Biography

Radio Contact: jburrowes990@gmail.com

Veteran Philadelphia songwriter Jon Burrowes says, "My first album, One More Ride, got enough airplay to make it onto the Folk Alliance International (FAI) charts in 2022. And here comes my second album, called Second Album. I didn't have the budget I had for the first album. I knew that meant that we were more likely to have tracks that sounded less formal, more homemade. But that was fine with me. I wanted a more relaxed, more personal sound on the album. And I think we got that."

Although only his second album, Burrowes, whose bluesy voice and jazz style earns comparisons to Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Mose Allison, began his music career long ago in a New England square dance band. "I had started out in folk music, but soon enough I got interested in other kinds of music. While I was in college in Montreal, I played in several successful blues bands there. In the 1970s, I worked occasionally with a cabaret act In Cambridge MA, Stormin' Norman and Suzie, and I played regularly in some garage bands. In the 1980s, I worked for about year in a New Wave band in Boston. I also worked on some avant-garde theatrical pieces in the 1990s, with Nick Thorkelson of the Fort Point Theater Channel in Boston. After that, I really didn't play out much. I held down straight jobs, woodshedded, and wrote.

"As far as my music is concerned, I guess it's possible to say that I'm the one who stayed behind – the forgotten songwriter. My friends made it. What happened to me? I think the short answer is: The usual. The distractions of Life; the changes in the music business that affected us all; and in my case, pretty considerable stage fright.

"Years later, I was back to just me and my guitar. But by that time, I had a lot of other music in my head. And I certainly wasn't just a folkie anymore. As soon as I started playing out in the Philadelphia area, people started saying things like, 'You're one of the very best songwriters we've ever heard here' (Carolyn Cott). And these were established performers and songwriters in the folk world here."

Thus Burrowes is getting his out into the world now with his second highly original album, Second Album.