John Strohm Never Meant to Come Back

From alt-rock drummer and guitar player to indie label president and back again, Strohm’s story isn’t about reinvention—it’s about remembering who you are.

John Strohm didn’t exactly fall into music—but he didn’t have a plan, either.

He was a kid in Indiana who loved punk rock, moved to Boston, and found himself at the heart of a new scene. One minute he was just a drummer with a fake ID, the next he was founding Blake Babies with Juliana Hatfield and Freda Love, opening for the Replacements, and suddenly part of a movement.

“I think we were all just trying to figure out how to not do what our parents did,” he says. “We didn’t know it was gonna become a thing.”

That “thing” was American indie rock—pre-Nirvana, pre-streaming, when bands still piled into vans and handed out flyers at record stores. Strohm was in it deep. He toured relentlessly, joined The Lemonheads (originally on drums, now and forever on guitar), fronted his own band Antenna, and logged a decade in the trenches of the alt-rock circuit.

But even as the music took off, something gnawed at him.

“I never really felt like I understood how the business worked,” he says. “We were just kids, and we made a lot of bad deals.”

By the early 2000s, the grind was wearing thin. He had a kid. Touring no longer looked like a dream—it looked like instability. So he did something that shocked just about everyone who knew him: he quit music and went to law school.

“I was 36, broke, and tired of living hand to mouth,” he says. “Law school seemed like the most punk rock thing I could do at that point.”

Most artists flirt with the idea of going “legit.” Strohm went all the way. Three years later, he had a law degree, a bar card, and a new mission: protect artists from the same mess he’d been through.

And he was good at it. Not because he loved arguing in court (he didn’t), but because he could translate. He spoke both languages—artist and executive. He knew when someone was trying to screw you, and he knew what questions most creatives were too embarrassed to ask.

“For a lot of musicians, the business side feels like another planet,” he says. “I could be the guy who helped them land the ship.”

Then came the call that changed everything: his first client was Bon Iver.

“Justin and his manager reached out right as I was getting started,” Strohm says. “They didn’t care that I was new to practicing law—they cared that I got it. That I’d lived it.”

Suddenly, Strohm wasn’t just a music lawyer—he was the music lawyer for one of the most influential acts of the decade. That early trust gave him the credibility and runway to build a whole new career.

“It was validating in a way I didn’t expect,” he says. “It reminded me that this crazy detour into law school wasn’t about abandoning music. It was about serving it in a different way.”

That path eventually led him to Rounder Records—first as outside counsel, then as president.

Now, Rounder wasn’t just any label. It had a long legacy in roots and Americana, and Strohm took the reins at a time when the whole industry was shifting underfoot. Streaming was exploding, catalog value was skyrocketing, and legacy acts were finally getting the respect (and checks) they’d been owed.

“Taking the Rounder job was kind of a full-circle moment,” Strohm reflects. “I went from broke musician to music lawyer to label president. It was like, damn, I’m on the other side of the table now.”

But that seat came with a different kind of weight. Budgets. Hiring. Firing. Trying to get buy-in from both the creatives and the parent company. It was meaningful work, but also draining.

“I started to lose track of why I got into music in the first place,” he says. “I’d sit in meetings and think—man, when’s the last time I listened to a record just to feel something?”

So, five years in, he stepped down. Not in a blaze of glory. Just quietly walked away.

It wasn’t burnout. It wasn’t bitterness. It was clarity.

“I think I realized I had been proving something—to myself, maybe to the world—for a long time,” he says. “Like, ‘See? I’m not just some washed-up drummer.’ But once I proved it, I didn’t need to keep doing it.”

These days, Strohm’s back in Nashville. He’s launched a new boutique law firm. He consults. He plays music again. He helps other artists navigate the maze without losing their minds. And—maybe most important—he’s stopped trying to fit into a box someone else built.

“I’ve come to realize that I’m not one thing,” he says. “I’m not just a musician. Or a lawyer. Or a suit. I’m all of it.”

That perspective is rare—and hard-earned. Strohm’s path isn’t clean. It’s not a three-act movie arc. It’s messy, weird, and wonderfully human. He made a lot of pivots. He burned some bridges. He walked away from things people spend their whole lives chasing.

And somehow, in all that movement, he found himself.

“I don’t think I ever really left music,” he says. “I just had to go through a bunch of other shit to remember why I loved it.”

Read John on Substack | John's New Law Firm

---

This story is part of A Minor In Reality, a series on the messy, magical leap from 0 to 1. Built for founders—both for-profit and nonprofit—these are real conversations with real builders.

Read more at here.