"we were little then / me and my sister ran and spending summers / in the dust and heat / smell the saved rush in / sounds of cars and gravel / the blackest nights we'd ever seen..."
The culled memories and cathartic cauterized pain of "Wildfire", by singer-songwriter / musician Jonathon Penn, is a song that tugs at you like a compelling albeit dark movie. It is not a song suited for a house party, it is one that you ruminate on alone as it slowly dares you to wonder about it as it moves into the soft places in your heart. It is so damn pretty though but pretty sad as well. In fact, those pretty acoustic strains hit me like Joni Mitchell whereas the reticent vocals bathed in sadness and bruised up introspection carries something that made me think a bit of Sparklehorse (Mark Linkous). I am dazzled by the nuances of the production, the sense of ambience like field recordings and I am dazzled by Penn's voice that literally makes you gaze down and look inward. The vocal patter or the lyrics if you just read them even apart from the song are a hazy blend of memories, some amusing and some disturbing, it is like the flush of memories come at their own cost and speed. Liner notes do reveal the back story:
LINER NOTES (excerpted / bracketed)
[Wildfire is impressionistic folk that traces the aftermath of the 2003 Cedar Fire in San Diego County, which burned 280,278 acres and claimed the life of Penn's aunt. She died trying to escape the house she had built in the mountains, a place where Penn and his twin sister spent their summers and first encountered the power and joy of creativity.
"She was the first real artist I knew," Penn says. "When she died, it felt like something fundamental disappeared too."
Penn went off to college not long after her passing and drifted toward a very different life path. Years later, the memory resurfaced in song. Rather than telling the story directly, "Wildfire" unfolds through a collage of images: a half-melted Rubik's Cube that survived an earlier blaze, a mythical machete hanging on the wall, his aunt's sideways smile as she sips Jasmine tea. Humor, tenderness, and grief coexist, as in memory.]
Of course, the backstory makes this song even more powerful in it's telling and there are 10 more personal works on Penn's upcoming debut album "It Took A Long Time To Get Young" set to drop June 2026.
(more) LINER NOTES (excerpted / bracketed)
[Jonathon Penn always carried two versions of himself: the songwriter who self-produced two EPs and an LP in college, and the professional who built a career in finance. For nearly two decades, the music was buried — a private dream, a half-remembered version of himself. Then came the breaking point: the loss of his father, the birth of his children, and a life-altering decision to walk away from his career, all colliding at once. In that moment, Penn chose which self would define him going forward. He chose the songs.
“It felt like this God-like force making me blow myself up,” recalls the San Luis Obispo–based artist. “This record is that story. It’s about losing and finding oneself; a journey through spiritual crisis and transformation; and growing up, and hopefully, aging gracefully.”]
Me and my sister and
Been spending summers in the dusty heat
Smell of sage brush and sound of cars on gravel
The blackest nights we'd ever seen
Old steel machete
My uncle said was ready
For fighting monsters we'd never seen
My aunt was smiling sideways
Funny look on her face
Softly sipping her jasmine tea
Always sometimes wildfire
Light the hills in my sleep
Half melted Rubix cube
Inside a chicken coop
The biggest bookshelf we'd ever seen
They had a name for it
Books piled up but not read
Tsudonku it's Japanese
Always sometimes wildfire
Light the hills in my sleep
Om mani padme hum
Back in my childhood home
Staring second floor balcony
Too young to really get it
Far too old to forget
The sound of my mama's scream
Always sometimes wildfire
Light the hills in my sleep
The Chicken Wheel will take you to the AP Go Fund Me- and any amount is so appreciated!
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.instagram.com/jono.penn/
https://jonathonpenn.bandcamp.com/album/wildfire
Jonathon Penn always carried two versions of himself: the songwriter who self-produced two EPs and an LP in college, and the professional who built a career in finance. For nearly two decades, the music was buried — a private dream, a half-remembered version of himself. Then came the breaking point: the loss of his father, the birth of his children, and a life-altering decision to walk away from his career, all colliding at once. In that moment, Penn chose which self would define him going forward. He chose the songs.
“It felt like this God-like force making me blow myself up,” recalls the San Luis Obispo–based artist. “This record is that story. It’s about losing and finding oneself; a journey through spiritual crisis and transformation; and growing up, and hopefully, aging gracefully.”
Today, Penn returns with It Took A Long Time To Get Young, his first solo album under his own name. The Americana-tinged indie-rock effort is a coming-of-age album for anyone still finding their way. The single “Hawk Circling" will precede the album.
The 11-track record brims with hard-earned wisdom, spiritual grappling, and unflinching self-reflection, recalling the tradition of moment-of-truth albums like Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, and Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. The unvarnished ethos also imbues its production and instrumentation: It Took A Long Time To Get Young is recorded on real instruments, in real time, with minimal editing and processing.
Tracked at the legendary Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas — home to recordings by Fiona Apple, Bon Iver, and Waxahatchee — the album was produced by multi-instrumentalist Adam Nash and features a cast of accomplished indie-rock and Americana musicians. Several songs trace back to a School of Song workshop led by Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker, whose exercises and philosophy became a guiding light for Penn during the writing process.
The breaking point that ultimately led to the album crystallized in a single, dramatic act. After months of wrestling with grief from his father’s death, the new responsibilities of raising young children, and the gnawing sense that his career path had run out, Penn brought it all to a head in a searing note to leadership that ended his professional life as he knew it — and with it, the future he thought he’d built his life around. “It was a crack-up of sorts,” he recalls. “Part of me knew I didn’t want to keep going down that road, and when I felt the door was closing, I blew it off its hinges.”
In the aftermath, Penn left New England and settled back in California, where he and his wife had both grown up. For months afterward, he wrestled with his actions, finding temporary solace in writing a novel before drifting back to his old acoustic guitar, a lifelong companion since age 14 that once belonged to his father. The songs that would become It Took A Long Time To Get Young poured out, anchoring him in grief, transformation, and renewal.
The album title is directly inspired by a quote often attributed to Picasso: “It takes a long time to become young.” The longer version reads: “One starts to get young at the age of 60 — and then it’s too late. Only then does one start to feel free; only then has one learned to strip oneself down to one’s essential creative simplicity.” It Took A Long Time To Get Young is Penn’s rediscovery of that simplicity.
The single Hawk Circling is an existential back-porch musing woven with banjo, folksy guitars, and raw vocals. It’s inspired by Hamlet, Dante’s Inferno, and the daily walks Penn took with his dogs as he was coming to terms with his new identity in California. On those walks, he started to notice a red-tailed hawk that nested in the canyon behind his house. “It was always up there, gliding and circling, scanning the earth below,” Penn recalls. “It felt like a sentinel. Like it was watching over me as I went through this painful but necessary process of internal transformation.”
While the metamorphosis made Penn, at times, feel set apart even among his closest friends and family, the song mythologizes how he ultimately found comfort in a new path. Its chorus features the lyric: “One man’s crazy is another man’s wild.” First it’s the hawk speaking, and finally it’s Penn, claiming the truth for himself.
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