It has suddenly struck me that the last few weeks are feeling like possibly the most magical time in my entire life and that perhaps I should get down on paper at least a scrap of anecdotal evidence so that sometime perhaps in the not too distant future, when I am moping about the house, probably back on the booze, dissatisfied with something or other, creatively blocked, ungrateful and blind to the true majesty all around, I will have some sort of blurry picture to look at which might remind me of the places I have been.

Even leaving Halifax felt special. Not just because Carole and Gabe came to see me off with a special care package of muffins and trail mix and fruit for my drive to Montreal, but also because as I drove across the bridge to Dartmouth and out towards the motorway in Mike’s 1985 mercedes diesel station wagon, I suddenly understood the implications of what I was doing. This was not just another trip down to the shops, I wasn’t going to pick something up from Ikea or take my daughter to a sleepover. I was heading out on the road. For the next six weeks – whether my gigs were poorly attended or not, whether there were any radio interviews lined up or decent reviews of my album or not, whether I sold any CDs or made any new fans or not….I would be ON TOUR, I would be ON THE ROAD, on my own, with my guitars Delicious and Radiant, my little p.a., a few hundred copies of my album, some flyers telling people a bit about myself and oh yeah of course, my two favourite suits and a new magical hippy vest perfect for transmitting light healing through….I felt charged with adrenalin, and I was only on the bridge heading to Dartmouth, here in this car, I would be sat and like a magical spaceship I would just sit here put her on cruise control and concentrate and steer and I would get delivered to the scene of all my future adventures….immediately I noticed the similarity between the road, driving, and meditation: everything ahead of you is the future and not your business, everything behind you the past and not your business, all you have is what is in the car, focus on what is in the car, practice just accepting what is in the car….

Let me whizz you through the first few days as my real intention is to get to what happened the other night, here in Toronto, when Kristin Sweetland and I set off on an adventure full of intention and had a quite amazing experience that I still can’t quite fathom. However, there is too much good stuff not to at least skim the surface of the first couple of weeks of this tour.

First stop was to play some songs at the 50^th Birthday of Ann Deschenes, a friend I had met in Los Angeles at an Unlit (the mix of gig and party I organize in peoples homes around the world, now and then, free and open to anyone…) in 2011 on my way back from troubadouring in Australia. She had since got well in to the album Whole Again and had been a regular watcher of Hot TV and as it turned out was living for a while just outside of Montreal with her family, around a lake called Lac Poisson and had kindly invited me to be come and be part of her birthday celebrations.

To begin with I’m not sure the rest of the family quite understood why I was there, but Ann explained to them all that she thought my music was very special and she wanted to introduce them to it and I spoke my French enthusiastically (learnt through many long drawn out romantic discussions with three French girlfriends over the years…) and jammed with her brother in law Sylvain, who it turned out had a studio next door he was just putting the finishing touches to that week. I stayed a few nights, meditated by the lake, talked with Ann’s father who also lived by the lake, went running and talked with Ann about her various amazing projects she was working on. I’ve never met someone with quite so much belief in herself. She has done some really quite remarkable things -  a few years before had spent a year and a half at the Shaolin Monastery learning karate…..most young men last only a few months and she at 41 had spent a year and a half there and was now writing a book about her experiences. When she came back from that she started motorcycle racing and within a year of starting had become 3^rd on  the podium in the drivers championship she was entered for…..She’s a quite extraordinary woman. And very generous and supportive of my music. It was a pleasure to meet her family and play for them.

From there it was straight to my spiritual musical home in Montreal, the wonderful vegan café and shining light of goodness that attracts so many lovely folk in Montreal’s Mile End district – Maria Modicamore’s La Lumiere Du Mile End. I had wandered in to it quite by accident, a couple of days after my second Vipassana retreat, as I walked miles and miles of the streets of Montreal, just breathing in this city that I immediately felt a deep affection for. I had bought a cheap nylon string guitar down near the old quarter, so I would have something to play, as I always feel like singing when I have finished Vipassana. I arrived one evening at Maria’s and started singing her and Maud her young helper some songs….we all became instant friends. I did a little gig there a couple of days later and now, returning on tour, Maria invited me to come and stay upstairs on her sofa and to do my first Montreal gig of the tour there. Immediately we felt like old friends, and it was lovely to meet the rest of the angelic bunch that she has work there…..Tommy the cherubic smiling aussie,

Only 20 years old or so and so delightfully enthusiastic…. I played a gig in the garden there, we did HOT TV around at Tom Mennier’s place, another lovely chap, a friend of Maria’s who produces records and plays piano and bass, I met Stephane Cocke there who I just clicked with straight away, us wandering down the street across the park, off to the house I had spied which I loved to go and knock on the door and find out who lived there., hearing about how he had become a superstar dj by accident and about his father who had died at the age of 28 and was an amazing artist and writer….I stayed there at Maria’s as the sun shone, I fell in love with Montreal, and played each day at the neighbouring café Le Depanneur where there was a chalk board you could put your name up on and when there was an empty slot you could just get up and play and they would give you a meal and a coffee in return…..good deal!  Benoit, the amiable young guy behind the bar liked my music so found a slot for me almost all the days I was there, and I played little hour long gigs to people as they ate their lunch or tapped away on their computers, speaking in French in between songs and telling them all about my free album download and giving them flyers to direct them to it…..occasionaly the person playing before or after would jam with me, play a bit of sax, a bit of keys…..one morning there was a beautiful woman in there having a coffee with a friend, I was heading out on a run from Marias, but I quickly wrote in one of my albums a little eulogy to her and delivered it by hand…..”excuse me this is for you….” And then I ran out the door…..off down to check that the fox (my name for the car) was ok, and then back up the street, to Outremont, up towards the park and then up the winding slow incline towards Mont Real itself, then the steep final couple of hundred stairs which almost finish you off before, yes, yes, we are there! At the top, the top of Mont Real, looking out on the whole city, the whole island of montreal, beautiful city, breathing heavily, exhausted but exhilarated….

I drop my favourite linen cowboy shirt (only recently returned to me by post after a two year absence) in the street somewhere near st.laurent. I only notice too late to know where it could be. I let it go. Part of being on tour for me is losing clothes. It’s only three weeks in and all my socks are gone. Bizarrely I have a lot of pairs of clean boxer shorts. And no socks. Shirts are disappearing. As I leave Montreal after a wonderful week at Maria’s, it is raining, I share a brief coffee with Klervi the girl who I’d given the cd to, in my haste leave my cds and flyers behind, and drive off to Ottawa.

I think the last blog post was written there, covers some of that ground, but basically straight after writing that rather calm and satisfied mail, the next day I suddenly had a sort of wake up call, a challenge to my equanimity: I had no money. Well, worse than that. As well as suddenly realizing (it shouldn’t of course have been such a sudden realization, but my optimistic nature and lack of any great fiscal skills had obscured quite how broke I was or how many expenses this tour would actually have) that I wasn’t necessarily going to have enough money even to cover the rest of the costs of my tour, let alone for my trip out to America in July and then the UK in August…while realizing this I also looked for my cashcard and realized it must have been eaten by the hole in the wall when I went to get some cash out the night before. So this new day began. I got a new card easy enough from TD, and I adjusted to the fact that rice crackers and peanut butter was what we were gonna be eating from now on.

Ottawa was beautiful to run around. The weather was gorgeous, there’s a canal, there’s a river, there’s old buildings, the sun was shining and it was hot and I was running around this new town, I had a new debit card (no cash but I had the card), and as I ran past the venue for the night – The Daily Grind – I ran up to various folks and told them about the gig. Needless to say none of the people I had accosted and invited to my free gig in lanky sweaty nutter running man mode turned up…..note to self…However, it was a lovely night, I felt kind of warm and emotional and the place was half full with the support acts family, and she proceeded to play an hour and something’s set so that I thought maybe I wouldn’t even get to play. Ha. I didn’t even care. She was young and full of verve and love and good energy. She adored being up there. She let it flow out of her in a sort of soulful, bluesy way. She was called Keturah Johnson. Her dad Lyle was loving it. Her sis  and her gran were there, her boyfriend too. All lapping it up and applauding loads after each song. I sat there,

Glowing in the warmth of it all, the little coffee shop where this young singer’s life as an artist was being born in front of us. Everyone was so proud of her. Everyone had the same impression: she’s really got it. That sort of distance that comes with that. When you see someone realy has it.

She went on and on….and I loved it. Eventually it was my turn and I just sat there and played very gently, very warmly, not even really trying to grab anyone’s attention, the afterglow of the keturah show still there but as it does, that song teardrops and pennies which I started with seemed to pull everyone in, and soon enough I was sat there, telling them who I was and how I’d got here  and singing songs to accompany the tale, coming out in whatever order seemed right, swapping from Delicious to Radiant (nylon to acoustic) and back whenever it seemed like a little change of tone was needed. By the end of the night obviously we were all friends, and they put some money in my shoe, and I gave keturah and her sister a cd and their dad gave me 20 bucks for his and we talked about next time, and maybe a house concert. I got home happy and tired around 1.20am.

In the morning before leaving Ottawa I had a chance to go for another run in the sunshine. Since leaving my little spring dip in to melancholy and lethargy, I’ve been running a lot and when I do I friggin love it, leggin it around the place like I’m celebrating something or joyfully trying a out a pair of new legs, all the while waving or saying good morning or afternoon to whoever I pass….thought I’d cross over the bridge this morning and on the bridge this song came in to my head, a little folky ditty, the words and tune – didn’t know what it was but it just came in to my head and was there – “this whole world is in your hands, and you can only do what you can, so give a little live a little give a little live a little love…” – but I knew how it was with these things, I’d forget it if I didn’t get it down. Fortunately I found a couple of homeless guys, hanging out on the riverbank in Shakespearean stylie, big flagons of beer in their hands and would you have it but one of them had a smartphone! I told them I’d just written a song all about love that might change the world and could I use their phone quickly to call my phone and leave a message and I’m not sure they quite got me but they said I could use the phone…..I sang it in and said my profuse thankyous, declined the offer of a drink (!) and ran on…..a young woman sat by the side of the road and I sang the song to her…..she liked it, I said “do you want to film me singing it so you can show it to your grandkids?” but she said she’d just go with the memory, and laughing I sped on further downt he road, and as I sang the verse out again, there was a woman in a black dress ‘maybe you could come over and help this granny with her bags”, weird, she wasn’t a granny, she was about my age, but of course I would help her with her bags, I took the little bag of hers with a bunch of papers she was getting photocopied, and after hearing the song (I didn’t give her the option), fairly shortly after we started chatting and she told me she had lost her husband a few months before and she had an 11 year old and a 14 year old. We happened to be passing the venue from last night, and so we went in and I got one of my flyers showing her where the free download was, saying she might find some of the music there comforting and telling her to reach out if she wanted to, if she wanted someone to talk to who she didn’t know then I was there.

Next stop was Kingston….gonna have to make this really brief as I must get on to the adventure with Kristin in toronto, but Kingston is TOO good to miss entirely and who knows what my memory will do with all this good stuff if I leave it any longer.

Erin, Maria’s friend from Montreal, had suggest I stay with her friend Barb in Kingston at the legendary house that loads of artists had lived in over the years in downtown Kingston, number 167 and a half Wellington Street.  I’d been in touch with Barb and she was happy to host me. Meantime, the cool café in town, The Sleepless Goat, were happy for me to come in and do an impromptu gig on the Friday night. It was a balmy hot evening, it felt great to be arriving in a new town, a nice small quite English style sort of town, to meet this gracious and cool host Barb, who was used to having people come and stay on the sofa and had seen many people come and go in the 7 years she’d been in the house. Or was it 15 years she’d been there? Maybe it was. Either way, she was pretty busy organizing a cabaret for the next night but showed me where to park, where the sheets were, and said she’d pop down to the show later and then maybe we could go see a local funk band. Sounded  good. I played the gig. Very chilled. Just a large café, people kind of listening, kind of working, about 6 or 8 people sat near the front and attentive, a few folks put some money in the guitar case, it was fine, and the staff at the café were lovely. Barb took me across the street to the funk band after but I was pretty knackered, and just went back, meditated a little and went to sleep.

When I came back from coffee in the morning the course of events of what would be a particularly magical day went like this: barb plays me a weeping tile record saying do you know sarah harmer, this is her singing on this record, weeping tile used to live here, sarah harmers sister used to live here.

I said yes, I do know sarah harmer actually, she is a friend of a friend. I’d met her a couple of times and tried to get in touch with her a couple of times since arriving in Canada to no avail.

We listen a bit to the record.

I want to give barb my last CD (remember I left them in montreal! Have a box in Toronto but for the mo, now in Kingston have just one)

She says I don’t even have a cd player, save it for someone special that you meet. Oh do you know Wolfe Island? It’s beautiful you can get the ferry there for free. You should go.

Ok great. I’ll go to Wolfe island, I say, I’ll go and have a run there.

Then I go for a walk to the farmers market and see a poster for a Sarah Harmer gig on Wolfe Island. Weird I think. Just talking about her. Turns out the gig is TODAY. Weirder. And I’m just about to go to Wolfe Island. I know – I’m going to go and give my last CD to Sarah Harmer and reconnect with her….last time I saw her was on some crazy night in LA in 2004 after one of her gigs when rather star-struck I had hung out a table in a pizzeria on Sunset with Ethan Johns, Daniel Lanois, Josh Rouse and Sarah Harmer, when I was still a wannabe rockstar….hahaha. I don’t even know if she’d remember me. But it seemed like the universe was lining up our meeting, so I just went with it, got on the ferry and while on the ferry met some folks who asked

“so are you going to the literary festival?”

er no, I’m not, I’m just going for a run, where’s the literary festival? Turns out it was 5km to the left. We chatted, I found the hall where the gig was at, Sarah was inside the lights were off, the band were sound checking, I immediately felt embarrassed like what was I doing there? Oh yeah, I’d written in the CD for her already and gave it to this tall bearded guy asking if he would give it to Sarah and he said yes, made a quick exit, and found the folks from the ferry who offered me a lift to the literary festival. I said can I give you my bag? Then I’ll run there! Alright! So I run feeling the light of god in my soul, running down some beautiful country road on some Island in Ontario, having just given a bag with my wallet and phone to complete strangers, and sweating I arrive a bit later, stretch and wipe the sweat off and sit amongst them and another 100 folk and listen to some writers reading out bits from their books…..then I walk back to town, in the sun, treating the whole thing as a walking meditation, feeling pretty high on the whole experience, and just as I get in to town, by this stage I have decided I will sacrifice my pride and go and find Sarah so that I can get an autograph for Edie (who is a bit of a fan of her music), there she is walking towards me down the street with the tall bearded bloke.

“Hi Jont!”

“Hi sarah!” and we have a chat and I explain a bit why I’m in Kingston,  and it’s totally cool and not embarrassing at all and she writes a little note for my daughter “keep singing and having fun, love sarah harmer” and that’s that, I get on the ferry and head back to town, just as the heavens open and start pissing it down…..

So Kingston was great. From there I head to Toronto…..Before Toronto there is a special meditation ceremony I am meant to be attending which I have been excited about for a while….and I have decided that for the ceremony my intention is going to be to really try to become as clear vessel for divine healing holy light in my music as possible….to actually try to write songs that genuinely might make a difference, to be brave enough to attempt that….rather than just navel gazing and hoping that by some implicit commitment to truth I am doing enough….I’m excited about hanging out and meditating with this group of people I’ve never met before and – bang kkkrrrrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkkrrrrrkkrkrrr…..what the **** is that? The muffler has hit the deck, fallen off the bottom of the car, I’m on the freeway, fortunately just outside Toronto.  Clearly my high-falutin intention is being tested by some other spirit….you really want that? Well how much do you really want to get to the ceremony? Ha. Anyway, suffice to say it works out magically, I get towed, and a guy called Dian can give me a lift and my dear friend Kristin Sweetland who I’d met earlier in the year at the Folk Alliance Conference is at home, and tells me where the nearest muffler shop is where I can dump the car and lets me bring in my bags and soon Dian has picked me up and the meditation has begun.

Which brings us nearly up to date: missing out of course the incredible generosity of someone at the ceremony who found out I had just spent a whack of money getting towed and immediately “bounced” me $150 that he had been given unexpectedly by someone else that day…or the generosity of Cam from Cam’s Autos (King Street East, ever need something done go there! That guy deserves it!) who put the tail pipe back on for FREE….and then of course my trip to Hamilton and visiting my friend Thomas’s friend Cindy’s café

And doing HOT TV from there, and then meeting the folks at Homegrown  and doing an open mike there and then a gig the next night, with 20 or 30 folks sat around and really getting in to it and then going to St.Catharines the next night and playing a gig to literally almost no-one but meeting my second widow in a week, third in a couple of months, who told me fairly quickly after meeting me about how her husband had died and the circumstances….funny, I have met so many daughters who have never known their fathers or who have recently met their fathers and now this pattern of meeting people who have lost their husbands suddenly……women who have lost men….and this has just started happening after I have come to be with my daughter, come to be in Halifax….which brings us ever so nicely near and close to the beginning of the story whereby Kristin Sweetland and I step out in to Toronto for an adventure full of intention.

Close but not there yet. I have a gig first! Yep at a place called Free Times Café, not a bad spot actually, pretty cool back room, pretty nice food and the hostess / founder / boss Judy is pretty funny and welcoming and a character….I was on last, part of a bill of various songwriters, and the small room was fairly full, say 30 people there….is there anything interesting to report about the gig? No notreally other than that during my run a voice had told me “let the words come out like light” and so I did, and I’ve started going on these monster runs during the day around the canal near Kristin’s place, and getting really high running and chanting JWONG and imagining this golden ball of light in my belly while I’m running and the black birds dive-bombing my head, I guess protecting their babies, and I was pretty present in the gig, and after everyone left I just sat there and played for ANOTHER TWO HOURS to just three people in the corner who were loving it, and two more who came in later…..all of them bought cds, I was just flowing. Next day got an email, and Sheila who had hosted the meditation ceremony and had been at the gig, her husband Murray had really enjoyed the gig,  and she was wondering if I would come and play some songs at her birthday celebration the next day? They were talking to the right person! Of course I would. So Sunday, I headed out to this gorgeous mansion out near Caledon, and played in the sunshine to Sheila and her family and friends at her 49^th birthday party. What an honour. And they paid me. Maybe I would have enough money for petrol this month after all! When I got back Kristin made a delicious meal. It was a lovely summers evening. It didn’t seem right to waste it inside. A wander was what was needed….

It’s been a while, ok no – it’s been a longvwhile since I wrote a blog post and the reason is so silly….I couldn’t work out how to put photos up here any more. I still can’t. If there are any photos they will have been affixed by my loyal supporter and hard working label manager at the record company that isn’t a record company really but just the name for the entity that distributes my music to the world, Unlit Records, which really is just me and my old good friend Lee who sorts out the website and techy side of things and makes things look nice and tells me when to ship out cds and stuff like that.

I loved writing the troubadour blog. Itstopped, where, really? I guess Italy tour, 2011. I would have continued but events became so extreme….my first experience of Vipassana meditation (the ten day course I have warbled on enough about I expect to most of you….but life-changing it was and will always be), then discovering  that I was Edie’s father, or should I say discovering for sure that I was Edie’s father? It’s funny how the more that time goes by that faint inkling I had that I might be her dad, which grew with seeing her photo on facebook until I was ready to write to her mum and find out– it feels now like I knew all along, somewhere deep down, and as I gradually took the layers of my own ego off that inkling was able to rise more easily to the surface. So there was that momentous change in my life to be here now, amere 16 months later, a permanent resident of Canada, living full-time in Halifax, Nova Scotia, happily playing the role of devoted father in my daughter’s life, getting on brilliantly with her mum and cultivating a new more grounded troubadour existence, a large part of which still and will always I hope include writing, recording and playing my songs to people.

So that is what brings me today to Ottawa,to the Raw Sugar Café on Somerset Street West, a couple of hours west of Montreal, to play the 5^th official gig of my first Canadian tour, to help get word out of my new album. Unlike say a gig by my friend Charlie Winston in Paris, or by Coldplay in London, or even by some rising tyro on the folk scene, my gig will not be accompanied by much fanfare here in Ottawa. 40 in August, and beginning to hit my stride with my recorded work (8 months on from its completion and I can safely say Hello Halifax is by far my most accomplished album yet),  it seems that despite all the strenuous efforts of my youth to heal the world with my music and play on stages in front of thousands, no, millions of people…despite trying my very hardest (part of the problem as I would find out – misdirected energy, an urge to please – parents, a listener, as opposed to simply being present, simply allowing the light to come through) I am still yet to have been discovered by any more than a decent size handful of people across the globe.

If you are one of those listeners – hello! You are cherished. I love hearing when people connect with my albums. If you haven’t done so already, be in touch – I have several good friends around the world who started as people who were taken with my music. The old dynamic of“fan” and “star” doesn’t exist in my musical world….if you are finding my music and connecting with it there is indeed something going on, as it won’t be because I am “famous”. And if it appeals to you then I would love your help, as I would appreciate from a friend, in sharing it with all those in your life who you think might appreciate this music too. In this way perhaps we might cultivate an ever expanding network of tendrils through which this uplifting, healing vibe – that many people tell me they feel comes through in my songs – can reach all that it is meant to…

The other day, after meditating for three hours and walking to the gig for an hour and a half in Montreal, I arrived at that evening’s venue – inauspiciously called Burritoville – and played a set to,for the first time in my career, literally no-one in the audience. If it had been two or three people….that would have been done before. But no-one! I was quite thrilled! Stacy, my accomplice behind the bar (ok, so I wasn’t totally alone, but she was working there so that doesn’t really count does it?) was a lovely, attentive and interested muse as I played song after song to the empty tables and chairs.

Three hours of meditation and a long walk will really put you in the zone and I was on fire! After years of angst and depression on this musical journey stemming from attachment to recognition and fame and appreciation – ego issues basically! – after so many songs and performances ruined by not really being totally present in the moment, wishing for some other place, some other venue, some other situation – even if only a tiny bit, it felt somehow wonderful to be singing at the top of my game, really great performances, utterly in the groove, utterly feeling this divine light as much as my beginner’s frame might handle it, and be doing it to an audience of no-one….in some way this seemed like a triumph.

After a set’s worth, I called it quits, gave my accomplice Stacy a cd and made my way back to Maria’s wonderful safe haven in the Mile End district of Montreal.  Maybe I would meditate another hour before bed. I was here.  Where? Here. I was here and and I knew, in that moment, that if I stayed there, stayed shining in that vein, I was doing my best, I was being my full potential to help others. The question of course, ever since I realized this for the first time at the basement bar in Sydney, is how to stay there….hopefully each day I am learning more……the true record of course will come out in the songs I sing, the life I lead, what I can give and be for others, and in the albums…..I might be in Halifax now…..and in time will be just dust like Whitman and Buckley and Blake….but the recorded work…..that can be transported so quickly now, everywhere, and it lasts if not forever, then long enough…..

If you’re reading this now, in May or june 2013….then do check out last night’s HOT TV at livestream.com….it was brilliant! A great insight in to where I’m at at the moment, and how the journey is progressing……and very funny with lots of colourful Montreal characters! It’s called “HOT TV Ottawa” but happened last night in Montreal….https://new.livestream.com/accounts/2015893/events/2133872

Love to you all, the troubadour (in blog form) is happy to be back. And happy to have arrived in Ottawa. I even did a couple of radio interviews this afternoon, pulling over the side of the highway and chatting with some very amiable djs who seemed to really like the album….how funny after this long journey, to have finally made something that genuinely seems to be doing what I always wanted my music to do…..and there’s more to come! The next album is written and the songs sound …well they sound enormous, big open anthemic pop rock tunes…..the problem will definitely once again be not getting too carried away and letting my ego strive after some enormous commercial success! But it’s so HARD!! Ha ha ha, they just sound like such enormous hits…!! Ah well, I will just meditate and try to let it all fall in to place…..and keep my BIG HEAD out of it!!

With love to all of you who continue to behere on this journey with me….I will keep working my hardest, and I thank youfor spreading the word and the support you show me…now buy a friggin CD or donate something please! I need some petrol money!

Jont

Check out the brand new video to Jont’s new single Church On Sunday – taken from his new album Hello Halifax which is available for free / donation / purchase at jontnet.com.

The video was produced by Analogue Songs / The Picture House

Here are a few of the first comments coming back about my new album Hello Halifax. I am so lucky to have you – appreciative and sensitive listeners that you are!

I’ve just listened to the album in it’s entirety on my studio speakers. So nice to hear someone reaching their full potential, someone developing as an artist… and as a being (going by the lyrics)… a record that has warmth, depth and emotion. A real triumph dude. (Motto – Never Give Up!)… well done mate. I’ll be in touch about radio, etc. Great to hear from you again, Lorin    -Lorin Cutts

Hey Jont:

It’s about 6:24 a.m., and I’m seriously needing to head out the door for work in less than 10 minutes. Yet, it’s so hard to do that because I’ve been listening to your CD for about the last half hour and I’m finding it so damn soulful, so damn uplifting. Thank you for that, brother. Thank you for creating such beautiful music.

- Rich Ferguson

I listened to your new album today a kijillion times, love, love, love it!  I laughed and cried and sat in awe! – christine knuckle

Your music is reaching ears in Singapore! Bringing tears to my eyes, and just as I was sitting on the subway, thinking about the first songs I ever heard of yours, you popped in ‘when the time comes’!!! Love the album. Walking round Chinatown and Little India in Singapore listening… Xx   – Suki Zoe

I listened to your songs and once again, tears….of happiness, joy, love…a special moment. You make such beautiful music and it has always touched me. Thank you. I will spread the word….and play your album to my little Neo.  I know he’ll love it too.   – Tonia Thorne

Dear Jont,
a little note to thank you, i love it and listen to it over and over again…this one is very beautiful!

- Salena Godden

I’m really enjoying the new album ‘Hello Halifax’ by Jont Troubadour. It’s got a real sense of peace and a warmth about it. Very well written, sung and recorded.  -  Sam Semple

(Here follows a translation for my Italian friends, explaining how you can become a Torchbearer and help me get my new record out there…hyperlinks to the shop and photos being added soon)

Ciao!

Sono molto eccitato di scrivere a tutti voi! Ho il nuovo album e (toccando ferro) tutti coloro cui l’ho fatto ascoltare finora dicono che, probabilmente, è il migliore che abbia mai fatto. Un critico, una volta, descrisse un  mio album dicendo “è così adorabile che ti fa venire voglia di abbracciare la gente per strada!”. Penso che il nuovo album vi darà ancora più voglia di tutti gli altri fatti prima!

L’uscita ufficiale dell’album “HELLO HALIFAX” sarà solo tra alcuni mesi, ma ho pensato ad un modo per farvi avere una copia immediatamente e rendervi parte di questi primi momenti che precedono il lancio ufficiale, chiedendovi di diventare mecenati o “Torch-bearer” della mia musica.

Con una donazione minima di £75-00 (approx. 90 Euros) puoi diventare “Torch-bearer” della Unlit Records, ottenendo una copia scaricabile immediatamente dell’album e un CD autografato e il booklet personalizzato con il tuo nome, non appena le stampe saranno completate. Inltre ti invierò aggiornamenti mensili sui progressi dell’album durante il prossimo anno e, se lo desideri, potrai avere un concerto personale via skype quando decidi tu … !

Se potrai offrire più di £75-00 la tua generosità verrà assolutamente apprezzata e troveremo insieme il modo migliore per ricompensarla.

Sono già sicuro di voler essere torch-bearer! Fai click qui e scarica immediatamente dal  Jont Shop Online il tuo album … vuoi ulteriori informazioni? Continua a leggere!)

A cosa serviranno i tuoi soldi?

Con il tuo supporto potrò coprire le spese per la realizzazione del CD e – in base a quanti Torch-bearers si uniranno al progetto e all’ammontare delle offerte – mi aiuterai a sostenere una serie di video promozionali che sto progettando insieme al regista  Benjamin Weiss (che ha già curato il video di  Paper Cup) oltre alla campagna promozionale via stampa, radio e internet indirizzata ad alcune zone chiave in tutto il mondo, per raggiungere altri che potrebbero amare l’album.

Quindi per chi tra voi volesse e potesse darmi un aiuto pratico nel portare questo progetto di album terapeutico e positivo in giro per il mondo può cliccare qui, iscriversi e diventare torch-bearer.

La tua copia da scaricare ti verrà inviata via e-mail immediatamente e il mio braccio destro Lee ti contatterà per organizzare il concerto speciale via skype e sapere esattamente quale nome inserire sul booklet.

Ricorda però c’è solo UN MESE per partecipare.

Il 20 Dicembre invierò il progetto finale all’editore e la lista dei torch-bearer sarà completata.

Non perdere tempo!  Strike while the torch is Unlit!!

Grazie in anticipo per il tuo aiuto a far volar questo album alle stelle

il tuo riconoscente troubadour

Jont

Wow.

So funny to sit on the bed tonight and at my 8 year old daughter’s request watch episode after episode of the Unlit tours I went on with Dave Depares between 2006 and 2008. Shall we watch something else now, I would say, and she would say no, lets watch another. What now I would say? She would say – Jont. Really? Ok… Yeah I like them she said. And as they rolled on to look at these adventures in the past, these parties and gigs and interviews and meetings with people and happening, all this energy, and rather than holding on to this feeling that I’ve always had of them in some way being a “failure”, this feeling that, because it never “became” something, that the tv show fell through, my record deal never happened, because I never “made it”, and have continued to struggle to exist as an artist, and still – sadly – continue deep down to have this feeling of failing at what I do…..suddenly to be utterly surprised to be so filled with pride at what Dave and I achieved with those tours, with those movies. We look so happy there.  To witness all the amazing energy there. How excited people were to talk about their music, to be playing their music. Wow, is that really me? I thought. I look so animated and happy….I really look pretty cool, I guess, so much desire for people to think I was cool, had to rub off somewhere. Accent on the voiceover is a bit embarrassing – got this slight “mockney” thing going on….but you know, I meant well!
The me I’ve got used to being recently is so different….something much smaller, something much more shy, more humble, more sensitive. I thought it was someone better, but I’m not sure. Look at the joie de vivre. I thought that person was insecure and worried and full of thoughts of failure, craving and striving. But he was, actually, doing it. Really doing it. Wow. It’s time to wake up. And start doing it again.  An Unlit tour of Canada perhaps to launch Hello Halifax….

Dave are you out there?  What do you reckon? Or maybe 2016, ten years on, go across America again? Make a feature about it?

Amazing how life kicks it out of you. Doesn’t mean too, but it does. Or maybe its just waves. After throwing yourself at a certain trajectory for so long against a brick wall….you stop don’t you? Until the wounds heal, you get your energy back and you start again. Maybe my energy is nearly back…but maybe this time I’ll just try to lose the slightly affected mockney accent out….hahaha….XXX jont

So I figured I’m moving to a new place and it might be a good idea that the things that say “biog” on my official site and facebook site actually reflect as accurately as possible what me and my music is actually about…. so I just wrote this, which if you’re just coming to my music for the first time, might be of interest….or not!! I’m well aware with these blog things that they might be a little insular and dull….my mum expressed relief the other day that I wasn’t doing my blog anymore, suggesting it was all self-indulgent nonsense. I didn’t tell here that I was starting it again once I got to Halifax! But I will try to keep the self-indulgent nonsense down to a minimum and just make it stuff that other troubadours and fellow adventurers might find entertaining or interesting….

Cheers!!

BIOGRAPHY
My name is Jont - an awkward to say nickname from Jonathan that my parent’s gave me, pronounced like Joint, without the “i”, which yes, I have to explain to everyone I ever meet!

I’m an English troubadour, newly moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia utterly committed to my life as a singer-songwriter and performer and to my new role as a father.

I’ve been on a long journey with my music – I started my first band in Manchester, then in London, then lived in Los Angeles, being managed by Tom Petty’s manager and working with some big names, then I put a couple of records out in the UK on my own tiny label, before I left around the world with just my guitar and no plan to be a troubadour for real….one the road I discovered meditation and also that I had a daughter, who I had not been told about, who was living in Halifax, Nova Scotia (that’s the east coast of Canada for those who don’t know). So now I have decided to start a new phase of my troubadour life and base myself here in Canada, so that I can be near my daughter. I’m really excited about playing my songs across Canada and I really feel that my new album – titled, of course, “HELLO HALIFAX” – is the best collection of recordings I’ve ever made.

I can clearly see now, after doing my music for 17 years, that my role in this life is to write and perform my songs to the best of my ability so that it may bring others whatever they want to take from it: some people have found my albums to be cathartic and healing, some find them upbeat and happy….everyone gets something different from them.

I’ve never been with a big record company or ever had my music distributed through the mainstream music channels. If I’m honest, part of me did crave that sort of success, both for positive reasons (wanting to help people with my music) and also for more selfish ones (please others, please myself). Over the years I definitely sometimes would be surprised that that sort of success hadn’t happened to me and would find myself thinking “why not me?”.

How brilliant then to realise that this was just a natural and important part of the journey! After dedicating myself COMPLETELY to the journey, setting out to Australia knowing I would not come back until something had changed, had shifted, until I had got to the next level with my music, whatever that meant – that dedication allowed me at some stage to just let go of all those desires, to just be and play my music from a still centered place, and be totally present while I was there….not interested in anything other than what I was channelling in that moment. Discovering meditation was hugely important in this shift. Actually exercising that sort of concentration, so that I might more easily be in the present, not anxious about the future or holding on to the past……exercising that muscle each day really really helped me be more present, and therefore to more fully embody my music as it came through.

I am now absolutely happy playing my songs to an audience of one person who wants a particular song to help them in some way…..or to 5 people sitting by a river or a tent, or to 25 people in a living room, or to 250 people in a big tent at a festival or to….thousands in a theater in San Francisco on a bill between Bonnie Raitt and David Crosby!!! That was a funny night….all of them are good. And I trust that simply by trying to be my fullest potential to help others more and more each day, that my music will reach exactly the people it is meant to.

Word of my music is spread by the people (perhaps like you) that find it and like it: I have a small, growing group of people around the world who seem to tell their friends about it, and then they tell their friends. I live off the sales of my music from my website and itunes and from gigs.

If you have come across my music somehow and have read this far and are wondering what music to buy first and if in some way you want to be involved in helping me get my music out to your friends……then I guess here are some answers:

1) People’s favourite albums tend to be the three i’ve made since 2008: Supernatural, Set It Free and Whole again. They are all different but all good in their different ways and people who really like the vibe of my music tend to like them all, at different times. The one with the songs that were on “Grey’s Anatomy” is Supernatural. Buying them (either as download or CD) from The Jont Shop (at www.jontnet.com) makes me more money, but if you like you can also buy them from Itunes.

2) If you really like my music and in some way want to help it get out to more people….then just share youtube links of songs I post and also know that I am totally happy for you to send out free mp3s of songs from my albums to your friends…..just direct them to the Jont Shop on my website and we’ll leave the rest to the universe….if people like my music and want to support what I’m doing and actually buy it, great! And if they don’t that’s fine. I would prefer that my music is out there and having a positive effect in people’s lives than not being heard and not helping people. Other than that, share links of songs you think your friends might like and

3)Lastly, maybe you want to see me play live? I have just moved to Canada and in the next couple of years I feel I will be concentrating most of my gigs there, and maybe some over the border in the ‘states. But I will also be following wherever my songs lead me….and I am open to touring anywhere in the world if my music is leading me there and finding an audience who want it…

So, wherever you are…….be in touch! Make sure you’re on the mailing list (you can join it here or go www.jontnet.com) and when its time for me to arrange a tour I’ll let you know the details. Perhaps we can even organise a house concert together……

That’s it!

Welcome to my musical world! We are one… Jont