He was in the restroom.
In all, there were 196 honors bestowed during the 10th Annual Josie Awards for the best in the country’s independent music industry, and just as they were coming down to announcing the biggest awards inside the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville back on Oct. 27th, Matt VanFossen had sneaked away to the Men’s Room.
He blamed the Mountain Dew.
“Oh, I heard my name,” the local country singer/songwriter said sarcastically. “It’s true. I won the Josie Award for Artist of the Year – Country Male, and when it was announced, I was taking a leak. I didn’t even get to do an acceptance speech.”
Mother-daughter duo Josie Passantino-Boone and Tinamarie Passantino founded the Josie’s in 2015 to celebrate independent music artists, and industry professionals to help generate more opportunities with recording labels and worldwide production companies. The Tennessean published a listing of all of the winners, including local band Crandall Creek for Best Bluegrass Group of the year.
So, VanFossen returned to the Upper Ohio Valley the next day, did a radio interview about the trip and the thrill of victory, and then made his most important career decision.
“After winning the Josie Award and coming home from Nashville, I turned in my two-week notice so I could really, really concentrate on this career thing I keep playing around with. I have to figure out what’s possible,” he explained. “I think it’s time. I know it’s time.
“I have performed a lot, and I have pushed before, but then real life has gotten in the way over and over and I’ve just given it up without really knowing what’s possible. You have to pay bills and you have to be a responsible adult and all of that other stuff when it comes to real life, right? But now I know I don’t want to have regrets. So, let’s do this.”
Matthew Sr. and His Son
The dream came true in 2013. Jamboree in the Hills. Not some side stage, either.
THE stage. Matt Vanfossen was a professional country music artist hired for the main stage and he, quite frankly, was on top of world. Until, that is, he had a disturbing conversation following his performance.
“I still remember the talk I had with a local DJ right after I did Jamboree because he just looked at me and said, ‘Ya know, it’s never going to happen for you around here because you’re gay. This valley won’t have that. Neither will country music. So, dude, you should just walk away from it.’
“That’s what he said to me, and it stuck with me … for years. Look, I’ve never lied about being gay. I just didn’t talk about it, but I almost did walk away back then,” he said. “I thought he might have been right, but instead, I just decided never to talk about it.”
That disc jockey, though, wasn’t the first to hurt VanFossen over his sexuality. While his mother, Dorothy Shepard, was his best friend and biggest fan until her passing in March 2010, Matt’s relationship with his father was too often tumultuous.
“My father was not my biggest fan for a lot of years after he found out I was gay,” VanFossen admitted. “But, at the tail end of his life, it was my music that brought him back into my life. It’s how he tried to make peace with me.
“Before that, it wasn’t good. He blamed me for a DUI he got while driving around one night because he didn’t want to be around me one Thanksgiving. He told everyone he was going to a store to get plastic for his windows because the weather was cold, but he stopped at a bar instead,” he said. “He told me after that he just sat there and kept drinking because his son was a gay and he couldn’t handle that. So, he got the DUI, and it was a felony DUI, too, so he went to jail and he blamed me for that, too.”
Since his father’s death in February 2023 after a brief battle against cancer, VanFossen has processed his memories while trying to make some sense of his childhood. His father was a wrestler in high school, a sports fan as an adult, and a man’s man as a mentor to his two sons, so perhaps his parenting skills, the singer/songwriter thought, were driven differently.
“He knew I wasn’t a roughneck boy when I was a child, and he used to hit me and call me names thinking somehow that stuff was going to change me and make me tougher and make me straight or something. He didn’t like me much,” VanFossen recalled. “He was trying to change it because, in some warped way in his mind, he thought he was being a good father. He thought only bad fathers had gay sons and he made life hell for me.
“Somehow, though, in his last little bit of life after he was diagnosed with cancer, he put it all aside and tried to be my dad and my heart told me I had to be there for him. He was my father, and you only get one of those in life. He said he didn’t have regret and that kind of bothered me a good bit, to be honest, but I learned he didn’t know any better. He knew what he knew and that was it.”
Do Angels Sing?
He wonders.
Did his dad really say hi to his mother for him up in Heaven? Because he sure hopes so.
Is his mom still a fan of the music he’s writing and performing these days? Or has it matured too much away from the innocent lyrics about chasing dreams? Because he prays she loves it.
Will this push with his music make a difference? Because, after all, some dreams never die.
And was it really the best idea to submit his two-week resignation notice at his day job? Because that dream isn’t dead either.
“My father left me some things when he passed away and I believe this is what he wanted me to do because his gifts have let me record a new album and make a new video,” VanFossen said. “And then I win this national award for independent artists and two of my songs are on the actual country music charts? Maybe he’s making amends. He did give me this look once in the hospital, and it kind of told me where he was with it all.
“That’s when he told me he would tell my mother that I said hi when he got to Heaven. He said he knew how much I missed her, and that he knew I felt alone in the world without her,” he said. “That said something to me even though he was furious with me when I didn’t tell him about my mother being sick or when she died even though they had been divorced for 16 years at that point. He was pretty self-centered. He wasn’t very loveable, but I still want to make him proud.”
Turns out, VanFossen doesn’t care much anymore about that disc jockey and his message from a decade ago. These days, he’s 40, a resident of St. Clairsville, still a ginormous fan of the gone-for-good Hill’s Department stores and Elby’s Family Restaurants, and VanFossen is a man with a dream to chase, too.
“It’s not a topic I’ve talked about it much in the public, and I’ve never talked about being gay on the radio or anything like that. And yeah, it’s because of what the DJ told me years ago. It’s stupid that people care that much, but that was the case back then,” VanFossen said. “It’s who I am, though, and I’d bet there are people out there who can relate to my experiences and understand.
“I just want to live my life open and honest because living life the other way just about killed me,” he admitted. “I’ve come to learn if people have an issue with me being a gay man, it’s their problem. All I’m going to worry about now is making great music and playing it in front of as many people as possible.”
Matt then laughed and paused a moment before blurting, “OH! And I’m never going to the restroom ever again during an awards show. I’m still so embarrassed over that …”
