Jesse Montanez

I was born in Paterson, New Jersey, to Denise and Orlando Montanez. My love and passion is music, it has always been. There is no genre I can't listen to. I took my love for music to a whole new level when I began to play instruments and use my voice to create my own music. At this point in my life, seventeen years young, music has afforded my many memories I will never forget. From the Gramercy Theater to the studio at Webster Hall music has taken me many places I would have never gotten to without music. Now heres the catch, if I never got over my fears these things never would have happened.

I was maybe five or six years old (maybe younger) when people began to notice my talent. I was at my cousins birthday when a clown was performing. This clown asked all the kids to get on stage and sing. Much to my dismay, my mother forced me to go onstage with everyone else. We all began singing and for some reason the clown thought my singing was fantastic. He then stopped everyone else from singing and had me sing on my own. I just did as I was told and sang away. After the show everyone said I sing great but the damage was done. From that moment on I was terrified to speak or do anything in front of people. Extremely shy growing up, I hid my talents or anything I could do different from everyone. I would never sing again until high school.

It was the first day of high school, and I was like a newborn child. I knew nothing of how this worked. I went to private school my whole life for goodness sakes! Getting lost in the halls and being extremely shy didn't help. Everything that bad that could of happened, happened. But finally, in the last class of the day, something good happened. As I sat in my computer repair class, someone that would change my life would walk in. As short, light skin kid with short hair walked into the classroom. He sat down, turned to me and said,"What's up?". His name was Shawn Dahlhaus and together we took the same path into music.

Many years have passed and many things have changed. Music wasn't one of those changes. I am in the band Point of Anxiety, a NJ punk band. From here on you'll watch me grow. Like us on facebook at Point of Anxiety.