Jennifer and Jason Barton
On July 2, 2023, Jason Barton was getting his family’s pool ready for a Fourth of July gathering. When he was working near the filter pump system, it exploded, and debris hit him just above his left eye with such force that it caused bleeding in four different areas of his brain. His wife Jennifer rushed to his aid and called an ambulance. It was four days before he opened his eyes, and around five weeks before he returned home. Walking out of the hospital, Barton was a different man, who was now learning to live with a traumatic brain injury that changed the way he thinks, feels and acts.
“I think the hardest thing for me was to really know that I was going to be OK,” Barton says. “I just sat there every day thinking, ‘I’m going to be this hurt for the rest of my life … I don’t know if I can do this.’”
Barton is an accomplished singer-songwriter who was a member of the boy-band-esque CCM group True Vibe in the early Aughts and started country-influenced CCM trio 33Miles with friends. Prior to his accident, he’d ramped up his work in public speaking, mostly with musicians and nonprofits.
For at least six years, Barton sang backup vocals during Amy Grant and Vince Gill’s annual run of Christmas concerts at the Ryman — a full-circle opportunity, since Barton’s first concert was an Amy Grant show when he was in high school. One of the few things he can recall from his stay in the hospital is glimpses of Grant coming to visit. (She is still recovering from her own traumatic brain injury after a 2022 bike accident.) With less than five months between the beginning of recovery and the beginning of the Christmas shows, Barton didn’t know if he’d be ready to sing.
“It was weird trying to come back and get a voice, and make my brain do all the things that it needs to do,” he says. “Going to rehearsals was a big deal. I went to my first day of rehearsals, and I just loved it.”
When the shows came in December, they were a big success for Barton. In an emotional highlight, Grant shared his story during the show every night.
“For me to go through what I went through — almost dying to stepping on the stage and singing, on the Ryman stage — it was all I could handle,” he says. “It was amazing.”
Jason Barton
The Bartons agree in crediting Jason’s recovery to both a miracle and modern medicine. Doctors examining his chart often expressed awe at the speed of his progress. Still, Jason was worried he would not have the same relationship with his sons, wife or friends after his injury. He had trouble remembering just about everything. He had moments of frustration and anger, which he would try to share only with those closest to him and not with doctors or nurses. All in all, his wife explains, he still kept in mostly high spirits.
“He was like Buddy the Elf,” Jennifer Barton says. “They say with a brain injury it’s, like, one way or the other. People are usually mean and mad, or how he was — like the happiest person in the world.”
One year later, both the happy-go-lucky personality and the challenges remain. Jason says he sometimes gets overwhelmed in complex situations, but most conversations are no different than before the accident.
“People would meet me and think, ‘You have a brain injury? I would never even think that,’” says Jason. “People necessarily wouldn’t notice, but know behind the scenes I struggle on a daily basis.”
Adjusting to this major change is shaping Jason’s music, and he says his purpose now is to focus on his healing and what’s in his heart. He’s recorded three new as-yet-unreleased songs: one to thank those who prayed for his recovery, another for his sons, and one exploring this new phase of his life.
“Nothing reaches me, to the deepest part of myself, more than a song,” Jason says. “Music does bring so much healing to my life. That’s why singing for Amy at Christmas was huge for me. I was like, ‘If I can stand on this stage and sing, then I know that I can make it back.’”
