Eclectic Composer Jon Downes Releases New Album “The New Normal”
Jonathan Downes is a naturalist, cryptozoologist, author, editor, film-maker, poet, novelist, activist, journalist, composer and singer-songwriter, best known for being the Director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology. His new album “The New Normal”, written in the wake of the loss of his wife Corrina, discusses life as it is today with people facing post Covid and post Lockdown, as well as ‘the new normal’ for the life that Jon is facing now.
“One of my favourite books is Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban, and in this lovely tale, one of the protagonists says that gibbons in London Zoo do their remarkable acrobatic feats, swinging from branch to branch and brachiating to their hearts’ desire, in the same way that jazz musicians play their music without any thought of financial reward. And I have always extrapolated from that the idea that true artists make art because that is what they do. They are incapable of doing anything else.
My last album, which was recorded in the summer of 2018, just after Corinna received her initial cancer diagnosis, sold eleven copies. But I know that far more people than that have listened to it, and I hope that they have got something from it. I have always seen my art as a mirror of my life, and when – back in the summer of 2018 – I was recording the songs which eventually turned up on ‘Coldharbour’, I was addressing the mental and emotional turmoil we were all facing, albeit writing in code, because Corinna wanted to keep her health problems private.
But now you know what lines such as ‘good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to you and me’ and ‘this thing came out of nowhere, I suppose we should have planned’ were actually about. My first wife, Alison, always said that I used to write in code, and I suppose this is a pretty fair accusation. However, quite often, the code is quite easy to break and written purely in a form that makes sense to me rather than any deliberate attempt at obfuscation.
And me? As you might have guessed, I have a new record out on Bandcamp. I may or may not do a CD release as well. It depends whether I have the emotional energy to do so. The record is called ‘The New Normal’, and is named at least partly because my darling friend Davey Curtis finds the term so irritating.
But it’s not just about the new normal that all of us in the Western World are facing post Covid and post Lockdown, it’s about the new normal of the life that I am facing, because of all the things that I thought I would be in my life, it never ever occurred to me that I would become a widower and I am facing a brave new world and an uncertain future of my own, and like Russell Hoban’s Gibbons I only know one way of dealing with things, and that is to write songs about them.” – Jon Downes
Jon Downes married Corinna in 2007, and has two stepdaughters, Shoshannah (Born 1985) and Olivia (Born 1987) and a granddaughter, Evelyn (born September 2014). He was widowed in August 2021.
“The New Normal” Track List:
- The New Normal 02:09
- I never stopped loving you 03:33
- Mick Farren 05:02
- GtoD 03:51
- You don’t stop loving someone just because they’re not there anymore 05:59
- Sophie by the sea 05:55
- The elephant in the room 02:15
- Corinna’s lament 08:24
To purchase:
https://jondownes1.bandcamp.com/album/the-new-normal
