Trivia

At age 16, John's band Windowpain had two of their original songs played on St. Louis' powerhouse rock station KSHE-95.

At age 16, John ran a Taco Bell restaurant as its Saturday night manager.

At age 21 and 22, John had professional hockey tryouts for the International Hockey League in Peoria, Illinois.

In 1998, John wrote/directed and acted in a 30 minute film titled "The Other Side" with actor Mark Neveldine, who later achieved success and fame as co-writer/co-director of the action films "Crank" and "Crank II".

In January 2000, John was President Bill Clinton's personal and lone videographer for an entire day as The President spent the day in western Illinois, touring the city of Quincy and giving a speech in the town square in front of several thousand people.

As a news reporter at WTVQ-TV, John covered the Lexington, Kentucky race riots in the fall of 1994 after a white police officer accidentally shot and killed a black teenage suspect hiding in a closet.

Between 1991 and 2001, John was a TV news reporter/anchor/producer in St. Louis, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Iowa and Nebraska. In all, he reported on more than 5,000 stories -- some of which aired on countless network news affiliates coast to coast, CNN Headline News, CBS News Overnight, and Inside Edition.

Between 2005 and 2008, John was a semi-pro poker player.

In 2007, John and his partner Randy Holmgren interviewed professional poker player Sam Farha several times for their radio show The Poker Power Hour based in St. Louis. Farha later called those interviews "the best interviews he had ever done" for radio or television about how the game is truly played and his new book about Omaha poker.

As a young boy, John lived through a deadly tornado in Indiana.

In 2000, John had lunch with General Paul Tibbets, Jr. -- the man who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima to help end WWII.

John believes the two greatest films ever made are "The Godfather" and "Citizen Kane".

It took John four years to write his first feature length film script, "The Revenant".

In January 1995, John spent two hours in a bar/restaurant in Memphis, Tennessee -- within about five to ten minutes of him leaving with his friends -- a gunman entered the building and began a deadly shooting rampage.

During his days as a television news reporter John interviewed Governors, Senators, sports icons, celebrities, and Presidential candidates on a regular basis.

John has written approximately 200 songs since he was 14.

From April to August 2003, John worked every day for four months to invest in his own short film called "Push" in an effort to find an investor for turning his script into a feature film.

John played guitar for the scene where actress Abby Wathen plays guitar and sings in "Under a Blood Red Sky.".

The first famous person John interviewed as a professional reporter was U.S. Olympic gold medal winning hockey player Billy Baker. John played hockey with him in St. Louis and asked him if he could interview him about winning the gold medal years earlier against the Soviets. Baker agreed, so John got his first great story.