Jonah Yano & The Heavy Loop

a look behind the curtain or whatever allegory of demystification you prefer

beginning with the end

I think it’s best to start with the last page of this story, go back to the very beginning, and try to close the gap with words, pictures, and a scrap of music so that I can give you a legible understanding of what this all was.

So, at the very end, it was October 3rd and my 30th birthday. I was completely delirious because I had just gotten home to Montreal after improvising for 24 hours straight in Toronto with my bandmates and I was scrambling to pack a suitcase because I was headed off to Japan the next day for some album release shows. At midnight, my 3rd album, which was 4 years in the making, was about to be released into the world and a handful of great waves (think emotion, not Hokusai) crashed over me and I was no longer responsible for keeping this all consuming, 55-minute, secret.

half-asleep on my balcony trying my best to commemorate the moment

the real beginning

The whole chain of events that ends with this album starts in a pretty funny place. I was cast as a guitar-playing background actor on a pretty shite Netflix show called “Grand Army”. I think it got cancelled after 1 season hahaha. Anyways, cast alongside me as the piano player was a young guy (and real piano player) named Felix Fox. In the seemingly infinite downtime between takes we got to chatting about music and eventually exchanged phone numbers.

About a year went by before we ever spoke again. At the time, I was living in Toronto writing songs for what would become “portrait of a dog”. One random day in the studio, suddenly, like a groundhog out of the earth, the name Felix Fox loudly popped into my head. It took me a moment to remember who or what that name was but eventually I got around to the fact that Felix was a piano player, and that I should give him a call. So Felix shows up to the studio, we get along well, and later go on to record “portrait of a dog” alongside BADBADNOTGOOD, which is another album and story I can type out some other time.

Ok so what does that have to do with The Heavy Loop? Well, Felix is the first of five musicians who will eventually sit and play instruments at the core of this entire, spinning, thing.

meet the band

In 2021, I was asked by my friend Lukas (of the great Toronto psych-rock band
Mother Tongues) if I wanted to put together a band and come out to the countryside of Ontario to play a diy-festival called Hollowfest. It’s the type of festival where everyone is sleeping in a tent (including the aritsts and vendors), everyone uses the same 2 outhouses, and everyone and everything in the direct proximity of the festival is enveloped in a thick layer of a seemingly permanent campfire smoke smell. But since it was the tail-end of pandemic restrictions, and I was feeling like a bird in a tiny, overpriced, cage in my Toronto apartment, I happily agreed to come be a part of the festival, irremovable campfire scent and all.

But, up to this point, I had never really put together a proper band to play my music on a stage. I gave Felix a call and asked him if he wanted to come play the gig with me and he was game. I asked him if he knew a good bass player and, by some strange luck, both of his roommates were bass players that he studied jazz with in university. So the question I asked Felix was, “which of your bass playing roommates would you rather sleep in a tent with for 2 nights in the woods with no electricity?” and so Benja joined the band.

forest jam Hollowfest 2021. from left to right: myself, Le Ren, Eliza Niemi photo by Raiden Louie

This left us with one last seat to fill on that tiny, plywood, stage somewhere off of highway 7. Enter Raiden Louie, who at the time was living in Vancouver studying jazz performance. I met Raiden 3 or 4 years prior because he was co-host of a radio show with my friend Tiger, and they were nice enought to have me on their show.

At some point in my search for a drummer, I remembered hearing from Tiger that Raiden was studying jazz and playing the drums after he graduated high-school so I got his number and asked him on a complete whim if he wanted to come play the gig with us. I flew him over to Toronto and we drove up to the countryside with Felix and Benja and, by some stroke of luck, we sounded great as this new makeshift band, and we played a great gig. In retrospect, it was a pretty wild shot in the dark considering I had never heard this guy play the drums in my life and that the last time I saw him he was a 16 year old DJ in Vancouver, but hey, a couple tours in all sorts of countries and a whole album later, I’m pretty sure he was right for the job.

meet the band pt 2

After Hollowfest, I didn’t have a single show booked until I got the call a year later that I was going to be opening for Clairo’s “Sling” tour for 19 shows across North America and Europe. Quite the terrifying step up from playing to 50 people in the woods.

At this point I had just moved my life to Montreal and was frequenting a weekly jazz night called Jazz & Tarot that was hosted at Datcha. The band leader was a saxophonist named Chris Edmondson. The first time I heard him playing saxophone my mind was completely shattered into a thousand pieces. I was so confused how someone could make such an abrasive instrument sound so soft, almost like headlights trying to pierce through a foggy road at night. So, I went back to hear him play repeatedly and eventually mustered up the courage to ask him to join my band.

It was a similar story with Leighton. Benja was going to move to playing electric guitar in the band so the bass player search began again. I had heard Leighton play the bass out at a jazz gig at a spot called Barbossa in Montreal. I remember his playing being incredible, but what I really remember most is that he was the only person on the stage smiling while playing his instrument. I’ve never told him that before this, but for whatever reason that really stuck with me. So, when it came time for a new bass player my first call had to be to Leighton Harrell.

the band in its entirety left to right: Felix, Chris, Benja, Leighton, Myself, and Raiden behind the camera

the language forms

Fast forward to the first show we ever play together as an ensemble and my first proper show as Jonah Yano on a real stage in a real venue. We pack up a sprinter van after a few rehearsals and head south to Philadelphia to play in front of a couple thousand Clairo fans who, like us, have no idea who we are or what kind of music we play.

Since this was my first proper show outside of playing to friends in Toronto, I was nervous as hell. I remember pulling up to the venue where Clairo greeted us and offered me a cigarette. I don’t really smoke all that often but I figured it would help with the nerves so I smoked it. I honestly have no memory of how that first show went or what it sounded like. To put it this way, I remember exactly how the backstage of the Fillmore looks, where the green rooms were, where we parked our van, I even remember where the convenience store that we went to for a snack is, but I have no clue at all what the stage we played on looks like or how the inside of the actual venue looks at all. It’s like I blacked out from nervousness as soon as I walked on the stage and came to as soon as I walked off. Almost like Adam Scott’s character in Severance riding the elevator up to the severed floor of Lumon at 9:00am and back down into his regular life at 5:10pm.

From that show onwards though, with the all the bandages of performance-nerves ripped off in one fell swoop, I was able to be fully present for every moment on stage playing with the band, almost like a member of the audience. Each night on stage I listened as we played through the songs, listened to the different solos and improvisation we would attempt within them, and felt us starting to break ground on a new sound - something I had never heard or felt before while playing music. I was listening to the source material for what would become the next album take shape in front of me in a very unlikely circumstance, in front of thousands of unsuspecting Clairo fans, one 45 minute set at a time on way-too-big for me stages all across North America and Europe.

Chris waving to some cattle on a day off somewhere in Scotland photo by Raiden Louie

the iron, hot!

After the last show of that tour in London, I sat on the plane home consumed by this new sound we had invented together and the bittersweet realization that the beginning of it all had come to an end.

Famously though, after every beginning is the middle. The middle is where we fan all those initial sparks and burn the brush and driftwood until there is one, big, fire.

Nik Arthur filming the big fire photo by Raiden Louie

So we returned to Montreal at terminal velocity with all the language necessary to begin writing an album. The first writing sessions were just Chris, Raiden, and I. Fueled by the bitter winter of Montreal and a 6 pack of whatever was cheapest from the depanneur, we began jamming out riffs and ideas at Chris’ rehearsal space in Little Italy recording any worthwhile ideas on the iPhone 8 that I was (and still am) borrowing from my friend Moya. The first song that we wrote that eventually made it’s way onto the record was “Concentrate”. Like most good songs, it came thoughtlessly and effortlessly from that great ether of songs that you can only reach when you aren’t reaching for it.

Here is the first 30-ish seconds of the demo for “concentrate” we recorded mostly on that old cell phone:

After listening back to this a few times, I was sure we were beginning to chase an album. So we jammed a few more times in Montreal before planning an end of winter trip to a cottage on a frozen lake to jam with the rest of the band to strike the hot iron and write as many things as we could. At the frozen lake house, joined by the rest of the band, we found the certainty that this was the way forward.

So, with songs and certainty in hand, it was time to find a place to record it all, to make permanent this forever moving thing.

running on the frozen lake at the cottage photo by Raiden Louie

port william sound

I am not sure how to properly express what the studio we recorded at means to me and this record as a whole, so instead of a plain explanation I’m going to write it a dramatic letter to try and paint the picture:

dear Port William Sound,

when i think of where you are, in that great, unknown to me, expanse of canadian shield, i think of the space between who i was and who i am. those low to the ground trees along highway 7 illuminate the distance between my past and present and, somewhere among them with that same low-to-the-ground sensibility, you stand wearing your corrugated steel outer layer, mics up, piano tuned, ready to hear and archive the things that people lucky enough to visit you want to say forever in song.

i often quote Mary Ruefle in saying that i would rather wonder than to know. to me, you are one of the few keepers of that wonder left in the world of music. so many of the other buildings where songmakers go to record their version of it all are plagued by precedent, bogged down by the myths of fidelity, obsessed with fame and identity, and ultimately sanitized of the spirit of wonder that keeps this whole thing alive. for the spirit that you carry i must also turn to thank the stewards who keep you up and running, the trio who ferments the grapes, that presses record, that keeps the fire lit.

jonas, caylie, gem, we are all indebted to the life you’ve made and the home you’ve welcomed music into. it is because of your unwavering devotion to music for music’s sake and life for life’s sake that allows a mere building to contribute so greatly to the vision of others.

ok back to you, corugated building. i’m sorry i called you '“mere” but i had to remind you that you are after all inanimate. it doesn’t mean you don’t have the ears for all this sentiment to fall on, it just serves as a reminder that the people who built you, and keep building you, are equally responsible for all the hospice you provide. now to close -

an emotion is only as replicable as the fragments of information it leaves behind and a memory is only as reliable as the fractions of itself that remain true over time. thank you for being the place where i was able to piece those fractions and fragments together and create something new and familiar, compartmentalized and whole.

with love, jonah

the corrugated keeper of wonder, Port William Sound

the heavy loop

Now what is “The Heavy Loop” anyways? On the record, it’s 30 minutes of improvisation on a theme we had written some time before. But in the present moment, “The Heavy Loop” represents the ever present musical language that exists between Felix, Benja, Raiden, Chris, Leighton, and I - it’s the song that is always playing, only we have to pick up our instruments together in order for it to be audible. It’s like throwing a sheet on a 6-headed ghost - not to see it’s shape, but to hear it’s story.

—

“The Heavy Loop” is at times visible as well. This is where you meet Nik Arthur, who was filming the big fire in the earlier photo. Much like Port William Sound, Nik is a keeper of wonder in a world otherwise obsessed with absolute definition.

Luckily, Nik wrote about his contributions to “The Heavy Loop” in his own substack.
You can read about it all here.

Thanks Nik!

the other voices

I think an important part of making records for me is making an accurate representation of the other musicians in my life. I want an album to also be a map with markings that point out where I am and who I’m there with.

Helena Deland and Ouri (who together are Hildegard) live here in Montreal too. I’ve been a listener and fan of them both long before I ever moved here and when I began my life here, it was through luck that I would meet them both. I met Helena at our mutual friend Lili’s birthday party (hi Lili) a few years back. I remember doing that thing I always do when I meet a musician I admire - I say over and over in my head “don’t act weird don’t act weird don’t act weird” (What no one tells you before you enter a life in music is that it can be so deeply embarassing being a musician while also being a huge music fan and nerd). I had met Ouri out and about at an improvised gig she was playing with Chris at a venue called Systeme where I repeated the same mantra of normalcy in my head so I didn’t embarass myself in front of who I think is a musical genius.

Some time after that, after running into each other a few times, Helena and I decided to get together and jam. “No Petty Magic” was the first, and only, song we wrote together. We both immediately pointed our minds in the direction of Ouri, who ended up dressing the track in much needed cello and harp over top of a bed track I recorded with the band. And there it was, the ‘‘x” that marks Montreal on the map of The Heavy Loop.

—

I remember sometime in 2018 biking to my coffee shop job in Toronto and listening to a song called “Pretty Girl” by a new artist that went by the name “Clairo” on loop in my headphones. I remember showing all my friends this new song and thinking about how I couldn’t wait to hear more.

On a random night in Los Angeles a few years later, I was waiting in line to order a beer at Zebulon before watching a Brad Oberhofer gig. The person in front of me had paid for their beer, turned around, and looked at me with a sense of familiarity - at this point I was already slated to be the opener of the Sling tour - and we both realised what was happening. I was meeting the artist behind the music I had been listening to on repeat and who was also the provider of the stage for my band to eventually come together. Again, I repeated in my head of fandom “don’t act weird” and walked away feeling good about how normal I pretended to act.

After we toured together, Claire and I kept in touch about music and life for a while. At some point later on, I had just finished recording what I thought was the last music for the album, and had a couple of studio days left over to use. So I invited Claire to the studio to jam, with no real intention or vision of a song, and after a couple days at Port William and some chords Benja had taught me a while back, we walked away with “Snowpath” and a solid hangover from the homemade wine that Jonas makes up at the studio.

Jana, Ouri, and Helena

singing with Claire in London photo by Raiden Louie

the album as it is

One criticism I’ve gotten about the album is that the two halves of the record don’t connect that well - the two halves being the first 7 songs of relatively normal length and the last, 30 minute, improvisation. And honestly, I understand. But allow me to plead my case:

I wanted to make a record that showed both sides of the coin of this band, and maybe any band out there. On one hand, there is the polished, considered, and arranged songs we often hear committed to record. On the other hand, is the sort of mise-en-place of it all, the long jam where all songs are born, a look behind the curtain of what “The Heavy Loop” is before it creates something thought over. I wanted to put together an album that presents the finished product as well as the thing-in-motion to try and represent that the two halves are in fact two sides of the same coin. The first half is a refinement of the second. The second half is what the the first half sounded like to begin with.

the here and now

Ok. Ok!

So it’s been 6 months since the album and here I am, toes at the edge of some proverbial and once frozen but recently thawed lake, looking down into the cold, still, water and considering here what’s in the reflection looking back up at me —————

here i am on a literal frozen lake while writing the album photo by Raiden Louie

To tie the ribbon on this whole long-winded explanation about some wiggly air (music), I want to make clear that, while this album is about many things, its meaning is, by a wide margin, dominated by my relationship to the people who helped make it with me and I hope all that I’ve written here illuminates that point clearly. To Felix, Benja, Raiden, Chris, Leighton, Ouri, Helena, Claire, Nik, Moya, my management, Warren, Theo, & Matt, my label partners Jamie and Nate at IL and everyone at Rambling Records in Japan, and to anyone who came to a show or listened to one song or listened to them all, thank you sincerely and deeply for taking the time to check out what consumed my life for the better part of 4 years. None of this happens without ears to fall on and hands to rest in.

The Heavy Loop forever <3

—

With that all that (or whatever part of it you read) in mind, have a listen: