Jonatha Brooke

Blending stirring folk traditions with tuneful pop structures and a sharper roots-rock attitude, singer/songwriter/guitarist Jonatha Brooke launched her recording career in the early 1990s, initially through the duo the Story before establishing a longer-lasting solo identity. Her first solo project appeared as 1995’s Plumb under the name Jonatha Brooke & the Story, while her third collection of original material, Steady Pull, reached the Billboard 200 in 2001. She supplied two tracks for the 2002 Disney feature Return to Never Land. Four years afterward she released The Works, setting her melodies to previously unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics, and in 2014 an album drawn from her one-woman show My Mother Has 4 Noses entered the Top Ten of the Billboard Americana/folk chart.

Illinois-born and Massachusetts-raised, Brooke had already begun composing when she encountered vocalist Jennifer Kimball as Amherst College students in the early 1980s. Performing locally as Jonatha & Jennifer, the pair never recorded during that period; after graduation Brooke joined a dance company and the partnership paused. By the close of the decade they had regrouped as the Story, issuing the 1989 demo Over Oceans. The independent Green Linnet label soon signed them, issuing Grace in Gravity in 1991; Elektra Records quickly licensed the album for re-release that same year and followed with the 1993 sophomore effort The Angel in the House.

The Story disbanded permanently in 1994, prompting Brooke’s solo path. Although Kimball no longer participated, the 1995 debut Plumb retained the joint billing Jonatha Brooke & the Story. Beginning with 1997’s 10 Cent Wings she received sole credit and moved toward a more broadcast-friendly approach, a direction sustained on 1999’s Live and on Steady Pull, the latter co-produced with engineer Bob Clearmountain, whose credits include the Rolling Stones, the Corrs, and Hall & Oates. That album peaked at number 192 on the Billboard 200 and reached the independent albums Top Ten. From the late 1990s onward her releases appeared on her own Bad Dog Records imprint.

For the 2002 Return to Never Land soundtrack she contributed the original “I’ll Try” alongside a cover of “The Second Star to the Right.” In 2004 she staged ten performances at New York’s Public Theater; selections appeared on the 2006 album Live in New York, packaged with a concert DVD. Careful What You Wish For arrived in 2007, followed the next year by The Works, which again matched Brooke’s music to Guthrie texts. Continuing to tour, she wrote the theme “What You Don’t Know” for Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse (2009–2010) and collaborated intermittently while developing the autobiographical play My Mother Has 4 Noses, drawn from her mother’s dementia. The show premiered at New York’s Duke Theater in February 2014, coinciding with the release of a same-titled album. Rejoining Clearmountain, she issued the full-length Midnight. Hallelujah in 2016, then the Imposter EP in 2019.