JONATHAN RUNDMAN BIOGRAPHY:
The Best of Jonathan Rundman: 20 Songs from the 20th Century, Summer 2007
Most of singer/songwriter Jonathan Rundman’s cadre of listeners have been acquired during this new millennium. His 2000 release Sound Theology was a staggeringly ambitious 52-song double-CD concept album, and his most recent studio CD Public Library was a pop-folk triumph, recorded with legendary Americana band The Silos and released in 2004. These projects generated mountains of national press attention and opened up Rundman’s music to legions of new fans. What few people realize, however, is that Rundman’s touring and recording history stretches back to the early 1990’s and includes four indie albums and a host of unreleased songs. Now in 2007 Salt Lady Records is pleased reexamine that early era of Rundman’s career with The Best of Jonathan Rundman: 20 Songs From the 20th Century; a testament to one of America’s most overlooked yet persistent independent rock artists.
Immediately following high school graduation in 1989, Jonathan Rundman left his hometown of Ishpeming, MI, in the isolated Upper Peninsula, and hit the road with his guitar. Performing in church basements, coffee shops, and colleges, Rundman began a steadily emerging career as a songwriter/troubadour. Rundman’s early songs had a frantic folk-punk quality that caught the attention of Iowa-based record label This Here Music which released the debut 28 Days in the Yellow Room in 1992. Rundman’s rollicking acoustic guitar, harmonica, and drum machine arrangements pre-dated Beck’s “Loser” by a year, while echoing like-minded ‘80s bands like Violent Femmes and Timbuk 3.
By 1994, Rundman had relocated to the Pacific Northwest and entered an extraordinarily prolific phase of songwriting. That Fall saw the release of two more Jonathan Rundman albums: a 10-song harmony duet project recorded with cousin Bruce Rundman under the moniker The Chanders, and the solo follow-up to 28 Days…, a geography themed CD entitled Wherever. Jonathan and Bruce played a few shows around the country in support of their Chandlers album, but it was Wherever that allowed Rundman to climb to a new level of music industry acceptance. Rundman had taken a big leap forward as both a songwriter and producer, and his increasingly melodic songs generated comparisons to bands like The Jayhawks and Freedy Johnston. A solo acoustic show at Eugene, Oregon’s legendary rock venue John Henry’s prompted the local paper Eugene Weekly to predict “watch out for this guy,” and a music journalist in the audience was impressed enough to give Rundman his first national review: Billboard magazine profiled Rundman’s Wherever, saying “his lyrics are refreshing and pleasantly unusual…the recording has a homey Liz-Phair-ish quality.“ Soon Rundman was fielding calls from record labels and radio programmers, and filling his calendar with performances from coast to coast.
Rundman’s Midwestern origins drew him back in 1996, when he relocated to Chicago. This new music scene gave Jonathan Rundman his first chance to collaborate with other artists in a supportive community, and those connections manifested themselves in the recording of 1997’s Recital. With his progressively sophisticated composing and recording skills, Rundman explored new sounds and topics on this 15-song CD. Guest instrumentalists included some of Rundman’s musical heroes including guitarist Dag Juhlin of The Slugs and Poi Dog Pondering and drummer Pat Tomek of Kansas City’s The Rainmakers. A growing number of national and regional publications commented on Rundman’s Recital, likening the heavier guitar sound to Paul Westerberg, and the sonic adventurousness to everyone from Giant Sand to Elvis Costello. The tour in support of this new collection of songs zig-zagged across the Midwest and beyond, and Rundman performed more frequently with a full band. In the Summer of 1999 Rundman returned home from months on the road and re-focused his energy on writing new songs. As the 20th Century came to a close, Jonathan Rundman’s new creative efforts would eventually lead to his career-defining double-album Sound Theology in the year 2000.
28 Days in the Yellow Room, The Chandlers, Wherever, and Recital provide the songs in this new Best of compilation. The original pressings of those albums had all been sold by 2001, and since then have remained out-of-print, occasionally surfacing on eBay or in used CD stores, but generally unavailable to the public. The new release of this 20 Songs From The 20th Century album will allow Rundman’s more recent fans to finally hear the songs that paved the way for Sound Theology and Public Library.
The recordings within this new compilation are collected from a variety of sources. Some songs like “Front Row at the Fashion Show,” “Brad N.,” and “Nothing Old, Nothing New” are the same recordings from the original albums, but remixed for optimal audio reproduction. Other songs such as “Meeting Nixon,” “Armyman,” and “Ask Me In Nebraska” contain the original album tracks, but with edited or updated vocal or instrumental performances. A few songs were completely re-recorded for this Best of project, including “The ‘Con’ Prefix Song,” “Read the Signs,” and “This July.” Finally, this album features numerous exclusive previously-unreleased recordings including “The Sound of the Cicadas,” “Continental Divide,” and a very rare 1993 version of “These Months With You.” Undoubtedly the early songs of Jonathan Rundman have never before sounded so clear, dynamic, and energized!
The design for The Best of Jonathan Rundman: 20 Songs From the 20th Century is by noted music industry graphic artist Jim Ward Morris, who has created CD packages for Cracker, Jay Farrar, Gillian Welch, and Dwight Yoakam. Liner notes are provided by acclaimed music journalist and producer Daniel Levitin, who has written liner notes for Stevie Wonder and Julia Fordham and engineered recordings by Santana and the Grateful Dead.
SPECIAL NOTE: The initial edition of The Best of Jonathan Rundman: 20 Songs From the 20th Century contains a free bonus CD entitled Myopia: Cassette 4-track Recordings 1991-1998. Dating back to Jonathan Rundman’s teenage years, these 20 songs offer a previously unreleased glimpse into Rundman’s most formative recorded work. Primitive demos, songwriting reference tapes, and album pre-production recordings are included along with select 4-track mixes from the original 28 Days… and Chandlers albums.
JONATHAN RUNDMAN BIOGRAPHY:
Public Library album, Summer 2005
Public Library is the long-awaited new album by Minneapolis singer/songwriter Jonathan Rundman, his first collection of previously unreleased material since 2000’s Sound Theology. The album’s thematic centerpiece is the power-pop vocational anthem “Librarian” where Rundman claims the role of musical bibliotechnician, gathering works of fiction, non-fiction, news, and history and presenting them in rock & roll form for access by the masses. “I bring order out of chaos, I shine light into the dark,” Rundman sings, “because power comes from knowledge just like fire from a spark.” A grandiose statement about songwriting perhaps, but one Rundman has lived up to. Even Billboard magazine has admitted “Rundman takes lyrical risks that pay off.” Rundman’s precision with melody and wordplay have been the foundation of his music throughout his career and Public Library continues with more of the same, although with a richer sonic backdrop thanks to producer Walter Salas-Humara of the New York City band The Silos.
Rundman addresses some familiar themes with Public Library but tackles formerly untapped topics as well. The album opens with “Smart Girls,” Rundman’s most radio-worthy recording yet, where he raves about the female intellect over huge guitars and grooving drums. Functional romantic relationships are celebrated in the rollicking “747s” and “Falling Down” with it’s double-rhyme-scheme structure. Ecclesiastical architecture is the unlikely focus of the observational rocker “Narthex.” The geography of the American Midwest has been a recurring image throughout Rundman’s repertoire, and he revisits it here in the ominous “Almost Never See” and in “Park River Bridge,” a reflection on the myth of youthful invulnerability.
Political and social issues are also explored throughout the album. “The Serious Kind” has folk-classic potential, and it sums up the troubling realities of the post-9/11 world with simple elegance. Rundman sings “Second Language” from the perspective of a teenage immigrant girl over the pulsing of a string quartet arranged and conducted by Mary Rowell, rock violinist and concertmaster for the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra. In “Cuban Missile Crisis” Rundman uses the precarious Cold War conflict as the setting for a love story, with eerie parallels to contemporary global events. The album closes with an exhilarating acoustic jam session “Every Town’s the Same” where Rundman details his past few years as a folk-rock troubadour facing the cultural phenomenon sociologists call “placelessness” and "the franchising of America,” all while referencing his own results from the Myers-Briggs psychological inventory test. Certainly not the topics of your average rock band!
Jonathan Rundman first surfaced on the national music scene in the late ‘90s as a Chicago-based touring artist. Traveling in support of his self-released albums Wherever and Recital, Rundman’s melodic and quirky acoustic-rock garnered steadily growing support from audiences, journalists, and radio programmers in the Americana, power-pop, and folk communities. (This period of time would be eventually represented on CD with the live compilation Field Recordings: Lo-Fi and LIVE in the Midwest.)
In 2000 the then-29-year-old Rundman took a major commercial and creative risk with his most ambitious recording, the 52-song double-CD concept album Sound Theology. Reflecting upon his Finnish-Lutheran heritage and upbringing in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Sound Theology’s unusual subject matter and eclectic sonic palette gave Rundman’s career even greater momentum. The album featured over two hours of intricate pop compositions, acoustic hymn interpretations, and raw garage rock, with Rundman playing most of the instruments himself. The press received Sound Theology with surprising enthusiasm, and likened Rundman to musical adventurers such as Beck, Bruce Cockburn, Elvis Costello, and Liz Phair.
With the release of Sound Theology Jonathan Rundman began what would be three years of relentless touring. Rundman hit the road alone with an acoustic guitar and played 150 dates a year from Florida to Alaska, New York to L.A., and in Canada, Sweden, and Finland. He found receptive audiences at colleges, rock clubs, coffeehouses, theaters, and church basements, and warmed up the stage for a wide variety of headliners including like-minded roots rockers Vigilantes of Love, pop genius Aimee Mann, and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In 2004 Jonathan Rundman entered a significantly different phase of life and career. After relocating to Minneapolis, Rundman stopped performing and began working on what would become his most concise and accomplished work to date, the forthcoming album Public Library. Enlisting Americana legends The Silos as his backing band, and Silos leader Walter Salas-Humara as his producer, Rundman traveled from the Midwest to New York City and back to assemble 11 new tracks. Using an outside producer for the first time, Rundman turned over the reigns to Salas-Humara who expertly provided the songs with a pristine yet rocking audio framework. Guest musicians on the album are some of the finest of New York’s indie-rock community including vocalist Mary Lee Kortes (Mary Lee’s Corvette, Freedy Johnston), violinist Mary Rowell (Sheryl Crow, Joe Jackson), lead guitarist Jason Victor (Steve Wynn, Mary McBride), bassist Drew Glackin (Crash Test Dummies, Graham Parker), and drummer Konrad Meissner (Mary Lou Lord, Syd Straw). As the Public Library album was being mixed and mastered in New York, Jonathan Rundman was in Minnesota witnessing the birth of his first child, a son. The album was released nationally on October 5, 2004, and Rundman played a CD-release show at the 400 Bar in Minneapolis along with The Silos.
You can read another biography of Jonathan at the All Music Guide.
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