With the entrenched national discourse stirring up turmoil across the country, a local Southern rock singer is using his gift to advocate for peace.
Tallahassee native Jason “Gamble Cosmos” Chimonides, 51, began his musical journey decades ago, but his recent projects have found him weaving heartfelt messages into his songs, such as his latest single, “Cool This Country,” in which he calls for calming the “hate burning in the States.”
“I just started doing it as a hobby,” Chimonides said of his immersion in the world of music while drinking coffee at the Black Dog Cafe. “I mean, I’ve recorded dozens and dozens of songs now. I can’t believe I’ve amassed this body of work. I guess I make music more for myself. But then all of a sudden I create something and I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m proud of it and I want to share it with other people.'”
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The 1991 Lincoln High School graduate remembers looking in the windows of local music stores before getting his first drum kit at the age of 7.–YesR-old. A few years later, his parents bought his first guitar.
It wasn’t long after taking basic lessons that he began experimenting with his sound and producing his own records. Early on, he began recording on tape at local studios, such as the now-closed Sweetbay Studios on Jackson Bluff Road, before the era of digital audio workstations like Pro Tools, Logic Pro and Garageband.
Back then, technology was much more limited than it is today. Musicians had to physically cut and splice tapes to make changes to a track. Today, however, they have the flexibility to cut, copy, paste and add effects using digital software programs.
After earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theater arts from Florida State University, Chimonides moved to Atlanta for four years, where he worked with other Tallahassee-based engineers.
“I love going into a studio with all the equipment, with an engineer who really knows what he’s doing,” Chimonides said. “I just love working with them and letting them focus on the technical stuff and the recording while I can focus on the performance and the song.”
In recent decades, Chimonides has moved around the northeast of the country, living in New York, where he met his wife, also a musician, Susan Carnell, and in Baltimore, where he began performing in front of live audiences.
When Chimonides returned to Tallahassee over a decade ago, he returned to his alma mater and taught theater at FSU. Upon his return, he began taking guitar lessons again at Guitar Center to hone his craft and learn music theory. While working on minor chords with his teacher, he began developing the melody for his latest single, “Cool This Country.”
“I got a technical idea from my teacher and started building on it,” Chimonides said. “Then, because of the polarization of our country, the rhetoric and the intensity, I came up with the idea of just cooling it down. Let’s just relax. Let’s slow down. We can’t keep going with all this anger and hatred.”
Before recording the single with engineer Joshua Rumble in Maidenland, England, a town just an hour outside of London where his wife is from, Chimonides performed the song live locally, at open mics and at venues like Bird’s Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack, Barrel Proof Lounge and The Sound Bar.
He says that performing the songs before recording helped him perfect the chords and structure of the pieces before putting them on a record.
“Cool This Country” has only been streaming for a few weeks, so stats aren’t available for all platforms. But if you’d like to check out the song, you can listen to it at youtube.com/watch?v=cYWagNzT6Fg or search for “Gamble Cosmos” on Spotify.
On October 5, Chimonides will perform alongside nine other bands at Local Soundfest at Sound Bar, an event created to bring Local Music Appreciation Day onto the national calendar.
To connect with Gamble Cosmos on social media, visit instagram.com/gamblecosmos73/.
Democratic author Mycah Brown can be reached at [email protected].
