoying a steady flow of his videos. He has quite a following now - literally thousands of fans and counting.

We have watched the quality of his productions evolve as he learns the new-fangled, digital equipment. His songs always display heart, human suffering and a desire to triumph. It is also very important that conservatives support and promote conservative artists like Joe Dan. We need to loosen the death-grip that liberals have on our entertainment culture.

So there you have it. This guy in an unfinished basement, who says 'he confesses" to composing all music & lyrics, playing, all of the instruments, and creating and editing all of the video---has found his productions featured by Michelle Malkin and Andrew Breitbart, among numerous others. He does this while not having two pennies to rub together, let alone invest. As Joe Dan would say, "Not too bad for a hillbilly from Hazard."

That's what makes his music so unique and remarkable; he says what those of us in middle America want to say. He is one of us! Joe Dan Gorman is the contemporary voice for today's conservatives.


Susan Fentz

(With special thanks to Joe Dan Gorman)