JONATHAN MORSE
Creator and CEO
Hey, I'm Jonathan Morse, the creator of Footjunkie. I serve as a stage technician through my company Stage Tech Solutions based in Nashville, TN. Since the year 2000 I have worked with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones and Victor Wooten, assisting with their life on the road. One of my jobs is to minimize anything that will distract them from their live performance, but it wasn't until after I started dating a keyboard player that I learned there was an across the board issue that all keyboard players deal with: sustain pedal creep.
Looking back over the years, since I became a part of the Nashville music scene, I had seen the signs: the sustain pedal recovery dance, the unique mic stand placement, gaffers tape or even a brick to hold it in place. But it wasn't until I watched my now-wife agonize and struggle to keep her pedal in place that I went on a mission to find something to help keep her head in the song.
I soon found out there were only a handful of products on the market for this problem and they didn't address everything a pro level player would expect from an accessory: first and most importantly that it reliably does the job, second, that it’s easy to set up and third, that it works in any performance setup. Funny enough, the "Ah Ha!" moment came to me when I realized that a seat cover I made for my motorcycle might do the job. When we saw that I was on to something I made the first Footjunkie prototype for her to use.
A few weeks later a fellow keyboardist learned what I had made and she shouted, "Make me one! I'll pay you for it!" So I started talking to all the pro players I knew to see what they thought. The responses where emotional...I was surprised! So I made about thirty more and put together a test market to try them out for the next year. The results came back with 100% satisfaction. So, in 2018 I went to market and I’m glad to say Footjunkie has served with that satisfaction rate ever since.