by Jane Roser
It started with a Joni Mitchell album. “When I was about 16 my dad played me a Joni Mitchell record,” says Fredericksburg, VA singer-songwriter Karen Jonas, “and I said that’s what I want to do. So I picked up a guitar and started playing and I’ve been playing ever since.”
Debuting her first full-length album, Oklahoma Lottery, Jonas recalls her album release show at the Kenmore Inn in downtown Fredericksburg was really fun, “we had The Green Boys here from Richmond and the full band. It was a packed room and a very supportive audience. Definitely a highlight so far this year!”
All 10 tracks on the album were written solely by Jonas and it has been catching attention for it’s fun, spitfirey tunes, as well as it’s more somber ballads. “Someone came to our show in Warrenton because they had heard a review in Saving Country Music and that’s happened a lot since then, so it’s been really exciting and great to have the album to leave behind with people [who come to the live shows].”
Jonas’ former band, The Parlor Soldiers, prepared her for releasing her first album as a solo artist. She was in the middle of laying tracks when she decided that the album needed to be recorded live. “This album was a long time coming,” Jonas explains. “I started laying tracks back in January of last year; I didn’t have a band at the time or a lot of direction for the songs, so it was going very slowly, then when August or September rolled around, I had a full band that I was playing with regularly and started to go in a different direction [with the album]. At the end of December we went into the recording studio for two days and, working with Jeff Covert, we recorded the album live. It was so fast and to be so focused for those two days was really inspirational.”
The musicians for this album included Jay Starling on lap steel and electric piano, Claude Arthur on bass, Brian Barbre on drums (Jonas calls him an “intuitive drummer, almost gentle”) and Tim Bray on guitar. “Most of the shows I do now, we perform as a duo, and then we have a couple of full band shows a month, but Tim has helped me so much to point me in the right direction. He’s been in a lot of bands and has been instrumental in helping me move forward.”
“Suicide Sal”, Jonas’ ode to Bonnie Parker and the title of one of Bonnie’s poems, came about after Jonas started reading Bonnie’s poetry she’d written while in prison sans Clyde. “She wrote a poem in the third person that was clearly about her and Clyde. She was in prison and he wasn’t at the time and one of her poems sort of reflects on what it’s like to be left behind. I was interested in her role, I mean, she must have known that it wasn’t going to end well and there must have been some point that she wanted to get out, but couldn’t. I’m a sucker for love and for love that goes really poorly,” Jonas laughs, “and so I took that angle on it to write this song.”
Jonas’ songs are heartfelt and genuine. When we talk about Americana and similar genres of music gaining in popularity of late, she says she believes it’s a return to something that’s real, something you can hear live without a big production and that audiences have an appreciation for things that are honest. The title track, “Oklahoma Lottery”, is one such song and the vernacular that Jonas uses really paints a clear picture of what the Dust Bowl days must have been like.
“I wrote that song after my husband and I split up, “explains Jonas. “I moved into an old, haunted house that my dad owned in Maryland with my kids. This woman lived there until she was 90 and she died in this house. I had moved away from everything I knew and two hours away from anybody that I wanted to see. I sat at the kitchen table after I put the kids to bed and would pluck my guitar and be scared with my back to the door. I’d write songs and try to sort things out and that’s one of the songs I wrote.” Jonas had read some chapters of “The Grapes Of Wrath” and tried to put herself in that place, but she believes the main themes of the song- leaving home and trying to find hope in something that is broken-was what she was herself feeling at the time.
Jonas has a busy summer schedule-I counted 30 shows on her tour page, including a performance at the prestigious WDVX Blue Plate Special in Knoxville, TN and opening for The Lone Bellow at The Birchmere this weekend. While Jonas loves playing the venues in and around Fredericksburg, she’s looking to book more shows out of town and playing more halls and listening rooms around the country. In the meantime, she’s writing and already has another album ready to record.
“I’ve learned a lot about song structure,” says Jonas. “When I wrote all of these songs [on Oklahoma Lottery], I wasn’t playing with a band, so I wrote them as a solo performer. Now I’m writing songs that have a more complex structure and I’m just so excited about putting them together.”
Considering how bad ass Jonas’s tunes like this one are, I can’t wait to hear what’s up her sleeve next. “They call me Suicide Sal, but honey I don’t smoke cigars, it was just a joke you know and I never shot no one, three years on the run is just about all a girl can do, honey if you’re going down I’m going down with you.”
