Daily Inspiration: Meet Jon Reynolds

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Jon Reynolds.

Hi Jon, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
It took time for me to develop my artistic taste (I’m still developing it, if I’m being honest). My parents started me on piano when I was five or six.

I played classical music because my sister was a bit of a prodigy on the instrument, and I thought I could be as good as she was. By the time I was thirteen, I realized this wasn’t going to work out. I took up bass guitar. This opened me up to pop music theory and changed my whole game.

All of a sudden, I could play the songs I heard on the radio or that my friends showed me. To this day, I focus on bass far more as a production tool than any other instrument. When I was 16, I learned guitar while recovering from shoulder surgery and began converting my classical piano training into a more modern, chord-based skill set. I even learned the basics of drumming.

I still can’t explain how I write songs, but when I began, it was the first time I felt like I was not just good at something but better at it than most. Very few people are songwriters, and I was one of them. I knew it from the time I wrote my first terrible song when I was 16.

Within 6 months of starting university, I had formed my first official band. I loved The Black Keys, so I bought a Fender Strat and began writing a similar type of blues-rock for my group, The Waymires. I gigged and recorded with that band all through my undergraduate and graduate degrees. By the time I was done with my education, I had a choice: music or policy analysis. I chose music and moved to Nashville in 2015.

In Nashville, I was met with what I can only describe as my peers. Here, I was able to write songs with other artists and musicians and be taken seriously for my skills. I quickly wrote and released an EP called Generation Love as a solo act. I started another band centered around the Americana Indie Rock genre that I was interested in writing. I called it Jon Reynolds and The Aches.

Both acts were produced by Josh Reynolds (Little Big Town). I focused my writing on the skills that my band brought to the table- particularly vocals. Although it is more common these days, we were one of the early bands in East Nashville to focus on three-part harmonies in our songs. I learned to write for our vocal instruments just as much as our material ones, something I have carried with me in all my work since.

During this time, met and began working with the artists, producers, and writers that would become a fixture in my work and life. One of those writers was Ben Cramer (Old Sea Brigade). To this day, Ben and I cannot recall meeting each other. The first memory I have of Ben is when he opened up his door for our first write together. Eventually, Owen Lewis became my producer and close collaborator. Matt Bellemont (Belle Mt.) and Braison Cyrus began writing with me in 2017.

In 2020, I signed a record deal with a UK-based independent label right after COVID-19 shutdowns began. I am incredibly grateful for this, but the timing wasn’t the best. I wasn’t able to do any live shows, but I was able to wrap up the second EP for Jon Reynolds and The Aches. The EP did alright and continued to develop my name as a reliably solid artist in the independent scene, but by the time Covid ended, the project had lost its steam.

I left the label. Nashville had lost some steam, too. So many unnamed artists and art lovers left this town during those years. It is those true weirdos and artistic cooks that make a city like Nashville special. So, my community was largely degraded. I still had Ben and Owen. Matt was stuck in the UK but still very active in my life and work. I needed something new.

I started learning production. With a simple interface setup and some Aston Mics, I learned my basics in studio production. This allowed me to write with tracks and production instead of just melody and lyrics. What came from this was something totally different from Jon Reynolds and The Aches. It was pop. It was a synth. It was somewhere between The Killers and Bon Iver.

All the skills I picked up from the writers, producers, and artists I mentioned in this story went into these new songs. I started gaining momentum again and began rebuilding my network. I started writing with Tim Deaux from Kings of Leon/The Whigs and Ryan Williams from Grizfolk.

It was here, for the first time, that I started writing about my Christian upbringing and feelings around those experiences. Age, time, and experience finally gave way to telling my story. I am very excited to make these songs, which I am still working on. They are truly the best work I have ever written. The project will be a solo one- REYN.

I used to see myself as a guy trying to be an artist, but it turns out that there is no difference between those two. It’s just me. And I’m working really hard to just be me.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Being an artist is never a smooth road. I don’t think it is supposed to be. I could choose from a variety of problems like COVID-19 or the death of live venues as challenges I’ve had to face while doing this work. But it would be foolish not to choose social media as not just my greatest struggle but THE greatest struggle for artists today. I began working as a serious artist at a time when social media was just beginning to take over the artistic world.

At that time, it was still optional and even useful for many people. I hesitated to use it because it felt very fake and limiting – not to mention it wasn’t my medium of choice. I’m a musician, not a content creator. I’ve never been uncomfortable in front of an audience or camera, but placing my entire artistic personality into an ever-narrowing, templatized box to be consumed as passive content has really been challenging to absorb.

These challenges have only become more necessary to engage in and more difficult to stand out in. Social media threatens not to extinguish artists but to drown them out with a whole new gaggle of content-driven music creators who are – albeit talented at what they do- happy copying each other for momentary attention as opposed to creating something original or thoughtful. It’s a very real challenge, adding to the already challenging work of trying to express what makes me unique.

I feel a real push to follow the cue and use the catchy hooks with fonts and funny payouts at the end. It’s been very hard trying to balance needing to present my work while not being sucked into the world of likes, follows, and reach. All of this feels like a distraction from what I really want, which is to make great, original music.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a songwriter, recording artist, and producer. I am most known for my project Jon Reynolds and The Aches and for working with projects like Belle Mt., Old Sea Brigade, and Braison Cyrus. I think I’m most proud of the fact that I have a family, and I still do this. I have a wife and a three-year-old daughter.

I’ve always worked side jobs to keep money steady in addition to music. I think what I’m trying to say is we respect the successful artist, and we romanticize the starving artist. We say nothing of the working artist. I’m proud to be a working artist.

We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
Life gives you on-ramps and off-ramps- take them when you see the signs. When COVID hit, my band was going through a change. My bassist needed to step back due to personal issues, and my guitarist needed to address addiction. We weren’t going to be able to gig for a while. Then COVID hit, and that wasn’t even an option. I took the off-ramp from playing live and signed a record deal.

This allowed me to shift my focus to writing and recording. I learned so much from that EP release, in addition to practical skills in production and engineering. If I’m being honest, my life became much more balanced and focused when Covid forced me to slow down.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @jonreynoldsandtheaches
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonreynoldsmusic/
• Twitter: @JnReynoldsmusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jonreynolds2910
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/08yRGj8ZIG8Eoa6OEMh8qi?si=ss5ueJKQRjCL9PbRF3IDyg

Image Credits
Hailey Reynolds, Tim Duggan, and Julia Perkins