Music Review: Jonivan Jones, ‘Ragged Jangly’
The itinerant singer-songwriter’s album is a travelogue of places, experiences and roots music styles.
Jonivan Jones, Ragged Jangly album artwork.
Born in Arkansas, Jonivan Jones grew up absorbing his mother’s vinyl collection as well as songs and stories around the campfire at folk music gatherings in the Ozarks. From there, life would take him to New Orleans, South Texas, the East Coast, the South Pacific and more.
As he grew and traveled, Jones absorbed a spectrum of American roots music from country to folk to rock ’n’ roll to the blues. He lived rough some of the past couple decades, sometimes sleeping in cars or camping in parks. Those musical influences and life experiences all contribute to Ragged Jangly, a 10-song collection that’s a mashup of Americana sounds and a journal of insights and mental struggles experienced along this itinerant life journey.
Jonivan Jones. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Ragged Jangly opens on a restless chugging tempo and lyrics that immediately capture the sometimes lonely and contemplative effects of being on the road:
My big plans gone, my headlights on
I drive the deserts and the hillside
Twilight, city lights, I’m still alive
Jones has described this single, “Having a Still Spell,” as “a metaphor for zoning out, feeling low down and getting lost in your own thoughts. It’s a struggle to get free, maybe from social platforms, maybe from ourselves.” The profound effect of travel on his state of mind is also reflected in two later tracks, “Road Stagger” and “Lonely Highway West Blues.”
Jonivan Jones. Photo credit: J. Ramsey.
“Little Red Hen” is an innocuous title that belies the eerie fiddle line and disquieting lyrics of the next track. The words loop around and in on themselves, provoking thought while eluding meaning:
They say that life comes and goes
I’ve seen some life come and go
This cold wind blows through a soul
I know that life won’t come and go
The next three tracks feel like companion pieces: “Ragged Truth” has the low-fi quality and percussive acoustic guitar style of a 1950s Sun Studio recording, and “Dear Lucky” and “Old Trails” could be lost gems from Johnny Cash’s songbook, both in melody and Jones’ vocals.
Jones’ rough voice and drawling delivery are appealing and eminently listenable, though the intriguing snatches of lyrics I could make out had me wishing for detailed liner notes so I could take in more of them. But even without getting the full lyrical picture, all ten tracks on Ragged Jangly create an atmospheric picture of lonely, restless wandering.
Before there were genre labels—many of which were artificially created by the music industry for cynical reasons—there was a fertile ground of discovery and experimentation and cross-pollination of European and African and indigenous music. Jones’ album feels current and sophisticated in its blend of sounds, but it also in some ways represents a return to that organic, authentic cultural exchange from which American roots music originated.
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the primary music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley!
