Tampa rocker made both of his dreams come true

Jamie Dunn won't be spending Father's Day with her dad, John Wesley Dearth - aka John Wesley, Tampa rock scene veteran.

He is in Germany performing at the Southside Festival with progressive rock group Porcupine Tree, on a bill with Stone Temple Pilots, The Strokes, Jack Johnson and dozens more bands.

Jamie, 22, will be at home in Brandon the day after her first ballet recital.

It's not the first time Wesley has missed a special event in his daughter's life because of work, but that's not to say he sacrificed family for career. Wesley and Jamie have a bond stronger than many a more traditional dad and daughter.

He didn't give up his dreams, either, as many musicians do when it seems they must make a choice. Even though he was a single, full-time father.

"You've heard, 'It takes a village to raise a child'?" says sister Julie Coggin of Lithia. "He had one."

Wesley had just gotten home from a European tour opening for English band Marillion when he learned he would be given sole custody of his then-6-year-old daughter. He and Jamie's mother had divorced five years earlier.

"I didn't come home with a lot of money," he recalls. "I had a car but no place to live. And she was mine."

Their first home was a friend's spare bedroom. With a roof over their heads, Wesley turned to the next pressing issue. Jamie would not be allowed to start first grade in the fall because she had missed too many days of kindergarten.

He arranged for her to finish kindergarten during the summer and, in the fall, enrolled her at a school near his parents' house. Father and daughter moved into another spare bedroom, this one in the apartment of sister Michelle Johnson.

"It had a walk-in closet," Wesley says. "I cleared it out, put in a mattress and put up Glow Stars. That was her first bedroom. And she was happy."

A happy time

Jamie recalls her childhood fondly, even if she had no delusions about Dad having a normal job.

"If he couldn't get a babysitter, I'd go with him to gigs on school nights," she says.

Wesley recalls her curled up asleep in his acoustic guitar case.

"He'd bring his guitar and play for my class during the Great American Teach-In," she remembers.

And when she was in first grade and Wesley was back on the road with Marillion, "He'd mail postcards to our class. We followed the whole tour."

Money was tight, though. Wesley took any local gig he could, often playing solo in bars, singing cover songs, while working on his own music when he could.

"I didn't ever stop playing or touring, but I cut back a lot in that time period," he says. "I would only take tours that were really, really, really going to benefit me.

"I had to pass on some opportunities. I could have relocated to London or Los Angeles, but I couldn't really do that with her.

"There were no gigs sometimes. I sold guitars to pay the rent. I took anything that was coming along, but I never gave up."

When Wesley had to hit the road, Jamie stayed with one of her aunts or her grandparents.

"Maybe that's why she's so adaptable," Coggin says. "We all pitched in, but it wasn't like she was a burden. She was always a joy to have around."

Some encouraged Wesley to take a steady job. Not his family, though.

"We all knew my brother was extremely talented," Coggin says. "He's not just a garage band player. He's so talented he should have made it big a long, long time ago.

"I don't think he would have continued on that path without having the security of knowing we were here to help."

A 'Brownie mom'

Besides making a living, Wesley was looking for a way to bring Jamie out of her shell.

"She was very reserved. Her teachers would tell me she didn't participate at school," he says.

Brownies proved tough for a single dad.

"I wasn't a good Brownie mom," he says with a laugh.

When Jamie showed interest in tae kwon do, Wesley signed her up for classes. He signed on as well.

"It was something we did together," Jamie says. "We went to class together. We went to belt-testing together."

Sometimes they went to town on each other.

"Once we got into a fight at home before class," Jamie says. "We went to class and decided to beat each other up in our pads. We were laughing the whole time."

Things began to pick up for Wesley. Through the Marillion connection, he teamed up with another English progressive rocker named Fish. That led to his current gig as the touring guitarist of the British quartet Porcupine Tree, a popular progressive rock band with whom he has toured since 2002.

He married Becca in 1998, and two years later he and Mark Prator opened Red Room Recording Studio in Ybor City.

Overcoming shyness

Things picked up for Jamie, too. The shy girl became a Brandon High School cheerleader. Her senior year she was co-captain of the squad as well as senior class president.

She graduated in 2006 and went to Florida State University for a while before transferring to the University of South Florida, from which she was graduated in December with a degree in marketing.

"They had a very special relationship," Coggin says. "He almost treated her like an adult. He shared a lot with her. There was nothing really hidden from her."

Don't confuse that with parental leniency.

"With my brother, there's no goofing around," Coggin says. "If Jamie did anything wrong, he put his foot down immediately. Becca's the same way."

Jamie sees her strong bond with her father as a result of the circumstances.

"I think it made us closer," she says. "In a situation like that, I had to learn to trust him more than I would have otherwise."

Jamie will soon have her own parental responsibilities; she and her husband, Alex, are expecting a child about the first of the year.

The one thing it seems Wesley was unable to give his daughter was his musical talent.

"I am not musically inclined at all," she says with a laugh. "He tried to teach me once and it lasted about a week. Taking music lessons from your dad is horrible!"

So they can't bond over guitars. But they have so much more, enough that missing Father's Day together is no big deal.

"Over the years, because of the touring, holidays and birthdays began to take on less of an immediate importance, as we began to really understand the significance of every day," Wesley says in an e-mail from Germany.

"So for me, when it came to her ... every day was Father's Day."