Canadian singer Jon Bryant speaks of his time in NXIVM, will release new album called, ‘Cult Classic’

Jon Bryant is a Canadian singer-songwriter.  He was also in NXIVM for about a year.

As a singer songwriter, Bryant has toured North America and Europe and is an artist advocate for World Vision while performing with Canadian music group Starfield.

As a member of NXIVM he took a number of seminars and admits he was brainwashed to a degree for a time. 

Bryant is based in Vancouver and was likely connected to the NXIVM center there under the direction of Sarah Edmondson.

Edmondson was one of the leaders of the anti-NXIVM movement that took the cult down.

Bryant has had some success as a singer-songwriter. His debut album, Two Coasts for Comfort, released in 2009 was iTunes Canada’s “Featured Singer/Songwriter Album of 2009” and garnered a 2011 East Coast Music Award nomination for “Folk Album of the Year”.

That award is actually a higher award than the East Coast Judo Champion, Keith Raniere claims to have won when he was 11.

In 2012, Bryant released his album What Takes You which featured Canadian musicians, including JUNO Award winner Meaghan Smith, and guitarist Jason Mingo.

Jon disclosed on an Cananda Entertainment Tonight report that he was in a “vulnerable place.”

In the Canada Entertainment Tonight report, Jon says:

“I think I was in a vulnerable place and I was just looking for people to hang out with that had similar interests and wanted to learn about themselves and make the world better. Their mandate was empowerment of the human, in the emotional realms specifically  They really targeted your emotions. You’re sleep deprived, you’re food deprived and then you have to go through all these really thought-heavy seminars….

 “I wasn’t surprised that it was a cult, but I was surprised at the degree to which they were exploiting people.” 

When did Jon realize he wanted out? 

“The first day. I felt like when we were reciting a mantra to a living guy, like another human, I was like, ‘this seems weird.’ They were like, “Listen this is why people say we are cult because of, but we’re not really a cult.’ And cults always say that.

“It took me about a year to officially say, ‘Nah, I’m done.’ They kept on asking throughout the year if I would come back. I was brainwashed in a way, to a point, but not enough for me to continue going with it and having that commitment that other people would have had.”

Inspired by his time within NXIVM,  John has a new album called ‘Cult Classes’ scheduled for release in 2019.

The first track is called “Cultivated and is about his experience in NXIVM.

“Throughout that time it had been simmering in my mind that I should definitely write about my experience there.  I wrote ‘Cultivated’ about our need for truth and our need for purpose and community and acceptance and you see it in all aspects of culture. You see it in politics and gaming and fashion.  It’s everywhere in our culture. Cults happen to be very sensational but we are all part of one or two cults, if we can be honest with ourselves.”

]

Jon Bryant has twice performed at the Juno Awards ceremony.[9]

His discography:

  • 2009: Two Coasts for Comfort[10]
  • 2012: What Takes You[11][12]
  • 2016: Twenty Something

Awards and achievements[edit]

  • East Coast Music Awards
    • 2011 – Folk Album of the Year Two Coasts for Comfort (nomination)
  • Music Nova ScotiaAwards
    • 2010 – Best New Artist (nominated)
    • 2010 – Digital Artist of the Year (nominated)[13]
    • 2010 – Inspirational Artist of the Year (nominated)
  • Covenant Awards
    • 2010 – Best Folk Album Two Coasts For Comfort (nominated)
  • iTunes Canada
    • “Deaf” – iTunes “Single of the Week” – January 2010[14]
    • Two Coasts for Comfort – iTunes Featured Singer/Songwriter Album of 2009[15]
    • iTunes “Indie Spotlight” – February 2010
  • TV/Film Placements

About the author

Frank Parlato

0 0 votes
Article Rating

Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

15 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Capt.Crunch
Capt.Crunch
5 years ago

And yet , OJ walked free, smh

Just Sayin'
Just Sayin'
5 years ago

Well, he obviously experienced it first-hand.
Kudos to him for moving on, and I wish him success.

Hiram
Hiram
5 years ago

I will be releasing my sure hit titled O VANGUARD in the coming weeks.
It’s an A Capella testament to the Master Keith. Remember, he used to have an infatuation with A Capella music (The A Capella Innovations festival in Albany’s Egg)
All the girls are singing backup with me.
We plan a tour in the Spring,
Watch for us in a town near you

Scott Johnson (@ScottTexJohnson)

Bryant needs to open up about his NXIVM experience on this website, not just through some random, uninformed interviews designed to promote his next album. I told him this on his website, and you (anybody reading this) should, too: https://www.jonbryantmusic.com/

Pyriel
Pyriel
5 years ago

Talking of songs…. The Twelve Days Of Vanguards Christmas

On the first day of Christmas, detention gave to me
A strip search at MDC.

On the second day of Christmas, detention gave to me
A bad case of thrush
And a strip search at MDC.

On the third day of Christmas, detention gave to me
Prison eyewear,
A bad case of thrush
And a strip search at MDC.

On the fourth day of Christmas, detention gave to me
Crying to sleep,
Prison eyewear,
A bad case of thrush
And a strip search at MDC.

On the fifth day of Christmas, detention gave to me
Bruising on knees,
Crying to sleep,
Prison eyewear,
A bad case of thrush
And a strip search at MDC.

On the sixth day of Christmas, detention gave to me
Food unamazing,
Bruising on knees,
Crying to sleep,
Prison eyewear,
A bad case of thrush
And a strip search at MDC.

On the seventh day of Christmas, detention gave to me
Blood pressure raising,
Food unamazing,
Bruising on knees,
Crying to sleep,
Prison eyewear,
A bad case of thrush
And a strip search at MDC.

On the eighth day of Christmas, detention gave to me
Mites ever grazing,
Blood pressure raising,
Food unamazing,
Bruising on knees,
Crying to sleep,
Prison eyewear,
A bad case of thrush
And a strip search at MDC.

On the ninth day of Christmas, detention gave to me
Head and feet aching,
Mites ever grazing,
Blood pressure raising,
Food unamazing,
Bruising on knees,
Crying to sleep,
Prison eyewear,
A bad case of thrush
And a strip search at MDC.

On the tenth day of Christmas, detention gave to me
Shower forsaking,
Head and feet aching,
Mites ever grazing,
Blood pressure raising,
Food unamazing,
Bruising on knees,
Crying to sleep,
Prison eyewear,
A bad case of thrush
And a strip search at MDC.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, detention gave to me
Lawyers bills growing,
Shower forsaking,
Head and feet aching,
Mites ever grazing,
Blood pressure raising,
Food unamazing,
Bruising on knees,
Crying to sleep,
Prison eyewear,
A bad case of thrush
And a strip search at MDC.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, detention gave to me
S%@t bombers throwing,
Lawyers bills growing,
Shower forsaking,
Head and feet aching,
Mites ever grazing,
Blood pressure raising,
Food unamazing,
Bruising on knees,
Crying to sleep,
Prison eyewear,
A bad case of thrush
And a strip search at MDC.

Viva Executive Success!

shadowstate1958
5 years ago

Jon Bryant claims to have been brainwashed and maybe he was.
But he is not using brainwashing as a defense to any criminal charges.

US scientists and the courts reject any notion of brainwashing as a successful criminal defense.
Brainwashing is a good plot line in movies but does not conform to reality.
US courts have almost universally rejected the Voodoo science of brainwashing as the basis for creating Voodoo law.
Brainwashing is being used as a ;last gasp attempt to save the spoiled brat leaders of NXIVM.
———————————————————-

The most famous attempt at the defense came in the Patty Hearst case. Hearst, a 19-year-old heiress to the Hearst publishing fortune, was kidnapped, held in a closet, and tortured for several months by the Symbionese Liberation Army, whom she then joined and aided in several armed robberies. (For a primer on the SLA, click here.) At trial, Hearst’s lawyer F. Lee Bailey advanced a “duress” defense, explaining that she would never have robbed the bank had the SLA not “brainwashed” her. The jury didn’t buy it, even when Robert J. Lifton, one of the earliest scholars in brainwashing, himself testified in her defense. Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Hearst’s brainwashing claim ultimately succeeded—not in any court of law, but in the court of public opinion. Six of Hearst’s former jurors joined a massive national movement to commute her sentence, and John Wayne, one of her many famous defenders, declared, after the tragedy in Jonestown, Guyana: “It seems quite odd to me that the American people have immediately accepted the fact that one man can brainwash 900 human beings into mass suicide, but will not accept the fact that a ruthless group, the Symbionese Liberation Army, could brainwash a little girl by torture, degradation and confinement.” President Carter commuted her sentence, and President Clinton granted her a pardon.

Why does the American public embrace brainwashing as scientific fact, long after the scientific community and the courts have made it clear that the phenomenon is dubious at best? Perhaps because brainwashing became so much a part of mainstream popular culture; perhaps because it offers a “scientific” explanation for religions we cannot accept. Perhaps, more profoundly, if everyone who doesn’t think as we do can be dismissed as “brainwashed,” we can keep asserting cultural and religious supremacy and still appear open-minded and tolerant.

But every dog has its day, and all junk-science has its limit.
In 1990 with U.S. v. Fishman, a California federal criminal action in which a defendant put forth an insanity defense in a mail fraud case, alleging that he’d been brainwashed by the Scientologists. The judge tossed the brainwashing testimony, holding that the views did not represent the consensual view of the scientific community.

More and more, the idea of brainwashing is dismissed by courts as either Cold War hysteria or the anti-cult mania of the ‘70s and ‘80s. With their new affection and tolerance for cults (now respectfully renamed “new religious movements”) and a dearth of empirical evidence that evil geniuses can force innocents to do what they would not normally do, the scientists aren’t around to testify. The most dramatic phenomenon revealed by the current empirical evidence is that something called “social influence” exists. (This is more or less the same thing that makes you buy the Ralph Lauren turtleneck instead of the one from Sears.)

The proper word to describe a savage act committed at the behest of a charismatic lunatic is not “brainwashed.” It’s evil.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/01/the-return-of-the-brainwashed-defense.html

t

fi
r
e.

Scott Johnson (@ScottTexJohnson)

This is hogwash, “…the American public embrace brainwashing as scientific fact….” While there are SOME who do think brainwashing is a scientific fact, most do not.

LaLaLad
LaLaLad
5 years ago

I hear Mark Hildreth’s album will drop in January.
Because of his long time in the cult he has enough material for a double album.
The cover art will be by MK10ART and have a BDSM theme picturing an unidentified slim brunette.

Anonymous
Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  LaLaLad

Mark Hildreth is in no position to play the victim card.

A Crapella
5 years ago
Reply to  LaLaLad

Heard that the slim brunette sings some backup vocals on the album, and that her singing is worse than her acting.

Anonymous
Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  A Crapella

Ha!

Mark Hildreth did a shitty song with an accompanying music video and his fellow NXIVM dickheads were in it! Kristin Crook is in it too. Spot those NXIVM cultists.
I can spot Kristin Kook, Sarah Edmondson, Marissa Cepelinski, Olivia Cheng. Look from 2:45.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_aVeBkXnDvs

Anonymous
Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  LaLaLad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aVeBkXnDvs

Here’s the video to his song Siddhartha. Many among the NXIVM believers are in it, a lot of them together around 3:43. In it I can see Sarah Edmondson, Olivia Cheng, Kristin Kreuk, and Brendan Fletcher among others.

LaLaLad
LaLaLad
5 years ago
Reply to  Anonymous

If anyone cares, here are the lyrics to Hildreth’s song
https://www.lyricsbox.com/mark-hildreth-siddhartha-lyrics-n8b1qjc.html

Anonymous
Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  LaLaLad

Nobody cares about his shitty song. Mark Hildreth is a little coward pussy.

Anonymous
Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  Anonymous

in it also appears the ex-boyfriend of allison Chad Krowchuk. As both director and actor, by the way in an interview given this year Chad said that before Allison was convinced to attend that weekend in which she met all those women from the inner circle and managed to recruit both she and he thought that NXIVM was a spooky cult for all the artists who were recruiting and who then devoted to continue taking courses

About the Author

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist.

His work has been cited in hundreds of news outlets, like The New York Times, The Daily Mail, VICE News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Post, New York Daily News, Oxygen, Rolling Stone, People Magazine, The Sun, The Times of London, CBS Inside Edition, among many others in all five continents.

His work to expose and take down NXIVM is featured in books like “Captive” by Catherine Oxenberg, “Scarred” by Sarah Edmonson, “The Program” by Toni Natalie, and “NXIVM. La Secta Que Sedujo al Poder en México” by Juan Alberto Vasquez.

Parlato has been prominently featured on HBO’s docuseries “The Vow” and was the lead investigator and coordinating producer for Investigation Discovery’s “The Lost Women of NXIVM.” Parlato was also credited in the Starz docuseries "Seduced" for saving 'slave' women from being branded and escaping the sex-slave cult known as DOS.

Additionally, Parlato’s coverage of the group OneTaste, starting in 2018, helped spark an FBI investigation, which led to indictments of two of its leaders in 2023.

Parlato appeared on the Nancy Grace Show, Beyond the Headlines with Gretchen Carlson, Dr. Oz, American Greed, Dateline NBC, and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, where Parlato conducted the first-ever interview with Keith Raniere after his arrest. This was ironic, as many credit Parlato as one of the primary architects of his arrest and the cratering of the cult he founded.

Parlato is a consulting producer and appears in TNT's The Heiress and the Sex Cult, which premiered on May 22, 2022. Most recently, he consulted and appeared on Tubi's "Branded and Brainwashed: Inside NXIVM," which aired January, 2023.

IMDb — Frank Parlato

Contact Frank with tips or for help.
Phone / Text: (305) 783-7083
Email: frankreport76@gmail.com

Archives

15
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x