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Jonathan Edwards | |
|---|---|
 Edwards atThe Flying Monkey, Plymouth, New Hampshire on October 13, 2012 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | (1946-07-28)July 28, 1946 (age 78) Aitkin, Minnesota, U.S |
| Origin | Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Genres | Country rock,progressive country,[1]folk rock[2] |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter, actor |
| Instruments |
|
| Years active | 1960s–present |
| Members | Stuart Schulman Kenny White Tom Snow Al Anderson Eric Lillequist Rob Duquette Bobby Chouinard Bill Keith |
| Website | jonathanedwards |
Jonathan Edwards (born July 28, 1946) is an Americancountry andfolk singer-songwriter best known for his 1971 hit single "Sunshine".[2]
Jonathan Edwards was born John Evan Edwards on July 28, 1946, in Aitkin, Minnesota. At the age of six, he moved with his family to Virginia, where he grew up. At the age of eight, he began singing in church and learning to play piano by ear. While attendingFishburne Military School, he began playing guitar and composing his own songs.[3] As a teenager he began performing in front of audiences.
I started on a $29 guitar and immediately started putting a band together, writing songs and learning all the contemporary folk songs of the time. I just loved it, loved everything about it, loved being in front of people playing music.[3]
While studying art at Ohio University, he became a fixture at local clubs, playing with a variety of rock, folk, and blues bands.[3]
In 1967, he and his band moved to Boston and played clubs throughout New England. WithJoe Dolce on lead guitar, they played cover tunes as well as their own country-blues originals under various names, including the Headstone Circus, St. James Doorknob, and the Finite Minds, and they made an album forMetromedia Records as Sugar Creek.[3]
In the early 1970s, Edwards left the band and began performing as a solo acoustic artist. He would later recall:
I liked the sound of bronze strings on rosewood better than steel strings on magnets, and so I walked out of that club in Vermont, rented myself a van and PA system, and started traveling around the colleges in New England by myself, without gigs, just setting up in the lobbies of dormitories on a Saturday. Pretty soon I started getting a following.[3]
Edwards began opening for acts such as theAllman Brothers Band andB.B. King. He signed withCapricorn Records to record his first album,Jonathan Edwards (1971).[2]
We took about a year recording the first album—different times, different studios, different sounds, different techniques. Recording was so new in '69 and '70. There was a song on the album called 'Please Find Me', and for some reason the engineer rolled over it. It got erased. We spent hours looking for it. We fired the engineer and put "Sunshine" in its place.[3]
Like most of the songs onJonathan Edwards, "Sunshine" was written shortly after Edwards left the band. "I felt really fresh, really liberated," he later recalled. "I just went out in the woods every day with my bottle of wine and guitar, sat by a lake near Boston and wrote down all those tunes, day after day." Regarding the theme of "Sunshine", Edwards commented, "It was just at the time of the Vietnam War and Nixon. It was looking bad out there. That song meant a lot to a lot of people during that time—especially me."[3] "Sunshine" reached No. 4 on theBillboard Hot 100 chart, sold over one million copies, and was awarded agold disc by theR.I.A.A. in January 1972.[4]
Following the release of his debut album, Edwards moved out of the city to a farm in western Massachusetts, which provided the rural, country inspiration for his second album,Honky-Tonk Stardust Cowboy on theAtlantic Records label. This was an album of mostly self-penned acoustic, country-flavored songs about love and life and was closely followed byHave a Good Time For Me, also on Atlantic.[3]
In 1973 he and his friends got together to record a live album calledLucky Day, named after a song he wrote in the truck on his way up to live in Nova Scotia. This "fresh-air break" lasted only a couple of months when his friendEmmylou Harris invited him to Los Angeles to sing backup on her albumElite Hotel. That led to a deal withWarner Bros. Records and two albums produced by Harris' husband/producerBrian Ahern:Rockin' Chair andSailboat.[3]
In 1979, Edwards moved back to the United States to New Hampshire, and then two years later back to Northern Virginia area where he had grown up. In 1983, he produced and recordedBlue Ridge with the bluegrass band,The Seldom Scene, forSugar Hill Records. Then in 1987 he recorded a children's album,Little Hands, which was released on the small independent American Melody label. It was selected by theAmerican Library Association as a Notable Children's Recording.[2][3]
Turning to acting, Edwards toured as the lead in the Broadway musicalPump Boys and Dinettes. When the show reached Nashville, he met an old friend from the folk circuit, Wendy Waldman.[5] She and Mike Robertson convinced Edwards to come to town and record a country album. "I've been making country-sounding records all my life, but never in Nashville. Yeah, let's do it." Edwards said. So,The Natural Thing was produced, recorded, and released on MCA/Curb Records in 1989. "I was crazy about the songs we selected from those great Nashville writers, and the acoustic-based production that Wendy and I put together was just a joy to make and to listen to. I count that as one of the best albums I've ever been involved with."[6]
In the 1990s, Edwards continued to tour, doing session work, and producing his own music as well as that of other talents, such asCheryl Wheeler ("Driving Home," "Mrs. Pinocci's Guitar"). He took part in the 1994 "Back to the Future" tour that also includedDon McLean,Tom Rush,Jesse Colin Young,Steve Forbert andAl Stewart. In 1994 he releasedOne Day Closer, his first solo album in five years, on his new record label, Rising Records.Man in the Moon, which includes several of Edwards' original songs, followed the end of 1997. In September 1997, Rising Records released a remixed, re-sequencedAmong Us, a CD bySimon Townshend, younger brother of the Who'sPete Townshend. Edwards also scored the soundtrack forThe Mouse, starringJohn Savage.[7]
In 2001, Edwards celebrated 30 years of "Sunshine" with a First Annual Farewell Tour withKenny White on piano. In the 2000s, Edwards narrated and performed in a travel series for Media Artists entitledCruising America's Waterways,[8] which was purchased by PBS. Media Artists also released a companion album. Edwards participated in a second series, which started running on PBS-TV stations in May 2004.
In 2008, Edwards appeared in the romantic comedy filmThe Golden Boys, starringBruce Dern,David Carradine,Charles Durning,Mariel Hemingway, andRip Torn. Set in Cape Cod in 1905, the film featured Edwards in the role of Reverend Perley. In addition to acting, Edwards scored the film.[3]
In the fall of 2012, he appeared withMichael Martin Murphey in a series of concerts throughout New England. He continues to tour both solo and with band members Tom Snow, Rick Brodsky, Rob Duquette and Joe K. Walsh.
Edwards lives inPortland, Maine.
| Year | Title | Label | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1971 | Jonathan Edwards | Capricorn |
|
| 1972 | Honky-Tonk Stardust Cowboy | Atco | |
| 1973 | Have a Good Time for Me | Atco | |
| 1974 | Lucky Day | Atco | Live album |
| 1976 | Rockin' Chair | Reprise | |
| 1977 | Sailboat | Warner Bros. | |
| 1980 | Live! | Chronic | Live album |
| 1985 | Blue Ridge | Sugar Hill | WithThe Seldom Scene |
| 1987 | Little Hands | American Melody | |
| 1989 | The Natural Thing | MCA | |
| 1994 | One Day Closer | Rising Records | |
| 1998 | Man in the Moon | Rising Records | |
| 2001 | Cruising America's Waterways | Live album | |
| 2006 | Live in Massachusetts | Rising Records | Live album |
| 2009 | Rollin' Along: Live in Holland | Strictly Country | Live album |
| 2011 | My Love Will Keep | Appleseed Recordings | Studio album |
| 2015 | Tomorrow's Child | Rising Records | |
| 2015 | Top 40 | Rising Records | Original recordings digitally remastered byPat Keane Mastering |
| 2021 | Right Where I Am | Rising Records | Mixed by Todd Hutchisen, Acadia Recording Company |
| Year | Single | Peak positions | Album | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US [10] | US AC [11] | US Country [12][13] | AUS [9] | CAN [14] | CAN AC [15] | |||
| 1971 | "Sunshine" | 4 | 7 | — | 45 | 3 | 11 | Jonathan Edwards |
| 1972 | "Train of Glory" / "Everybody Knows Her" | 101 | — | — | — | 70 [16] | — | |
| 1973 | "Stop and Start It All Again" | 112 | — | — | — | — | — | Honky-Tonk Stardust Cowboy |
| 1988 | "We Need to Be Locked Away" | — | — | 64 | — | — | — | The Natural Thing |
| "Look What We Made (When We Made Love)" | — | — | 56 | — | — | — | ||
| 1989 | "It's a Natural Thing" | — | — | 59 | — | — | — | |
| 1990 | "Listen to the Radio" | — | — | 82 | — | — | — | |
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart | ||||||||
| Year | Title | Label | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Cruising America's Waterways | PBS | Live concert |
He got a lot of progressive country kind of artists, such as Dan Fogelberg, Jackson Browne, Jonathan Edwards, J.J. Cale, the Charlie Daniels Band and Barefoot Jerry
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| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |