"so what do you expect / from the root of all evil / man compelled to hold the earth / for fear of falling off / and I could be forgiven / for hearing gold is where you'd find it / thinking life is full of innocent mine..."
The introspective and elegant sadness of "Gold Rush", by San Luis Obispo singer-songwriter / musician Jonathon Penn, and from his 2026 debut album "It Took A Long Time To Get Young", beautifully washes over you without haste like late night existential dips into dark pools of your own thoughts. These thoughts might happen after good days but maybe mostly after less than good days when you are feeling varying degrees of life's bruises on your skin. These bruises might be self administered or not, but just the same, are there. You can feel those black and blue discolorations all throughout Penn's vocal countenance that openly holds his pain and resolve too.
I am loving the plaintive acoustic piano that feels like it's been living life too, the easy stoic drum beats, the wishing well ambiance courtesy (I think) of textured subtle synths, the almost not there guitar strums perfectly placed, the melodic drops with backing vocals in tow, the amazing stair stepping bass lines that seriously embrace you, the way all these elements float in the air with space around them and the heaviness of that space and when a lone string sound pierced the sonic veil and a choral of voices offer hope this damn song can send chills down your arms (like it did mine).
I will listen to this song tonight under the mountain sky on my front balcony and look out for that huge bear that has been trash panda-ing our cans for weeks but this time I won't bang pots and pans together and scream at him, I will just laugh.
-Robb Donker Curtius
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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