Mentally Sound

Mentally Sound is a band with 2 members. “Good” Johnny Phillips, and David "D" Minor.
D minor, having spent a good chunk of his youth on a ranch, has his roots in Country and Western genre. As a small child, he was a proficient child savant, performing with his fiddle in regional talent contests. When he got older, his attention was drawn sharply away from this style, and became a rock and roll artist. His influences range from Kiss to the White Stripes, but he is mainly a Beatles fan at heart.  His parents divorced when he was young,and his mother remarried to a cruel and abusive rancher. This eventually led to David moving out and being homeless for a time.  His mother later left this man, and David reunited with her and his sister, and all was well for a while.  
It was during this time that he met Andy Mariner, a man who shared his love of rock and roll, and they became fast friends. They started a band that they called “Brothers Grass.”  They learned to play rock instruments and to record them with the technology of the time. They sometimes incorporated a third person in the band, and they also played gigs from time to time. In the late 90’s they both had had jobs in the food service industry.  That’s where they met Johnny Phillips.
Johnny grew up in Fritch, Tx.  Starting in Kindergarten, it was apparent that he had a learning disability, and the fact that he was trying to grow up in a small town with backward classmates and with teachers who were ill equipped to deal with his condition compounded his dilemma. He found writing and drawing extremely difficult, and was held back in 2nd grade, and socially passed in fourth. He grew frustrated with his situation, and would often retreat to a world of fantasy, video games. 
He excelled at music, however, and joined the Sanford-Fritch Band in fifth grade.  His talent with the Tuba earned him 1st chair in the all-region band competition.  But he couldn’t be in the all-region band if he couldn’t pass his classes, so Johnny had to study twice as hard in order to make the grade.  It worked.  He overcame his disability and went on to serve in the Army and went to college on the GI bill.
After his term of service was up, He started working in food service to help earn extra money. He moved from Fritch to Amarillo in the late 90’s where he found himself working with Andy and David.
Johnny needed an outlet for his musical talents, so when Andy mentioned that he had a band, he joined as a singer, not knowing how to play any band instruments. Together, they began calling themselves “Buffalo Grass” and won a contest with FM 89.9 that had them on the radio once.  
Soon afterward, however, tragedy struck when Andy passed away at his house.  All were sad, but David was devastated, and soon fell into a slump which was later diagnosed as Major Depression.  
The band fell apart for nearly 2 decades, but Johnny and David stayed in touch, mainly due to Johnny having married David’s sister.
Recently, however, after being diagnosed with cancer, David had had enough.  He broke out his guitar and started performing at open mics around Amarillo.  Johnny, having never gotten out of the food service industry, was inspired by David, and was soon joining him on stage.  They changed their name to “Mentally Sound” because another band named “Buffalo Grass” was performing in the area.
They perform covers of classic rock and roll songs, as well as some country and  contemporary music, but what they really like to do is to compose.  Generally, David comes up with a melody and an idea of what to sing about, then pitches it to Johnny, who mulls it over in his head until the lyrics are complete. Then it’s pitched back to David and they work on it until finally it gets recorded.
Even more recently, they have started making Stop-motion films with as videos of these originals. This painstakingly long process is made less daunting because David is, and always has been very good at art, and Johnny has a very vivid imagination, and the mind of a computer geek.   For David, this process not only gives him an outlet to express his feelings, and also keeps his mind off the things that upset him.  For Johnny, it lets him escape into the fanciful world that he helps to create, and lets him finally excel at something for the first time since All-State Band.