Growing up, Jonathon Linaberry was obsessed with the radio.  “I remember sitting there at night, glued to the boombox, cassette player ready to record whenever my favorite songs came on,” he recalls. “There was something so thrilling about it, something romantic that I think we’ve lost now that everything’s available at our fingertips. I wanted to find a way to get back to that place, to recapture those feelings of excitement and anticipation and possibility.”  Linaberry does precisely that on Radio Waves, his sixth studio album as The Bones Of J.R. Jones. Recorded in Toronto with producer Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Bahamas), the collection is moody and hypnotic, steeped in the sonic landscape of the ’80s and ’90s as it excavates the past with equal parts nostalgia and curiosity. The arrangements are utterly entrancing here, built on the tension between acoustic instruments and retro synthesizers, and Linaberry’s performances are raw and visceral, at times aching in their vulnerability. Put it all together and you’ve got a poignant exploration of memory and longing delivered by a relentless searcher, a revelatory work of personal reflection steeped in the endless beauty, pain, and chaos of youth.     “I’ve never really resonated with the idea of ‘the good old days,’” Linaberry reflects. “Your understanding of the past and your relationship with it change as you get older, and I’ve always been more interested in the evolution of those feelings than in wearing any kind of rose-colored glasses.”  Born and raised in central New York, Linaberry got his start playing in hardcore and punk bands before becoming enamored with the field recordings of Alan Lomax, who documented rural American blues, folk, and gospel musicians throughout the 1930s and ’40s. Inspired by the unvarnished honesty of those vintage performances, Linaberry launched The Bones of J.R. Jones in 2012 and, operating as a fully independent artist, began releasing a series of critically acclaimed albums and EPs that would land his songs in a slew of films and television shows  (including True Detective, Suits, Daredevil, Longmire, and Graceland) and lead to countless tours across the US and Europe (including stops everywhere from Telluride Blues to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass). Along the way, Linaberry also shared bills with the likes of The Wallflowers, G. Love, and The Devil Makes Three, soundtracked an Amazon commercial helmed by Oscar-winning director Taika Waititi, and earned praise from Billboard, American Songwriter, Under the Radar, and more.  “After a dozen years of touring and recording, I found myself getting burnt out by the constant barrage of new music that’s out there,” Linaberry reflects. “In some ways, it’s great to have that kind of access, but it can also be numbing, and I found myself missing what it felt like to have an album change your life, to listen to your cassette of Born In The USA so many times you have to wind the tape back up with a pencil.”  Linaberry set out to tap back into that magic on Radio Waves, writing songs steeped in the sounds and stories of his own coming of age. He tuned out the modern world in favor of stark, lo-fi demos built around fingerpicked guitars and old school electronics, and when it came time to record the album, he leaned into working with an outside producer for the first time, traveling to Canada for two ten-day sessions at Lackritz’s studio.  “A lot of these songs started on a drum machine, which was very intentional,” Linaberry explains. “I wanted to focus on simplicity, on stripping tracks back to their most essential elements so that the melody and the vocals could shine.”  The result is an almost primal sound, familiar yet uneasy, like a memory hanging perpetually just out of reach.  “These songs live in the night—the endless kind, where you get in your car just to drive and listen to music, to feel like you’re going somewhere even if you’re not,” Linaberry says. “It’s the sound of a kitchen heavy with the leftover heat of an August day and a table crowded with drinks, of arguments and first loves and first heartbreaks, of not living up to your potential, of breaking promises, of being human.”  Take a listen to album opener “Car Crash” and you’ll understand exactly what he means. Tender and hazy, the track offers up a bittersweet embrace of life’s imperfections, finding meaning and connection in our shared flaws and shortcomings. “I want your whole heart,” Linaberry professes, “even the broken parts.” Like much of the record, it’s insistent yet understated, as much a celebration as it is a confession. The sensuous “Savages” revels in the reckless abandon of young adulthood, while the spare “Heart Attack” stares disappointment directly in the face, and the piercing “Shameless” works its way through a lifetime of what ifs.    “Our lives are an endless series of revolving doors,” Linaberry reflects. “Even the smallest decisions can change our entire trajectory. What kind of arrogant fool doesn’t look back and wonder?”  That sense of lostness, of uncertainty as to who we are and where we belong turns up throughout the record. The blistering “Drive” devours itself from the inside out in the tedious solitude of the road; “The Devil” grapples with identity, intimacy, and dependence; and the breezy “Catching You” wonders what we were ever trying to prove with all the debaucherous nights and bad decisions of youth.  “I think so many of us live in the past because it’s easier to face than the future,” Linaberry explains. “But I’m not interested in going back. I’m interested in understanding the feelings and experiences that made us who we are: the passion and the hunger, the faults and the failures, the hopes and the fears.  Truth be told, those feelings never really go away. They’re all still out there, floating in the ether, drifting through eternity on an endless sea of radio waves. All you have to do is tune in. 

The miles we travel make up the stories we tell.   The soles of your favorite boots or the tread on your prized car’s tires soak up the experiences and wisdom of the road under your feet. Born in New England, based in Bozeman Montana, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Madeline Hawthorne pens the kind of tunes you listen to on a cross-country trek to start anew or in the dead of night when you just need a reminder that somebody’s listening.   In this respect, her 2024 independent album, Tales From Late Nights & Long Drives, serves as a fitting soundtrack to life’s trip. “It’s the perfect road trip record,” she affirms. “It was mostly written while I was on tour. If the songs were written at home in Montana, I took inspiration from journal entries and memories of my travels. This is me stepping onto the stage with more miles under my boots. I’m giving into the moment and the melody to tell a story. It’s like eleven different versions of me—a woman I could have been, a woman I perhaps thought I was, and a woman I hope to be someday.”