The Bones of J.R. Jones

Growing up, Jonathon Linaberry was obsessed with the radio.

“Music was my whole world,” he recalls, “and the radio was pivotal in that. There was
something so romantic about it. You never knew what you’d hear, what you’d discover and fall
in love with. I wanted to find a way to recapture that.”

Radio Waves, Linaberry’s sixth studio album as The Bones Of J.R. Jones, is indeed steeped in
the past, but there’s more than just nostalgia at play here. Recorded in Toronto with producer
Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Bahamas), the collection is moody and hypnotic, drawing on the sonic
landscape of Linaberry’s youth as it reckons with all the doubt and uncertainty of adulthood.
The arrangements are utterly entrancing, built on the tension between acoustic instruments
and retro synthesizers, and Linaberry’s performances are raw and visceral, at times aching in
their unflinching 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 rooted in the endless beauty, pain, and chaos that comes with finding your place in
this world.

“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 looking at them with
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.