From Federal Prison to a Piano: Jason Made Turns a Nightmare Into Music | Jason Pears

When I talked with Jason Pears about his time in federal prison, I expected to hear about survival, maybe some regret. What I didn’t expect was to learn about a spiral notebook filled with more than 40 original songs, a creative explosion that happened behind bars at Federal Prison Camp Pensacola.

Jason’s story starts in Fairhope, Alabama, where he grew up around gospel music and church pianos. By age 10, he’d replaced the church musician and was given his own key to practice. “I was probably the only kid in my little universe that could not be pulled away from a piano,” Jason told me. That musical foundation carried him through a car accident that kept him out of school for a year, teaching himself to read music on a spinning organ his mom found at Goodwill.

From Music to Real Estate to Federal Charges

Despite early success, including a development deal with a Sony subsidiary at 16 and later ghost-writing in Los Angeles, Jason couldn’t see music as his driving force. He bounced from LA to DC, where he started a bakery business that took off after helping a children’s hospital charity. Eventually, he returned to Alabama for family reasons and got into real estate with a business partner.

Then the pandemic hit. “The worst thing you can do is like, let them go away from the work,” Jason explained about his contractor team. “You’ll never see them again.” He applied for PPP loans to keep everyone on payroll, forecasting based on ongoing projects. The problem wasn’t the application, it was what happened next.

Two years later, the FBI and IRS showed up at his house while he was walking his dog. After 45 minutes with a search warrant, the IRS agent pointed to a bottle of wine on Jason’s counter and said, “If I were you, call your lawyer and open that bottle tonight.” The investigation stretched on for months before Jason received his target letter and eventually faced charges for $1.2 million in PPP fraud.

Walking Into Pensacola

At sentencing, Jason received 30 months. The day he reported to Federal Prison Camp Pensacola, just 45 minutes from his hometown, almost didn’t happen. When he arrived at the gate, the officer said they didn’t have his name down to report that day. “I’m going to want you to go check that again,” Jason responded. “Because if I turn around, that’s like, I guess this was all a mistake.”

Because he didn’t bring his COVID vaccination card, Jason spent his first eight days in an empty dormitory used for quarantine. He shared the building with just one other person, with no contact except meal deliveries at the door. It was a strange way to enter prison, isolated but with the run of an entire building.

When quarantine ended, Jason made a decision that would define his sentence. “I just made up in my mind that I’m going to find something to do with this time. I’m going to make the most of it,” he said. “I’m not going to leave here the same way that I came in.”

Finding the Chapel Piano

For the first few weeks, Jason wasn’t assigned a job. He spent his days reading in the library and on his bunk at the back of the dormitory. Then one evening after count, another inmate tapped on his bunk: “The chaplain wants to meet you.”

Jason had no idea where the chapel even was. When he found it, Chaplain Dixon was there with a couple other guys, just talking. The scene felt familiar, and that’s when he saw it. A piano in the corner of the chapel.

Dr. Prophet from the psychology department had read Jason’s pre-sentence investigation report, which mentioned his musical background. The chaplain did indeed want to use his skills, and Jason began playing for chapel services. But something bigger was happening.

The Spiral Notebook Sessions

With access to the chapel piano and time to think, Jason started writing. Not just playing old songs or leading worship, but creating entirely new music. He grabbed a spiral notebook and began documenting what was pouring out of him, songs about uncertainty, pain, and the strange experience of being locked away from the world.

“I cannot defy my purpose,” Jason reflected when we talked about those writing sessions. “Your purpose is sort of written in stone. How you integrate that into your life, how you get there, how long it takes you to get there, it’s all up to you. But you’re going to have to confront your purpose.”

Over the course of his sentence, that spiral notebook filled with more than 40 original songs. The music became Jason’s way of processing not just his own experience, but the stories of the men around him. Each song was a piece of the puzzle he was putting together about who he really was and what he was supposed to be doing.

From Prison to EP

Jason’s now out and releasing his debut EP, “Go Lay Down,” featuring songs from that prison notebook. The music industry connections he’d walked away from years earlier suddenly made sense in a new context. The kid who couldn’t be pulled away from a piano had found his way back, through federal prison.

The spiral notebook that helped save his sanity during 30 months at Pensacola became the foundation for his artistic comeback. Sometimes your worst nightmare forces you to confront the thing you’ve been running from all along. For Jason, that was accepting that music wasn’t just something he could do easily, it was something he had to do.

He’s back in Fairhope now, the same small town on Mobile Bay where he first learned to play. The difference is he’s no longer fighting his purpose. The chapel piano at Pensacola taught him that sometimes you have to lose everything else to find the one thing that matters.