Jason Young has long had a passion for music and has turned that passion into helping seniors and Veterans.
Young, who serves as marketing director for SYNERGY HomeCare in Oklahoma City/Tulsa, got his musical start with Ty England, who played for Garth Brooks.
“I was a tour manager, and I worked for guys like Chad Brock and Cledus T. Judd and Aaron Tippin. I toured for about 14 years with bands like Confederate Railroad and worked with Charlie Daniels and people like that,” Young said.
Young was born in Edmond. He currently resides in Yukon.
He started his musical career working for Nashville recording artists Ty England, Chad Brock, and Cledus T Judd. Young formed the Jason Young Band in 2009.
He has released 5 singles to Texas Radio “Long Way Home” – “The Moment” – “Under My Skin” – “Vinyl”-
“POOR” all charted in the Texas Radio Top 30. Since 2017 the single “Long Way Home” was used in the movie
An Evergreen Christmas (IMDB Credited). Their single “Crank It Up” was used in the Amazon movie Shut Up Anthony, (IMDB Credited).
In 2020, Jason Young, along with Cross Canadian Ragweed’s Grady Cross and Randy Ragsdale, formed Cross Rags And Young. Their first single “Family Name” spent 35 weeks on the Texas Charts, 12 weeks in the top ten and 5 weeks at No.3.
Their second single “Reckless” was their first #1 single on Texas Radio and spent more than 30 weeks on the chart. Cross Rags and Young were nominated for Best New Group from Texas Regional Radio and performed along with presenting at the Texas Regional Radio Music. In 2023 Jason became 1 of 5 Oklahoma Artists to represent the State Of Oklahoma Tourism Campaign Imagine.
In 2020 through 2022, Young and his wife Kerri adopted their two sons Charlie and Hudson.
“I was touring a lot and working a ranch. I wanted to be with those kids who were more important to me than this music dream I’d been chasing for 20 years,” he said. “And even though I was having some success in it, I ended up backing off. I wanted to find a real
job, and I knew I wanted to work around seniors.”
Young called a friend who worked for Physician Housecalls, and she happened to be having a networking event the next evening, so she invited him to attend.
“I didn’t even have a résumé,” he said. “I had to go home and get one together after the event, because I hadn’t had a real job in 20 years. I got five interviews that night. I met with Weama Kassem (SYNERGY Homecare owner) that next morning. It was my first interview. I was there for a couple hours. And when I left, I remember being in the parking lot, and I canceled all the other interviews. I knew that’s where I wanted to work. I knew I found a home.”
Young later took on an additional role as Veteran Advocate alongside Marketer Diane Young with SYNERGY. He went on to say, “One thing that inspired me even more was watching Weama Kassem’s love for her clients and veteran clients. She always goes out of her way for them and goes above and beyond. It’s like they are her family. Watching her and the SYNERGY team inspired me to do even more.”
“I’ve been raising money for Veterans off and on for many years and working around a lot of Veterans,” he said. “My grandfather, Tracy Titus, was a World War II Veteran, and he was always an inspiration to me. And so, I wanted to get involved even on a bigger level than what I was.”
Young said he started doing Veteran coffees at local American Legions though the state and was later invited to join the American Legion post in Mustang.
“I joined their group in Mustang, and at the time we were doing maybe three or four veteran coffees a month,” he said. “And one thing that was kind of itching at me was I’d be at these communities, and I would see that they didn’t do these coffees there, and a lot of these guys couldn’t get out. A lot of them were in assisted living, or independent living. They just didn’t want to or couldn’t leave the community.”
Young wanted to bring those coffee events to those communities.
He started visiting those communities and learning about their senior/Veteran residents.
“Every month, I have special guest speakers,” he said. “We did a show-and-tell that was amazing, where these Veterans bring something from their past, and they tell us their story. We’ve also done Veteran trivia about World War II and World War I, which was amazing. We are doing everything we can just to bring the Veterans together.”
Young said another thing they do for Veterans is present them with a challenge coin when they come on service with SYNERGY.
“So, I would give a presentation on the history of the challenge coin, then present them with their very own SYNERGY HomeCare challenge coin whenever they came on service with us,” he said. “I love seeing their faces when we give them that. I go to these events, and now I’m getting phone calls daily saying ‘Hey, my dad’s a veteran. I heard you could help.’”
Young’s next goal is to help create a local gathering space like the Coffee Bunker in Tulsa.
“I went into this place called the Coffee Bunker in Tulsa, and I was blown away. It’s all volunteer work. They’ve got VSOs. They have counselors. They deal with the homeless. They feed veterans lunch every day, donuts every morning,” he said. “They have a library. They have clothes. If you need something, they help you with it. It’s very moving when you’re there, and you’re seeing all these different Veterans come in and hang out all day long. The more I found out about this place, the more I wanted to be a part of it.”
Young has been promoting the idea for an Oklahoma City location.
“I’m excited about trying to get something like that here for our Veterans. I want to do everything I can for Veterans. For all they sacrifice and all they do for us,” he said.
. • by Van Mitchell, staff writer
