PAULINO’S OWN JOURNEY

For nearly two decades, Jason Paulino has known exactly what it feels like to bring a packed room to its feet singing someone else’s songs. What he is discovering now is what it feels like to bring them to their feet singing his.

Paulino grew up in Hudson, Massachusetts, in the 1980s, in a house full of music and a family that made sure he knew who Steve Perry was. That early admiration for Journey’s frontman would end up shaping the rest of his life, though he could not have known it yet. He idolized Freddie Mercury, Hall & Oates, and INXS’s Michael Hutchence too, and by the time MTV had gotten its hooks in him, there was no question left about what he was going to do with his life.

In 2008, Paulino co-founded The Great Escape, a Journey tribute band, and stepped into the role that would define the next era of his career: fronting a full-tilt recreation of 1981 Frontiers-tour Journey, night after night, for audiences from casino stages to community feasts across New England. His voice, uncannily close to Perry’s own, earned The Great Escape two New England Tribute Band of the Year honors and a devoted, multi-state following. Paulino became something rare in the tribute-band world: a frontman audiences would swear was the real thing.

But somewhere underneath nearly twenty years of “Don’t Stop Believin'” and “Faithfully,” Paulino was writing his own songs. Last year, he made the leap that so many musicians only talk about: he moved to the Nashville area to pursue a solo career as a singer-songwriter and recording artist in his own name. He still returns to The Great Escape when he can, including a homecoming performance this past August at the Senhor da Pedra Feast in New Bedford, a nod to the Portuguese heritage he has always worn proudly. But increasingly, the songs on stage are his own.

That leap is already paying off. Paulino has been officially nominated for Song of the Year – Rock Artist at the 12th Annual Josie Music Awards for his single “Don’t Give Up On Me,” placing him among an elite field of independent artists to be recognized this year. “It is truly an honor to be nominated for a Josie Award, and I’m incredibly grateful to be recognized in the first year I’ve entered my music,” Paulino said. “The recognition of being heard and understood in such a personal song confirmed I’m achieving my dreams and right where I’m supposed to be.” On September 20, when the Grand Ole Opry House opens its doors for the Josie Music Awards, Jason Paulino will be there, not as anyone else’s voice this time, but as his own.