SEA GLASS

A New Single / A New Video

Greetings, again weary internet travelers.

Today, my new song “Sea Glass” is set free to be enjoyed by you — and hopefully many others. It’s from the record Slow Cooker, which comes out next month. “Sea Glass” was birthed a little differently than the rest of the songs.

My band and I had been working on the record for some time by the point I recorded this track. Every few months, I would lug a whole bunch of recording gear (oof) into the upstairs ballroom of the Stone Church Music Club (thanks to their generosity) in my hometown of Newmarket. We’d record some material after work — late on a few Tuesday nights when they were closed — over the span of a few months. It was always fun, but it was a lot of work to lug everything upstairs, get it set up, and go fishing for some takes. We knew we were nearly done with the record, but I needed a few more.

“Sea Glass” had started to materialize after spending some time on the midcoast of Maine with my family. My lovely little brain can’t help but think in metaphors, and as my wife and daughters collected sea glass over the week we were there, I started to jot down the initial lyrical ideas — in the Notes app on my phone — that became the lyrics you hear on this track.

What started as a demo — complete with a 70s Casiotone keyboard beat, Omnichord, and a single mic capturing my voice and Suzie Q (my ‘61 Gibson J-45) — eventually got built out a little more and became the track you hear now.

The band and I thought it captured a thing, and didn’t want for really anything. I did have Pat add the electric guitar hook he came up with in practice, though. Not quite a Nebraska story, but that’s what happened!

I sure do love the way it came out. Sometimes a finished, recorded song makes you feel exactly the way you wanted it to. This is one of those, for me.

Enjoy!

Jon Nolan / Kitchen table, Newmarket, NH – Aug 7, 2025

P.S. - Every possible way to hear the new song (YouTube, Spotify, Apple, etc) is HERE

P.P.S. We made a GREAT video to accompany it. Click the image to see it.

Pushing offshore!

May Mini-tour & Strolling Bones Records Signing

Hey there,

In "official news"..I've signed a deal with Strolling Bones Records (Athens, GA). Check out the press release here, and read on, dear friends!

Sooooo...I'm back! I'm playing music again with friends and enjoying my damn self. Hell yeah. So, I've decided to put some adventures in motion —even before everything is "figured out." When I was younger and Say ZuZu was out there trying to "make it," there was a whole slew of spoken and unspoken rules guiding our journey. Lots of things have changed since then, including me and what I'm seeking. So I'm digging music again and that's cool. I can still write songs. I can arrange them, get some friends to join in, play them in our practice space, even record them. But what then?

It's the water's edge, a bit. Especially in the age of Spotify and the other streamies. Get in the boat and push offshore? To where? How do I know when I/we "get there?" The old ideas and urges are still in me. I still want to be "discovered" and/or have some sort of huge and obvious affirmation that the vulnerability and effort for rowing the metaphorical boat is "worth it." Who even freaking knows what that means or how to get it? I've decided it's none of my business. What I do know is I've found joy sitting in my kitchen birthing a song, and I've found joy listening to my band bring life and color and texture to my new and old songs, and I've found some joy bringing this music back to places where other people can experience it locally. I've found joy in my little community at Crackskulls Coffee, The Oak House, Auspicious Brew and Prescott Park and The Press Room Earth Eagle and Mr Sippy's BBQ. I've watched and enjoyed my music and art friends do their thing, and it feels GOOD. I've shared a bite or a coffee, jokes, stories, concerns, hopes and plans with new and old friends in these places, and it feels GOOD. It's a damn fine feeling to be in the middle of a community, to be on the scene for others and to feel supported by others, and music helped connect me to these people and places. So that's what I'm doing. I'm looking for community, and joy and art and good people to kick it with and be human. It sounds so fun to go searching for kindred spirits elsewhere. Imma go find out. See you out in the wild? I hope so!

Yours in neighborliness,
Jon
PS - That Baltimore Date is with my ole pal Cliff from ZuZu!

Don't Be Seduced by Easy/Familiar

Don't Leave the Center of Your Song Behind

So you’re working up a song, and you’re sure it’s good. You’ve played it by yourself. You’ve listened to your iPhone demo if it. It’s good. Then you get in a room with the band and it some of the juice isn’t there.

Go ahead and mess with it, but make sure you get your bearings before you wander down a new path. Take a second and step back from your song and be curious about why you like it. What is the center of the song? What caught your own interest when you were writing it? Was it the emotion? The story? The blend of a hook and a line? Honor that. (Is the band vibing off the same thing? Didi they miss it, or think something else makes the song powerful? Ask.) Consider recording “where you are,” so you can listen back and see if you’re leaving the center of the song behind.

It’s easy to slide into easier musical frameworks like a rhythm or part or something that feels more “fun” or comfortable or familiar and easy when you’re trying to make the song feel right when it feels clunky. That can be just the thing! Or, you can accidentally create a “fun” tune without a center. To be fair, it’s usually because everybody is excited about the thing you were excited about. They know it’s in there and still feel affected by it. What I’m saying is make sure your presentation shares that “thing” with everyone else.

You’ve got to be patient. Try doing the opposite of your instincts every once in a while. Get softer when you usually get loud, try a different time signature or guitar tuning. You might just come back home to where you started, or the power of the song might reveal itself in one of the different manifestations. If you’re patient, and don’t run straight to “easy/familiar”…you’ll find it. More importantly you’ll grow your skillset in presenting your good songs in their most powerful form.

Start with You

Go where you’re valued

I love music. I value it deeply. I used to bring it to places where it wasn’t valued. Sometimes that was because a gig paid well, or because I was “supposed to” play there. It hurt.

It took a lot of gigs that hurt and made me depleted of any motivation to do more music before I realized I didn’t have to do things that way. I had the right dance steps, but I was dancing to somebody else’s tune. Other peoples expectations, my own inner critic, whatever. Now that tune is my joy.

Now music has officially become kind of a discipline for self-acceptance. I am following the part of my creative self that brings me joy. I’m trying to stir my own heart. Sometimes that’s tricky, because I want to be liked! But now I need to like what I’m doing first. I’m making sure that I am feeling joy, then my bandmates are, and then we are bringing that out into the world. People who like that like me, like us – not some version of what we think we should be that isn’t actually us. If we can stir our own hearts, that’s the job.

Inevitably some listeners in the room won’t be affected by what we’re doing. They should probably find some other music. The people whose hearts are stirred by what we are doing — those are the people that value what we value. And that my friends, is the shit.

What if I only played the gigs that I wanted to play, or where people asked me to play? In other words: go where I’m wanted, or go where I want, instead of playing the gigs that are a signal to people that I “should” be valued.

I wanna play music for people that like music, especially mine. Not follow me or come to a gig because I played some other fancy gig.

It took me a long time to realize that I need to bring my authentic self into my music and prioritize my own music joy so that if I “succeed” that said success is built on who I really am and what I actually love, not some fake version made to sell tickets. That sounds exhausting.

Write the Songs That Come

Even if You Don’t “Like” Them

I can’t even estimate how many songs I’ve started writing and then abandoned them because they “didn’t sound like me,” or weren’t “cool.” That’s too bad. I’m lucky to have kept demos of plenty that - after some time passed - I was able to hear them. A lot of them are cool!

It’s a byproduct of my meditation practice to allow songs to come without my resistance anymore. Maybe they aren’t for me to sing. Maybe they house hidden intention. Who knows. At the very least, I’m practicing finishing songs and self acceptance.

PS - Hi! I’m back.