When a fifteen-year-old Jonah McLean left Warkworth in 2010 to attend a sports oriented high school in Sugar Land Texas and develop his innate gift for the game of golf, he did not know that in time he would grow to hate it. It took quite a while to figure out that his actual passion was music. It took as long as it did, well into his college years in North Carolina to leave golf behind, and return home to Warkworth, beginning anew. While working various jobs – including at a nearby golf course – he met up with a few local musicians (me included) and an entirely new path was forged by a then very clean-cut simmering music-man.
From budding sportsman, Jonah shifted his attention to song. Talent can be transferable, and the young artist has it in splendid quantity. His ‘coming out’ as a bona fide singer-songwriter was a slow reveal. From an early venture to blend in with my band, to his later incarnation as the leader of his own band, Jonah has recently gone solo. His newly minted first recordings are mature renderings of accumulated knowledge; at age thirty he is experienced, plentifully nourished with the requisite heart-ache and joy that a man lives through during his first adult decade, the Roaring Twenties.
Jonah recounts an interesting story. While training in North Carolina, his parents Joe and Kim travelled south for a family reunion. Passing by a musical instrument store, Joe insisted they pop in to check it out. It was there that the yet-to-learn how to really play golf-student picked up a special acoustic guitar. For some reason, unknown even today, Joe insisted that Jonah accept the guitar, as a gift. One can well imagine that dad simply intended to lift the boy’s melancholic spirit, as parents often try to do. The custom Martin_000 became the foundation for this young artist’s evolution, in song.
This year marks an important milestone for the now fully formed singer-songwriter. Over the course of 2024 Jonah McLean has penned and recorded a prolific quantity of songs, whittled down to a number of exceptional releases, now made available on all major streaming platforms. For links, check out his website: https://jonahmclean.ca/
Throughout the latter months of 2024, Jonah shared with me a number of fully formed songs, in mp3 format. I now listen to them as I write. He has worked intensely both in his basement recording studio and also with the well-seasoned producer, James McKenty, in Peterborough, Ontario. At one session with James, I had the pleasure of seeing the two in recording action. The beauty of McKenty’s approach is simply listening, and nourishing the artist’s voice to ring true. The craft of arrangement and accompaniment takes years to develop. James knows what he’s doing. There is no forcing, no attempt to make the singer-songwriter sound like something he is most certainly not. Working this way, the results are audibly resonant. Additional instrumentation is blessedly provided by Jeff Halischuk on drums, Ryan Weber on bass, harmonica, and trumpet, and Aaron Hoffman on piano. The horn section also includes Jim Usher on saxophone, and Tom Reader on trombone, with a little organ by yours truly.
Jonah McLean’s first single, titled ‘Hope You Stay’ is a perfectly formed authorial creation. The impeccably clear Martin guitar chimes in, followed by the sweetness of a mature voice. Jonah has range. In this song you can hear the combined raw feeling of hope for a lover’s commitment, with air-like Art Garfunkel backing vocals (it’s all McLean playing and singing). This guy knows how to write a sublimely succinct melody, with just the right chorus to accompany tightly effective verse, a bridge only when required. He plays within the concise format of popular song, in the 70s troubadour tradition, with substantialness, like the most familiar songs reminiscent of the time-weighted classics by fellow Canadians like Young, Mitchell, and Lightfoot. Yes, he’s that good. This, at the age of thirty, one wonders where he will take it.
A breakthrough in songwriting came when Jonah shed composing for his band to simply crafting songs for himself, for his solitary voice. Jonah and I share the same view that good music is always good music, regardless of the latest trend or fashion. As Gary Michael Dault points out in his Grapevine Magazine winter article:
“…good is good, and there is no responsible place for the insidious machinations of a momentary critical spotlight gleefully turned, for a brief time, on the newest, latest flavour in art—while the past dims into neglect…I believe in a Perpetual Present in aesthetic achievement. Yesterday’s good art cannot be allowed to dwindle into the mere condescension of art history. Eternality will always trump the momentary.” GMD
No one can state it better than Gary Michael Dault. We all know that good art is good art, simply self-evident, but occasionally we do need to be reminded. As a young artist, Jonah reminds us that we (Canadians) contain a wealth of great art, often under-appreciated, until success comes south of the border. I wonder when, rather than if, Jonah will make that (almost) required leap from Warkworth, to Toronto, to Los Angeles?
Today, releasing original music is a bit tricky. Long play albums are rare, replaced with singles and the extended play song-cycles (more than one song, less than an album). As Apple Music and Spotify make fortunes on the original work of artists around the world, tragically very little trickles down to the actual makers. In previous decades, touring musicians supported their record sales revenue by playing live, while today it’s the other way around. Recorded music does not fund creation and sustenance; musicians must tour to make a living. Records, as they were once called, capture a moment in the musician’s life. It is all journey, while an imagined ‘Ithaca’ remains always the vision, not a real destination; whatever McLean makes is of a moment in the struggle and journey, towards something. Whatever gleaned success (or failure) awaits is entirely beautiful. One may say it’s ‘living the dream’.
‘You and Me’, both song and EP title, is a dreamy creation. It frequently repeats the title phrase, rendered in soft choral cadence – a technique Jonah seemingly embraces effortlessly, gently transporting the listener. ‘Rescue Me’ is pure pop, with punchy guitars, groovy drums and horns, sounding a bit like a higher-pitched Van Morrison crossed with Paul Simon (from the 1980s minus African rhythm), more Detroit-ish. ’Falling Some How’ is a wistful song, major chords for the verse shift to a minor pre-chorus, followed by combined lift and simultaneous cascading choral vocals. A sweet aural experience, the kind you want to hear over and over again.
Release dates in 2025, on all streaming platforms:
February 11th – Hope You Stay (single)
March 13th – You And Me EP (4 songs)
April 15th – Inside Out (EP)
And with James McKenty producing,
May 20th – Wild Roses (single)
June 10th – Falling Somehow (single)
July 18th – Fool For You (single)
August 19th – Trepidation And True Feeling (EP)
Jonah McLean will be gigging throughout the year, solo, but don’t be surprised if you catch him accompanied by some warm-hearted collaborators.
Dimitri Papatheodorou
