Jonathan Edwards Biography
Jonathan Edwards is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Jonathan is best known for his 1971 hit single “Sunshine”. He appeared in the romantic comedy film The Golden Boys, in 2008. Set in Cape Cod in 1905, the film featured Edwards in the role of Reverend Perley. In addition to acting, Jonathan scored the film.
Jonathan EdwardsJonathan Edwards
Jonathan was born July 28, 1946, He is currently 72 years old. His birth sign is Leo.
Jonathan Edwards Early Life
He was born John Evan Edwards in Aitkin, Minnesota, United States. He moved with his family to Virginia at the age of 6 where he grew up. At 8 years old, he began singing in church and learning to play piano by ear. While attending military school, he began playing guitar and composing his own songs. As a teenager he began performing in front of audiences.
He started off with a $29 guitar and started putting a band together, he enjoyed composing songs and learning all the contemporary folk songs of the time, He loved everything about it and extremely enjoyed being in front of an audience. While studying art at Ohio University, he became a fixture at local clubs, playing with a variety of rock, folk, and blues bands.
Jonathan Edwards Photo
Jonathan Edwards Photo
Jonathan Edwards Career
Jonathan and his band moved to Boston and played clubs throughout New England. With Joe Dolce on lead guitar, they played cover tunes as well as their own country blues originals under various names, including the Headstone Circus, St. James Doorknob, and the Finite Minds, and they made an album for Metromedia Records as Sugar Creek. Edwards left the band in the 1970s and decided to follow a solo career.
He rented himself a van and a PA system, he started travelling to colleges all over in New England all by himself, Without any gigs just selling up in lobbies of dommitries on a saturday and pretty soon started to get a following. He began opening up for acts such as the Allman Brothers Band and B.B. King. He signed with Capricorn Records to record his first album, Jonathan Edwards in 1972.
Like most of the songs on his album, “Sunshine” was written shortly after Edwards left the band. “I felt really fresh, really liberated,” he later recalled. “I just went out in the woods every day with my bottle of wine and guitar, sat by a lake near Boston and wrote down all those tunes, day after day.” Regarding the theme of “Sunshine”, Edwards commented, “It was just at the time of the Vietnam War and Nixon. It was looking bad out there. That song meant a lot to a lot of people during that time—especially me.” “Sunshine” reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in 1972.
Following the release of his debut album, Edwards moved out of the city to a farm in western Massachusetts, which provided the rural, country inspiration for his second album, Honky-Tonk Stardust Cowboy on the Atlantic Records label. This was an album of mostly self-penned acoustic, country-flavored songs about love and life and was closely followed by Have a Good Time For Me, also on Atlantic.
In 1973 he and his friends got together to record a live album for his fans called Lucky Day, named after a song he wrote in the truck on his way up to live in Nova Scotia. This “fresh-air break” lasted only a couple of months, when his old friend Emmylou Harris invited him to Los Angeles to sing backup on her Elite Hotel album. That led to a deal with Warner Bros. Records and two albums produced by Harris’ husband/producer Brian Ahern: Rockin’ Chair and Sailboat.
Jonathan moved back to the United States to New Hampshire in 1979, and then two years later back to Northern Virginia area where he had grown up. In 1983, he produced and recorded Blue Ridge with the bluegrass band, The Seldom Scene, for Sugar Hill Records. Then in 1987 he recorded a children’s album, Little Hands, which was released on the small independent American Melody label. It was selected by the American Library Association as a Notable Children’s Recording.
Turning to acting, Jonathan toured as the lead in the Broadway musical Pump Boys and Dinettes. When the show reached Nashville, he met an old friend from the folk circuit, Wendy Waldman. She and Mike Robertson convinced jonathan to come to town and record a country album. “I’ve been making country-sounding records all my life, but never in Nashville. Yeah, let’s do it.” Jonathan said. So, Natural Thing was produced, recorded, and released on MCA/Curb Records in 1989. “I was crazy about the songs we selected from those great Nashville writers, and the acoustic-based production that Wendy and I put together was just a joy to make and to listen to. I count that as one of the best albums I’ve ever been involved with.”
Jonathan continued to tour in the 1990s, doing session work, and producing his own music as well as that of other talents, such as Cheryl Wheeler (“Driving Home,” “Mrs. Pinocci’s Guitar”). He took part in the 1994 “Back to the Future” tour that also included Don McLean, Tom Rush, Jesse Colin Young, Steve Forbert and Al Stewart.
In 1994 he released One Day Closer, his first solo album in five years, on his new record label, Rising Records. Man in the Moon, which includes several of Jonathan’s original songs, followed the end of 1997. In September 1997, Rising Records released a remixed, re-sequenced Among Us, a CD by Simon Townshend, younger brother of the Who’s Pete Townshend. He also scored the soundtrack for The Mouse, starring John Savage.
He celebrated thirty years of “Sunshine” with a First Annual Farewell Tour with Kenny White on piano. In the 2000s, Jonathan narrated and performed in a travel series for Media Artists entitled Cruising America’s Waterways, which was purchased by PBS. Media Artists also released a companion album. He participated in a second series, which started running on PBS-TV stations in May 2004.
He appeared in the romantic comedy film The Golden Boys, starring Bruce Dern, David Carradine, Charles Durning, Mariel Hemingway, and Rip Torn in 2008. Set in Cape Cod in 1905, the film featured Jonathan in the role of Reverend Perley. In addition to acting, Jonathan scored the film. He continues to tour both solo and with band members Tom Snow, Rick Brodsky, Rob Duquette and Joe K. Walsh.
Jonathan Edwards Sunshine
Sunshine is a country folk song from 1971 by Jonathan , released as the first single from his debut album “Jonathan Edwards”. The single reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on January 15, 1972, and earned a gold record. “Sunshine” was not originally planned for release, but when an engineer accidentally erased the master of a track called “Please Find Me” near the end of sessions for the album, “Sunshine” was used to fill the hole.
The song was released as a single and first gained popularity[citation needed]on Boston radio, before going nationwide. Here’s Edwards’ take on its success: “It was just at the time of the Vietnam War and Nixon. It was looking bad out there. That song meant a lot to a lot of people during that time–especially me.”
Jonathan Edwards Net worth
He has an estimated net worth of 1.2 million dollars.
Jonathan Edwards Wife|Married
We currently have no information on his personal life. This information will be updated soon.
Jonathan Edwards Albums
- Jonathan Edwards
- Honky-Tonk Stardust Cowboy
- Have a Good Time for Me
- Lucky Day
- Rockin’ Chair
- Sailboat
- Live!
- Blue Ridge
- Little Hands
- Natural Thing
- One Day Closer
- Man in the Moon
- Cruising America’s Waterways
- Live in Massachusetts
- Top 40
Jonathan Edwards Songs
- Sunshine
- Train of Glory
- Stop and Start It All Again
- We Need to Be Locked Away
- Look What We Made
- It’s a Natural Thing
- Listen to the Radio
Jonathan Edwards Interview
“Interview on CentralMaine.com”
Q: Are you still spending a lot of time on the road?
Edwards: I do 50 or 60 shows a year, which is plenty.
Q: Do I remember correctly that you live in Maine now?
Edwards: Yeah, we spend a lot of time in Maine. We’re in Maine as often as we can, especially in the warm months.
Q: Where are you now, where am I calling, just out of curiosity?
Edwards: I’m on the west coast of Florida.
Q: Any problems with tropical storms or hurricanes lately down where you are located?
Edwards: No, it’s remarkably resilient down here on the west coast. For whatever reason, we’ve been really, really lucky.
Q: Now, your latest album is “Tomorrow’s Child”?
Edwards: Correct.
Q: Are you working on something new?
Edwards: Always. I’m always writing songs and trying to conceptualize the next collections of tunes, you know, seeing if I want a producer or just forge ahead by myself, all those decisions — what kind of musicians will I have or will it just be a guy-with-a-guitar album?
Q: Well, that’s the way you perform anyhow, right? The solo guitar and voice, for the most part?
Edwards: Yeah, but lately I’ve been blessed by having Tom Snow join me on piano for whatever shows we can arrange that for; that has been such a gift. He’s been with me now for eight-going-on-nine years.
Q: Wow. Will he be with you at the Johnson Hall gig this Sunday?
Edwards: He will. He will be there with bells on — that’s how you’ll be able to recognize him!
Q: Do you find that age gives you a perspective when you’re writing your songs that you didn’t have back when you first started out?
Edwards: Sure, I’ve been chasing some of these songs around for 50 years, literally, and it does give you a different context and it does give you more perspective. And, having done those songs for so long, people love that first album, it still has that special sauce, so I often include four or five songs from that album just because people love it and I love doing them. Every night is different, every night is a new crowd and every night I try to do something different with the songs but still make (them) recognizable. It’s a bit of a challenge in that respect. But do I love doing them still? You bet. I happily look forward to their arrival on the set list.
Q: Now will you have anything new that you’ve worked up when you get to Johnson Hall?
Edwards: Oh, yeah — ohh, yeah!
Q: He says with great delight.
Edwards: Oh, yeah, I kick off the show with one of them, so don’t be late, folks. It’s a song I wrote about gratitude and thankfulness at the audiences being able and generous enough to give me these 50 years to do what I love to do — it’s called “Fifty Years.”
Q: Is it hard to put together a set list seeing you have so much material to draw upon?
Edwards: It is a bit challenging to find songs you feel like doing and that are pertinent to the day and the hour, and also ones that people want to hear, and also songs that I just have to do that night because I feel like doing them. There’s a Dylan song that I’ve been doing lately called “Copper Kettle”— (singing) “Get you a copper kettle/Get you a copper coil” — and it’s kind of about the moonshiners that I used to actually visit back in military school — it’s a long story. Oh, God, it was crazy: marching to class, marching to breakfast — you know, weird. But apparently it was decided that I was in need of that kind of discipline in my life!
Q: Is there anything, Jonathan, that you’d like me to pass on to the folks reading this article?
Edwards: Yeah, you’ve gotta get out and vote. You must be a participant, you can’t be a spectator anymore. We have to know, we have to be informed and we have to get out there and participate. But I guess more pertinent to the show is that I’m really looking forward to it. It’s going to be the third night of our October tour and we’re so excited to be back at Johnson Hall. We have some new songs and lots of new energy and vibe.
Note: This biography is based on the available information as of 2023, and real-time updates or developments are being updated by our editorial team.