NY Singer’s Comeback An Inspirational Hit By Dave Shiflett (Bloomberg) – If you’re looking for a mega-dose of inspiration, Jason Crigler may be your man. Crigler, a New York guitarist and singer, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage during an August 4, 2004 performance in Manhattan. His unbelievable recovery is chronicled in “Life. Support. Music,” which airs on PBS July 7 a 10 p.m. New York time. When it comes to comebacks, Crigler gives Lazarus a run for his money. Calamity struck early in the gig. Bandmates recall that Crigler, then 34, suddenly looked confused and rushed from the stage to wife Monica, who was two months pregnant. “I need help, I need help,” he said. They went outside, where he gently lay down on the sidewalk. Being whisked away in an ambulance, he recalls, “is the last thing I remember for a year and a half.” Jason had little brain function when he got to the hospital, and doctors offered little hope of him regaining even basic abilities. Over the next several months muscles deteriorated and the fingers that once danced along his guitar neck curled into a tight knot. Filmmaker Eric Daniel Metzgar, a friend of Crigler’s, interviewed family, musical colleagues and doctors during the recovery, and also includes video shot during therapy sessions at Boston’s Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, where Crigler transferred after six months in acute care. The videos are shocking and heartrending: Crigler’s mouth is wide open and his eyes bulge, as if he had just been speared in the back. I found myself thinking: If I’m ever that far gone, let me go. His doctors offered little hope. "Scientifically, he wasn't there," says Dr. Christopher Carter, who treated Crigler. To his family, however, Crigler was anything but a Nowhere Man. Instead of placing him in a nursing home they moved him to a Boston residence and provided round-the-clock care and stimulation. Slowly the old Jason began to re-emerge. Wife Monica, who is remarkably unsentimental, says the smallest advances “were miraculous.” She adds that she came to “see the beauty in sadness and hardship,” though she states she is “not trying to romanticize” the situation. Perhaps the biggest miracle was when Crigler started playing the guitar, initially picking out a small progression of notes, which he repeated incessantly. An old saying came to mind: There’s no curing a guitar player. While Jason Crigler is not a household name, he has shared the stage with John Cale, Linda Thompson, Marshall Crenshaw, Rufus Wainwright and Norah Jones, who in an interview says his loss created “a big hole in the community.” Crigler’s comeback came in increments – a cameo song at a friend’s gig, then a set, and finally, on his 36th birthday, a full show at a favorite Manhattan venue, The Living Room. “I think I’m okay,” Crigler says as he tunes up. The audience couldn’t have been happier if John, George, Paul and Ringo had materialized on stage. “Something exceptional and quite indescribable occurred,” Metzgar says, and it’s impossible not to be astounded watching Crigler play and sing, considering the dismal wreck of a man we recall from the therapy videos. His family believes he’s 90 percent recovered, though his sense of humor couldn’t get much better. In a bit of stage bantering, Crigler calls the stroke “quite an experience” during which he met doctors who told him he would never walk or play the guitar. “Luckily, I proved them all wrong.”
