Roots-influenced artist Jonah Tolchin has traditionally been associated with the Blues but has never made a complete album focused on his biggest formative element until now. His collection Dockside, recently released by his own newly established label, Clover Music Group, was Produced by Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars) and recorded at the beloved studio of the same name in Louisiana. Though in some ways it’s surprising that Tolchin hadn’t taken such a focused plunge before now, given his love for the Blues, in some ways the album represents a time of change in Tolchin’s personal and creative life and one which came fully to fruition once Tolchin knew he’d be working with Dickinson to really hone in on his core sound and lyrical philosophy.
Knowing that he’d be making a record that he’d kept in mind as a personal goal for some time also influenced Tolchin as much as the physical location of B.B. King’s favorite studio. There’s an earnestness and stripping away of anything extraneous that cuts to the core of Tolchin’s biggest goal as an artist: To create music that makes people feel something. I spoke with Jonah Tolchin about creating Clover Music Group and his goals for it at present, and also about the personal journey into creating Dockside and the lasting impressions it’s left upon him.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I know that this album, Dockside, has been released on your newly founded Clover Music Group. Did you have to do much preparation and research to make that step? It’s something that more artists are doing lately, for sure.
Jonah Tolchin: I talked to a lot of people, including labels that I’m friends with, and project managers, about what their recommendations were. My opinion, which I think a lot of people share, is that nobody really knows what they are doing right now. [Laughs] There are these older models that people have stuck by a long time, like you hire radio and press, and you tour, and you put out a certain number of singles. Something that I haven’t really done with this record, funnily enough, is something that I do want to do, which is change that model. I followed an older model with this record, other than the fact that I’m not touring, but my focus is digital.
Yes, vinyl is having a resurgence and I’m doing vinyl for this record, but as a small label, it’s not really practical to think that I’ll do physical media for everything. Especially because I want to sign artists who don’t want to tour. That may seem counter-intuitive because most labels won’t sign an artist unless they want to tour. My feeling is that there are a lot of artists who haven’t been able to get signed because they don’t want to tour. They want to live at home with their famly, or there might be other reasons, however, they make great music. There is a way to make money from digital. Even though royalties may feel like nothing, they do add up, but with strategies that make sense, it is possible. That was part of my strategy with my label, focusing on digital distribution. That’s where my vision for the company is at this moment.
That really fits into a lot of other conversations I’ve had with artists. It’s really cool that you are creating a space for other artists who may not want to tour, because there are undoubtedly many people in that category. I try not to assume that everyone is a live performer or that everyone wants to tour because things are changing about choices that artists make.
Totally.
Do you have any thoughts about being genre-specific with your label, or is it any kind of music?
At this moment, I’m thinking that I don’t want to be genre-specific. One of the challenges of any business is branding, however, I have pretty bad ADHD, so a good reflection of my interests would be for the brand to be a scatter-shot approach of things that I like. I wouldn’t be surprised if I wanted to release a Hip-Hop record or an Electronica record at some point. My criteria is that it has to make me feel something. That’s hard to meet because a lot of music that I meet doesn’t make me feel anything at all. That may be because I’m desensitized, but I think it’s mostly that people are making music without as much emotion or feeling as maybe there used to be? I don’t really know what it is.
What’s the history of your relationship with Luther Dickinson? How did he end up becoming part of this project?
The timing worked out really nicely on this, and it was pretty serendipitous how it all came to pass. I was asked to play Mountain Stage at short notice, and I met this guy at the hotel, Jesse Williams, who is a bass player for North Mississippi Allstars, and we really hit it off. I met Luther at the end of my show, and we exchanged some information. Several months went by, and I started thinking about what I wanted to do with this record. I asked Jesse if he thought Luther would be a good Producer for the record and he said yes. So I texted Luther, and didn’t hear back for a little while.
I have a book called The I-Ching Workbook, which I consult a few times a year. I had three Producers in mind at that point and was trying to figure out what to do. For the workbook, you’re supposed to throw pennies, and as soon as I did that, the second the pennies hit the floor, my phone lit up with a text from Luther. So I felt like that answered that question! Then we talked and really hit it off on the phone. He liked the vision for the album and we went through a series of ideas about what to do. He said, “We need to record this at Dockside in Louisiana.” A big part of that decision was to work with the drummer Terence Higgins because both Luther and I are drum fanatics. We’ll figure out who the drummer is going to be and work around that person. That’s how important the drummer is to us.
That’s an amazing story. I can definitely see the importance of the drummer to these songs. I feel like that gives you so much freedom to work on top of that. I think without that, these would be very different songs. Did Luther hear demos of the songs before you went down to Louisiana? Were they all written before that?
I think I had written about half of the songs, because when I connected with Luther, it was like turning on a faucet. There were all these ideas pouring forth, I was so inspired. I tend to write very well when I have that kind of motivating factor. Here’s someone who I consider to be a the top of their field who’s willing to listen to my demos. That was very inspirational.
There are some differences between this new music and your previous releases. Did you talk with Luther at all about some of the changes you felt you were working through?
Totally. I told him that I wanted to make a Blues-centered record and that I had never done that before, even though I had always wanted to. That’s where my roots are and that’s the whole reason I started playing music: the Blues genre, and Blues guitar, specifically. A lot of people have considered me to be within that space, but I’ve never actually made a record that is, in its entirety, in that space. I said to Luther, “This is what I want to do and I know that you’re the guy to help me figure out how to do it right.” That’s another reason that we decided to go to Louisiana. It didn’t feel right making my first Blues-centered record in New Jersey, though we did consider other locations based on drummers.
I’m assuming that the experience of actually recording at Dockside influenced you pretty profoundly. I did notice that at least one of the songs makes reference to that environment.
Exactly. The song “Vermillion River” is one that I wrote before I even got to Dockside because I knew that it was on a river and I was curious about it. I love recording near water. That’s my happy place. I looked into it and I heard some stories about Dockside before, like how it was kind of haunted, apparently.
That song mentions the haunting, too! The ghosts up in the attic.
Yes, and there’s a real deep reference. There’s a line that says, “There’s a ghost up in the attic, Singing Sweet Sixteen, Makes my bones shake and rattle, Like Chains and Things.” Both “Sweet Sixteen” and “Chains and Things” are names of B.B. King songs and the reason why that reference is there is because Dockside was his favorite studio to record in. He made a lot of records there, and he loved it so much that he donated one of his original “Lucille” guitars. He had a few original Lucilles that he owned, and he donated one of them to the studio and signed it to the studio owners. I got to play that guitar on my song “Lucille”. I was inspired before I even got there.
Once we got there, it was unreal. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I can say that my experience recording there was by far the best experience I’ve ever had, musically, in the studio, but it was also one of my top ten life experiences, period. It was just incredible.
I’m so happy to hear that because in many ways you were taking a risk making these changes. So it’s wonderful to hear that it worked out the way that you hoped.
Nick, the bass player, and I, drove out from New Jersey to go there, so we got to slowly acclimate to the vibe of going down south. I think that was really important. There’s a song on the album called, “Nothing’s Gonna Take My Blues Away” and we had driven a few days to get there, then set up all our stuff at maybe four in the afternoon on the day we got there. Then we were going to get some sounds that day before our first day of recording.
The very first song we recorded was, “Nothing’s Gonna Take My Blues Away” and the version on the record is the first take. No one had ever heard the song before. Luther had heard it maybe once. I barely even knew it because I had just written it. There was just all this built-up energy from being in the car for so many hours thinking about this experience. All that energy went into that song. We didn’t talk about it before doing it. We just pressed record and that was what happened. It was pretty wild. [Laughs]
That’s incredible. I was wondering about your vocal choices on that song, but I don’t know how much you’d be able to say about that, because it was the result of all this built-up energy. That song really does feel like it lays the groundwork for the rest of the album. It’s a core, structural thing to album, I think.
It’s interesting that you say that. That song, and “Suffering Well” are both, lyrically, the most attuned to my life philosophy and my feeling of what The Blues means to me. I wasn’t sure that anyone would pick up on their importance as a structuring element.
Lyrically, I can definitely see it. Sonically, I can even see the way it links to the album because of the minimal instrumentation and the big guitar solos. The guitar has its place on the album that is equally as honored as the vocals.
You’re one hundred percent right. I’ve wanted to make a record that’s just instrumental Blues guitar because when I first started playing music, I did not sing at all. I was terrified to sing. So the guitar was my voice, musically, for a while. That’s how I found my voice with music. Actually, I’d even say that I can say more on the guitar than I can through my voice, any day. That’s just my way of communicating musically. I’ve gotten better at singing, but I don’t consider myself a singer. When people ask me to sing vocal harmonies on their records, I say no! I can do it, but it’s just my thing.
