Transcription of Jonathan Edwards for the show Soul Music #214
Lisa: As listeners of Love Maine Radio realized I’m constantly fascinated by the way in which life tends to wrap itself around and around and around itself. One of our earliest guest was Dr. Stephen Goldstein and as Dr. Goldstein who happens to be an optometrist, he was leaving, he said you’ve got to get this guy Jonathan Edwards on. He’s this amazing musician and I know how you can reach him. Four years later, here he is.
Jonathan: Perseverance. I’m telling you.
Lisa: Exactly, not through Dr. Goldstein but he put the energy out there. We have Jonathan Edwards in the studio, I’m really quite thrilled. He’s a singer-songwriter who has been writing hit songs and playing for audiences all over the country for closing out on five decades. He’s done 18 albums and he’s lived in 18 different zip codes and he’s a legend and he’s here.
Jonathan: That’s right. It’s unbelievable.
Lisa: Well, thanks for coming in today.
Jonathan: My eye doctor and now me.
Lisa: Exactly. Exactly, from one to the other. It was pretty funny to think about one of the things that you’re known for, sunshine, which was done in 1971. That happens to be the year that I was born so now everybody knows how old I am. I remember the song. I remember the song, my parents actually would play it on their record player, because that’s what they had back then in the 70s. It was such an iconic song for the decade. Somehow the upbeat nature of it was an interesting counterpoint to what was going on in the early 70s. Tell me a little bit about that.
Jonathan: Well, the genesis of the song came from my experience in military school, from my high school years. I know you don’t know me at all but it seems that I was deemed a behavioral problem in public school, my early years in public school and so I found myself in military school and so I got acquainted with the military and disenchanted with it at the same time and my dad was an ex-FBI agent and I had just narrowly survived any pre-induction draft broad physical where I tried to demonstrate how much I was ill-suited to life in the service and a tour at Vietnam or Cambodia wherever we were at the time.
I sat down on the bed with all those things in my mind and I had this little folk melody running through my head and those words just spilled out, sunshine in the morning and don’t … Sunshine go away, feels much like dancing. Very few people, very few radio personalities in fact really understood that it was a war protest on. I was tired of the direction that our nation, our government was taking on our behalf.
I wrote this little cleverly disguised folk song that people saw the title and went, let’s play that, it’s cheery, and it was a cheery little melody but like the third verses, he says in love and war all is fair but he’s got a card he ain’t showing. Here we are some I don’t know how many, 40 something years later and still at it.
Lisa: Yeah. As you’re talking about this, I’m thinking about my family, my dad, he graduated from medical school in 1971. He was in the military at the time, he has served through two different military conflicts. I’ve had three family members who went off to the Gulf War or went off the Persian Gulf. You’re right, it’s interesting that, you’re right, this is 44 years ago and we’re still in the middle of it somehow, maybe not Vietnam but certainly we’re still out there in the middle of conflict.
Jonathan: Yeah. It’s a downer topic.
Lisa: Well, it is. Although I would say that it seems as though we have more respect for people in the military now than I believe we once did. I wasn’t really cognizant in the early 70s, but it seems as though we now are more supportive of the people who are trying to fight for freedom, keep our country safe and all that.
Jonathan: Well, it’s a volunteer force now and it wasn’t at that time, it was conscription. You’re going to go do this when you’re 18 whether you want to or not which is terrifying to think of and that’s the culture we lived in in the late 60s and early 70s.
Lisa: Yeah, I can imagine. I have a son who’s 22, I can imagine if somebody just said please go on overseas and you may not come back.
Jonathan: Correct.
Lisa: You’re an interesting guy in that you have this military school background and you grew up in Minnesota.
Jonathan: I was born in Minnesota, and was adopted when I was nine months old.
Lisa: Okay.
Jonathan: By a lovely couple that brought us to Virginia, so my dad could be in the government.
Lisa: Yes, you ended up back again in art school even though you have this father in the FBI.
Jonathan: Accountant, lawyer, business.
Lisa: Exactly. You went to art school.
Jonathan: Yeah. The credit is due to my parents, my adopted parents who understood that I was not cut in the mold they were made from, that I was a creative soul and a bit of a free spirit, and that I should follow my dream and that was to be creative and to be always thinking about how to express myself in creative ways instead of more demonstrative perhaps ways.
Lisa: You have the music running through you, you described at some point. Beginning on the $29 guitar.
Jonathan: Yeah. My adopted mom was a preacher’s daughter and we were always involved with church, she was always getting me to sing and there’s always a piano in the house. I grew up on gospel music, all the way from gospel music to Harry Belafonte. I was always, I remember singing a solo in our huge church sanctuary when I was eight years old. They brought me out to the children’s choir to be in the adult choir for a Sunday. I remember how my voice sounded to me in that reverberant room and the effect it had on me.
Lisa: Well, tell me about that. Tell me about that effect. The effect that it had on you. This is something that I’m really interested in having sung in church myself, having been a soloist in church myself, and having felt that interesting. There’s just something that happens. There’s some connectivity that occurs that I don’t think I’ve ever been able to replicate in anything else that I’ve done. Tell me what that was like for you at the age of eight.
Jonathan: Interesting. You’re an interesting person as well.
Lisa: Well, some people would say but we’re talking about you now.
Jonathan: Okay. It was profound. It was a profound feeling to have, to see visible effects of what I was singing in that church that morning. As a child, there was a lot that I didn’t understand about life as most children but I think I was really late in understanding a lot of life’s concept all the way from understanding that winter came in February every year. Wow, I learned that late in life.
Just I didn’t understand anything about politics, or religion or behavior obviously. I understood music. That touched me and that I understood it. I loved that experienced and I was always in minstrel shows and always trying to get on stage and taking part in that level of performance and creativity.
Lisa: As someone who went to college and studied art. How did the educational experience regarding creativity, that creative, how did that influence your songwriting and your performance?
Jonathan: Well, I started writing songs in military school and my roommate coincidentally just came to my show, my military school roommate just came to the show I did in Oregon a week and a half ago or so, and it was great to see him again after many years. We used to write poetry together and trade words, we were word smiths and he still writes and obviously so do I.
For me like I said, I picked up the guitar in military school and if anything, if so many things didn’t make sense in my life, all of a sudden something made sense. I joke about it in my bio, the clouds part and the angels sing. That’s really what it was like. It really was, this guy showed me a couple things to play on the guitar and it made total sense. Something I could do with no other help, with no other rules except to make something sound good.
I started writing songs right off the bat. My parents and I really realized that there wasn’t really a living to be made at that in 61 so I better pick some other endeavor, artistic endeavor to try. Art became the natural fall back. They sent me to the art school of a higher university which at the time was a really highly rated art school. This is all to say that all that creativity comes to bear on my soul in writing and on my art.
I do the record covers of my records lately and it’s all other piece. I tell people, it’s part of the process. I know it doesn’t seem like gardening is part of the process, but it is and so is making compost and so is digging in the dirt and planting things. It’s all being in the woods and being in nature is all part of my recipe for putting stuff down in the studio and on paper.
Lisa: What does that look like as far as you’re living in Maine, because you’ve been all over the place, you’ve been in Austin, Texas, you’ve been up in Nova Scotia. Obviously you were born in Minnesota, you lived in Virginia. You’ve traveled.
Jonathan: Yes.
Lisa: You’ve worked for the last closing in on five decades.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Lisa: What does that mean as far as the Maine connection for you?
Jonathan: Well, I always resonated with the Maine experience, hard-working people, real people. I’ve lived in Connecticut, lived in Texas and I just love the people in Maine and I love the summer here and the fall, spring too, mud season and all of it. I love the coastline and I just recently got rid of my boat which is really hurting me this summer, but I had no time, there’s time with my schedule and what I’ve embarked upon promoting this new album to be in any boat, never mind my own. I’ve always loved the people here and the fans and the venues and I hope to get a chance to live here in Maine. It happened.
Lisa: I’m impressed by the fact that you are, I’m allowed to say your age, right?
Jonathan: Sure.
Lisa: That you’re 69. It happens to be the age that my father is. My dad just retired from seeing patients but he loves family medicine so much that he continues to teach with the residency program at Maine Medical Center. You’re 69, you love what you do so much that you continue to write songs, perform, tour, promote your albums, that’s saying a lot, because there are a lot of people who are waiting just to get your stage of life so that they can finally “retire” and then start living but you’re living, you are living the life that you want to live.
Jonathan: Yeah. I wake up every morning grateful and happy that I can do that and have the ability to do that and I think it’s in great measure to the fact that I take good care of my audiences all the years. I make sure that I give it all up every night that I can on stage and audiences respond to that and that encourages me to even go deeper and on it goes. Even now I’m learning so much every show I do, I’m learning so much about how to do it and what resonates with people and what energizes me and incentivizes me and of course inspires me.
Lisa: You’ve performed at the Stone Mountain Art Center and you’ve performed at other venues around Maine and around the country. Do you have particular favorites, or are there places that you really enjoy being?
Jonathan: Well, Stone Mountain is certainly one of them, up in Brownfield, it’s an amazing venue and they take such good care of us and their audience and the food is great, the barn is great, it’s just a wonderful place and very few people know about it. I often, Vince Gill is a friend of mine, he’s on my new album and they played there I don’t know, I want to say a year and a half ago or so, I went up to see them and stuff.
I imagine what their bus ride was like on the way up that hill. Imagine that the band was going, what in the world, where are you taking us? On a dirt road and this huge silver eagle bus, I imagine, I don’t even know. They had no idea what they’re in for and of course ended up like the rest of us just loving it. That’s a favorite venue, there are several all over the country. The Infinity Halls in Connecticut, there’s two of them that are really, really good for us to play in and audiences love it.
Lisa: You also happen to be working with a classmate of mine or a schoolmate of mine, Tom Snow.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Lisa: Plays piano, very talented. Used to play when I was singing way back when. We went to the same church.
Jonathan: Wow, I can’t wait to talk with him.
Lisa: Yeah. He’s a very, very talented guy. In addition to Tom, you’ve surrounded yourself with other very talented local musicians. You’ve had the opportunity to play with or open for some pretty big names, BB King, the Allman Brothers. You mentored from what I understand Cheryl Wheeler. You’ve touched some of the musical community in so many different ways. How does that happen? What’s the progression?
Jonathan: Just following your ears and following your heart and just trying to surround yourself with people that inspire you and make you better, make me more aware and sensitive and powerful by knowing these people like Tom and Joe Walsh and many other folks around here, and Cheryl that you mentioned. Yeah. It was wonderful opening and being honest, on the bill with some of the great artists of my generation. I take that inspiration with me wherever I go.
Lisa: How has your songwriting changed over the years? I’m guessing that things from when you were in military school to now have probably shifted in your life. You’re probably not exactly the same person that you once were. As far as the songwriting goes, has that, has the subject matter changed, has the way that you approach it changed?
Jonathan: Yeah. The songwriting I think is getting much deeper and more personal, more meaningful. I used to write just anything that sounded good, let it go with that. That has a lot of merit to just let your soul and spirit fly and go ahead and commit towards what just sound good and melodies that just sound good and that seem to follow some natural progression that comes from the muse that I’m privileged enough to have visit once in a while.
It hasn’t changed. I don’t know. My subject matter is a little more, I don’t know. I hesitate to say that anything has changed really. People say, well, you’ve got, you’ve made 18 albums or whatever. What’s changed? If I really examine, not a whole lot, the instrumentation is the same. I’m learning to sing better I think than I ever have and I’m listening far more accurately and more deeply and from a more emotional level than I ever did before. That maybe the only thing that’s changed. We still use some banjos and mandolins and pianos and acoustic instruments and lots of harmony.
Lisa: Jonathan you’re going to play the song, Tomorrow’s Child, which is the title track from your latest album Tomorrow’s Child and it features a pretty well known singer-songwriter. Tell me a little bit about the song and who you worked with on this?
Jonathan: Well, the song was written by Marcus Hummon who is a national songwriter that I have yet to meet but I’m familiar with his work and it was suggested to me to listen to and see if I could wrap my mind and my heart and my voice around his song, tomorrow’s child and it fit perfectly into the other songs that we had selected for this album and songs that I had written for this album.
I started calling up my friends which I’ve never done before and I suddenly felt so good about this record that I started, I had to conference call people like Jerry Douglas to play some dobro and Vince Gill to sing some harmony and Shawn Colvin to come in and sing. I said well I’m on a roll I might as well go for the holy grail of asking my distant friend Alison Krauss to come in and sing, and she sings with me on this title cut tomorrow’s child.
Lisa: Well, I feel very fortunate to have the chance to talk with you about your music and to hear your song.
Jonathan: Likewise.
Lisa: I encourage people to buy tomorrow’s child or one of your other 17 albums or maybe see a performance that you will be doing locally. How can people find out more about the work that you do, what is your website?
Jonathan: Jonathanedwards.net. Seems all the answers, they know more about my schedule than I do. These CDs come out of our house, you can buy them from our website and would love for people to hear some of this new music.
Lisa: Well, thank you. Thank you for not only being willing to share so much of yourself, your life, your music, your words over the last most five decades, but also thank you for being willing to take the time to speak with me in such a deeply personal and heartfelt way.
Jonathan: My pleasure. Lisa, thank you so much.