Jonah Tolchin - Fires for the Cold (2019) [Hi-Res]

Immediately after Jonah Tolchin finished recording his new album,
'Thousand Mile Night,' he got behind the wheel and lived it,
driving from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, all the way back to his
native New Jersey with guitarist Lucas Hamren and drummer Michael
Bosco in one straight shot. By the time the car finally coasted
into Hamren's driveway in the early dawn light, the odometer had
accumulated 998 miles. The journey wasn't quite over yet, though.
Tolchin said his goodbyes, gathered his things from the back
seat, and began the walk to his childhood home on nearby Clover
Lane. It was precisely two more miles.The universe is full of
signs if you're open to them, and there could be no clearer omen
for Jonah Tolchin than the mileage of that epic trip: he'd had
made the perfect album for the perfect moment in his life.
Recorded at the legendary FAME Studios (Wilson Pickett, Otis
Redding, Aretha Franklin), 'Thousand Mile Night' charts the young
songwriter's remarkable growth, both personally and artistically,
as he digs deep into the roots of American music with a
distinctly modern perspective, tackling everything from love and
marriage to life on the road to loneliness and depression with a
deft lyrical touch. The album follows Tolchin's acclaimed Yep Roc
debut, 'Clover Lane,' which was recorded in Nashville with a slew
of special guests including Los Lobos' Steve Berlin and Deer
Tick's John McCauley. NPR called Tolchin "a promising new artist
who artfully occupies the gulf between old-school tradition and
contemporary appropriation," while Uncut said he "demonstrates
the finesse and maturity of someone like Jason Isbell," and MOJO
praised him for "adding raw, punk brio to a folk-blues template."
Tolchin racked up more than three million plays on Spotify with
tracks from the record and toured the U.S. and Europe extensively
in support of it, sharing bills with artists like Chuck Prophet,
Dave and Phil Alvin, Gregg Allman, Joseph Arthur, and more along
the way. When he wasn't on the road, Tolchin was busy showing off
his talents behind the board as a producer, heading to
Nashville's Bomb Shelter to helm an album for Bill Scorzari and
bringing bluesy soul singer Julie Rhodes to record at FAME, where
he made such a powerful connection with engineer John Gifford III
that he knew he had to return there for 'Thousand Mile Night.'
When it came time to record, Tolchin doubled down on the same raw
approach that made 'Clover Lane' such an infectious collection,
performing live as a band in the studio and recording and mixing
the entire album start-to-finish in a staggering four days. "I
work very well under pressure," Tolchin explains. "If I had three
weeks to make a record, I don't know what would happen. There's
something about having this pressure to create on a deadline that
helps me as an artist. We didn't have the luxury to over-think
anything."Tolchin once again teamed up with producer/multi-
instrumentalist Marvin Etzioni, who helped shepherd 'Clover
Lane,' and rounded out the band with Hamren on guitar, Bosco on
drums, and Jamie McFarlane (son of legendary Muscle Shoals
musician Will McFarlane) on bass. Rather than prep everyone for
the whirlwind sessions, though, Tolchin kept them in the dark
until it was time to press record."I purposely didn't show anyone
besides Marvin the songs," he explains. "I don't like anyone to
chart anything out in the studio. I like them to make it up as
they go along. I want everyone to play what they feel is the
right thing to play."The result is free-wheeling and instinctual,
the rare sound of a group of artists discovering the magic and
mystery in the songs at the same time as they reveal themselves
to the listener. It all begins with album opener "Beauty In The
Ugliest Days," a beautiful showcase of Tolchin's young-man-with-
an-old-soul brand of heartfelt philosophy featuring a performance
by Bob Marley drummer "Santa" Davis. It's a song of resilience, a
gentle dose of Zen reassurance in the face of doubt that every
dark cloud does indeed come with a silver lining."I was on an
airplane sitting on the runway in Los Angeles, and I got a call
from Marvin," remember Tolchin. "He had just spoken to a friend
of his from school that he'd lost touch with along time ago, and
it turned out this friend had been living on the streets. He
said,' Marvin, I have this title for a song called 'It's Up To
You To See The Beauty In The Ugliest Of Days.' He started talking
to Marvin about this concept, and then Marvin called me right
away, and I'd finished writing the song before we even took
off."There are some ugly days on this record, to be sure, from
"Song About Home"--written during an unhappy stint living in
Olympia, WA--to "Where The Hell Are All My Friends"--an
apocalyptic, Tom Waits-esque musing on time spent alone--but
Tolchin takes the lesson to heart and always pushes deeper to
find moments of transcendence and redemption. He embraces change
and uncertainty throughout the record, singing "All the wise men
say / That they know nothing at all" on "Workin' Man Blues #22"
and surrendering himself to the all-encompassing power of true
love on "Completely," which features Joachim Cooder on drums.
Elsewhere, "Unless You Got Faith" is an ode to trusting in your
gut, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" resurrects the Skip James
classic, and "I Wonder" is a rollicking note-to-self to accept
things as they are."I can get in these existential mindsets where
I'll get very philosophical," says Tolchin. "I'll want to know
the answer, and I won't want to rest until I find it. This song
was a reminder that sometimes you can just wonder about something
and that's all. There doesn't have to be an answer. The process
of wondering is one of the most beautiful things about being
human."With an album this outstanding, we don't have to wonder
much about what's in store for Jonah Tolchin. It's safe to say
there will be many more thousand-mile nights in his future as he
takes these songs across the country and around the world,
bringing beauty and truth and silver linings wherever he goes,
"driving all night," as he sings, "on a little bit of faith."