how Jon Walker knew Pete Wentz & Tom Conrad in high school and got involved with Panic! at the Disco:
someone asked how Jon knew Pete before Panic! at the Disco and I feel like any question of how someone’s associated with Pete Wentz quickly turns into a tangled web involving half of the mid-2000s scene lol. but here’s a general idea of where Jon Walker fits in.
I guess the fastest place to start is probably when 15-year-old Tom Conrad met Nick Scimeca on a message board in 1999 and then joined the band 504Plan that Nick had started with Mikey Russell (I’m really summarizing here btw. and ok their site said “504plan,” some fans wrote “5o4plan,” and their CD I have says “504 Plan” so idk take your pick). Anyways, their band started playing legit shows in 2001 and then released their CD in January 2002. here’s Nick & Tom:
504 Plan was kind of ridiculously awesome and their early site had the “We don’t take hits, we only write them” line at the top. Adam Anderson was the bass player at this point and they were doing cool stuff like Warped Tour.
The band was from Chicago and Fall Out Boy originally opened for them (Pete usually said he met Nick & Tom during a snowball fight in Chicago). It sounded like the bands kept doing occasional stuff together until 504 Plan broke up.
Patrick sang on the song “Breathing Deep” on 504 Plan’s EP in early 2003 and there were lots of pics of them wearing each other’s merch:
speaking of merch… so Nick was the drummer in 504 Plan and did a lot of graphic design stuff around the Chicago music scene (especially for Pete), continued to do work with Clandestine after 504 Plan broke up, did Friends or Enemies, and I don’t know how to sum up all the design & marketing he did with We Can’t Stop Thinking, but basically this is all coming back to how the FBR guys were woven in and out of each other’s lives (ex: Nick was really good friends with William Beckett, he and his friend Travie McCoy became Tequila Mockingbird, and Nick played a part in getting Gym Class Heroes signed by Pete). ok I feel like I’m about to get off-topic in 10 different ways… main point = everyone’s connected. back to JON WALKER:
Nick Scimeca shared a different version of this picture on his blog in 2009 but I didn’t save it, so thank you Jon for posting this one on instagram. super exciting:
That show is from November 2002 about six weeks after Jon turned 17. One of his high school bands was Farewell Night (here’s some live footage). This isn’t a complete summary of Jon’s early bands btw. I’m just focusing on the main points at which his stuff intersected with this main scene… or at least the aspects I’m aware of. So Farewell Night played many shows with 504 Plan and some with Fall Out Boy. (fun side note: Jon ran the journal updates on Farewell Night’s site with the same tone & varying names that he used 4 years later with P!ATD). Farewell Night broke up when AJ LaTrace left to join The Academy Is…
504 Plan’s bass player left around the same time, so Jon joined that band next and started touring the country when he was 17 (he was still in high school but it sounded like he took time off to tour?? I heard his dad used to be a guitarist and wanted to see his son succeed). Here’s Jon, Tom Conrad, & Nick Scimeca after a show:
The band broke up in spring 2004 when Jon was 18. ok I think I’ll just summarize some main points that came next…
key events starting in spring 2004:
17-year-old Ryan Ross meets Brendon Urie for the first time around the time 504 Plan breaks up.
504 Plan shares some unreleased demos on their site with the message “These songs were written between June - October 2003 and recorded in November 2003 by Jon Walker, in our basements. They do not have vocals because after the breakup not everyone was interested in having something complete to look back on later in life. Burn them to cd or in a fire, we do not care.”
Jon works at Starbucks and attends Columbia College Chicago where he and his flip flops update his livejournal with lots of pics of the area near his school.
The Academy Is asks Tom Conrad (who was in 504 Plan with Jon) to replace AJ (who was in Farewell Night with Jon).
TAI invites Jon to start doing video & photography stuff for them… I’m not entirely sure at what point Jon starts (I think the first TAI TV video was uploaded in August 2005 and Jon was still working at Starbucks at the start of that month. He was def touring with TAI a few months later, though). For reference, P!ATD had just finished recording AFYCSO and then played their first show ever in mid-August 2005.
So Jon Walker is touring with TAI in January 2006 when Panic! at the Disco starts opening for them (which was 5 months after P!ATD played their first show… and after they’d finished 2 national tours, a string of headlining shows, the IWSNT video, their first big tv appearance, and the interview for their first Alt Press cover… they really came storming onto the scene). Jon fixes Ryan’s guitar pedal, sings the Aladdin soundtrack with Brendon, and they all become good friends (except Brent is MIA in most stories from the band & fans this season. His brother later claims that Brent doesn’t even know who Jon is lol). P!ATD opens for TAI for over 2 months. P!ATD tells Jon by early March that they’re thinking of replacing their bass player.
Brent Wilson fails to show up as P!ATD is heading to LA for the KROQ Weenie Roast on May 13, 2006 and it’s the last straw in his lack of investment. The band fires him & calls their friend Jon to ask him to leave Cassie’s prom (or some kind of dance – the story varied) and take a last-minute flight from Chicago to save their butts. Jon grabs a black outfit and learns the entire set list by ear on the plane. (He’d had some advance notice that he might be replacing Brent, so he had more than a few hours to learn the album that spring, but still… he did it by ear omg). He just listens to their album and then goes onstage in front of like 10,000 people without ever fully practicing with the band nbd (I think they practiced the transitions between songs, though, since those weren’t on the album). P!ATD realizes how lucky they are to find a committed bass player who sings, writes songs, is great in interviews, boosts the band’s morale, plays a range of instruments, and is really good with the fans.
Jon starts doing a lot of the band’s journal updates, Brendon changes his livejournal icon to “Team Jon” stuff and is like an excited little puppy about him, and by the end of summer most fans have embraced Jon as a new favorite (I’m massively summarizing here btw). My own opinion: the band finally felt complete or like they’d found their footing.
Jon is officially listed as the new bass player at the start of July during the summer 2006 tour.
maybe Pete & Jon’s Lollapalooza afterparty adventures are relevant since Nicholas Scimeca was there too (they’re buried in this tag).
Tom Conrad is kicked out of TAI in October 2006.
Tom announces that he’s tagging along on P!ATD’s Nothing Rhymes With Circus tour to take pictures and says “JWalk and I were actually separated at birth. Believe it.” He shows up in the background of pics from this time too. Tom continues to post a few random shoutouts to Jon over the next couple years.
Pete Wentz has Jon join FOB onstage during the Chicago stop of their 2007 Honda Civic Tour and tosses his bass to him.
Tom forms the band Empires and then many years later Jon opens for them on May 21, 2011 (and also did this shoutout for them). Idk much about stuff that happened after 2009, though, so I’ll stop here.
Jon told Sydney’s MX newspaper in 2008:
“I grew up in Chicago and I was in a band with [TAI’s] guitar player and they went on tour and I just stopped going to college. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I did know I didn’t want to still be living at my parents’ house. I toured with [The Academy Is…] for four months and met these guys and the rest is history.”
This post kind of turned into how Tom Conrad & Jon Walker stayed friends through several bands… so there’s that too. I know I skipped tons but hopefully something in this random info dump gives a slightly better idea of how Jon’s connected! and I just typed this all in one go mostly off the top of my head and I’m really only decent with remembering P!ATD stuff, so if there’s something wrong please point it out & thanks :)
