Jont

JONT


Jont is a singer-songwriter newly arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia from the United Kingdom with a loyal following in the UK and the United States. His music has been featured on various US shows including "Grey's Anatomy" and the hit film "Wedding Crashers" and he has also built a significant global community through the success of his traveling house concert series "Unlit", the webisodes of which in 2008 became a "viral internet phenomenon" (The Guardian, UK) and from his “Troubadour Journey” which saw him set off at the end of 2010 on a spiritual odyssey to be a "troubadour" for real - to travel with no plan, and to just let his songs organically lead him round the world – and which concluded with a tumultuous climax.

The journey started in Australia, where after a serendipitous introduction to meditation by an acupuncturist, he had a real breakthrough in how he sang and played his music, and wrote the centerpiece of the new album, the epic Teardrops & Pennies. Inspired, the trip took him onward through Italy, Germany, France and the UK until in January 2012 in Los Angeles, a few days after returning from an intense 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat, he made the real, life-changing discovery that this “Troubadour Journey” had been leading up to…He discovered what many troubadours probably don’t dare to find out - that he had an 8 year old daughter, living in Halifax, Nova Scotia!

“Basically,” says Jont, “after finishing this really intense meditation course there was just something I really wanted to clear up with an old friend, that wasn’t totally transparent”. On his return from the retreat, he contacted this old friend and found out that yes, he was indeed the father of her beautiful 8 year old girl. He flew out two weeks later to Halifax and after a magical reunion, it was a “no-brainer” that he would move there for the rest of her childhood and that this phase of the “Troubadour Journey” was now officially over!

Since arriving in Halifax last April, Jont has played a couple of sold-out shows at The Carleton, with special guests Matt Mays and Joel Plaskett coming out to support him, and recorded a good chunk of his new album at The Old Confidence Lodge in Riverport, an hour outside Halifax. Fortunately Jennah Barry was in town when he recorded and she plays the beautifully understated keyboards on the album and joins London’s Eska (Grace Jones, Nitin Sawnhey) to provide the striking and emotive backing vocals that along with the warm feel of the 2 inch tape it was mixed on, are a feature of Hello Halifax.

Before the Troubadour Journey began, Jont had a colourful childhood, growing up outside New York and then in London. As a teen he attended the world-famous Eton College and one day as a 17-year old found himself sitting at a dinner next to Princess Diana with her asking him if he was a boxer or a y-front man. On leaving school he travelled across the US, followed The Grateful Dead and interviewed 23 of the most well-known living American poets, ending up having dinner with Allen Ginsberg in his Lower East Side apartment, chatting about his old mates Kerouac and Burroughs. For a short while he then became a spin bowler for a professional cricket team, Middlesex County Cricket Club, alongside his heroes from childhood who just a few years before he had been asking for autographs. Soon enough he turned his hand to writing songs and organizing underground music events and his true creative life began.

Since 1998 Jont has made 7 solo albums all of which he has put out through his own label Unlit Records. Since 2004 he has put on a travelling house-party gig called UNLIT in 100s of people’s homes across the world. “UNLIT is a celebration of generosity and openness,” says Jont, “a mixture of a gig and a party, open and free to anyone”. Between 2006 and 2008 UNLIT became a “global internet phenomenon”(The Guardian, UK) with the webisodes Jont posted being seen by 100s of thousands of people. The mobile phone giant Orange even licensed UNLIT for six months to be part of its digital advertising campaign in 2008 bringing it to national attention in the UK. Meanwhile Jont's ??albums have received critical acclaim with 4 stars in Q (“so lovely it makes you want to hug strangers in the street”), 4 stars in UNCUT ( “achingly beautiful under-stated melodies”, Nigel Williamson) and the album Supernatural continues simply through word of mouth to sell well around the world. Songs from that album featured twice on Grey’s anatomy and also on Parenthood and Without A Trace. The song Sweetheart also featured as the closing song of Hollywood smash "Wedding Crashers".

A favourite guest of BBC Radio 2 DJs in the UK, Jont has appeared live on Dermot O’Leary’s Saturday Sessions show as much as any other artist (three times) and legendary DJ Johnnie Walker is now a personal friend and has had him on his show twice – Jont even went and did an UNLIT in Johnnie’s house!. Dermot calls Jont “A tr