Sunshine

Well now, Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew has been spinning that bright little number Sunshine by Jonathan Edwards off his self-titled album Jonathan Edwards, and if you have not heard the tale behind this one, pull up a chair because it is a classic case of how a song can sneak onto an album and then take over the whole world. Back in the early days, Edwards was living in a house full of songwriters up in Boston, everybody sharing a kitchen table and trying out new tunes. He sat down and started playing what would become Sunshine, but he did not even have a chorus yet. So right there at the table he made one up on the spot: How much does it cost? I will buy it. Time is all we have lost. I will try it. He cannot even run his own life, I will be damned if he will run mine. One of the other writers, Joe Dolce, told him it did not make sense and to go back and rewrite it, but Edwards stuck with it because it felt right in the moment. That same spirit of questioning authority is what gives the song its bite, even though the melody floats along like a sunny afternoon ride.

The real wild part is how it ended up on the record at all. During the sessions for the album, an engineer accidentally erased another track called Please Find Me. Panic set in because there was a hole in the tape, and the engineer asked Edwards if he had anything three minutes long that could fill it so nobody would notice the next morning. Edwards remembered the song he had played for the housemates, sat down in the wee hours, and cut Sunshine with just vocals and bass. He added the twelve-string later, and the drummer Richard Adelman put his part on after that. Just like that, the blank spot was filled, and the song that was never supposed to be there became the one everybody remembers. Edwards has said more than once that if he had never written another song, he would be happy to be known for this one, because it helped a lot of people through the tough years of the Vietnam War and the drug culture of the late sixties and early seventies. He even played it at the Mayday protests in Washington, D.C., in front of the Washington Monument while the National Guard was rounding folks up. He and his bass player looked at each other and just kept starting it over again because nothing else fit the moment better.

Edwards has always been careful not to pin the meaning down too tight. He used to get letters from English classes and science classes full of deep interpretations about the meaning of life, and he figures their versions are usually more interesting than whatever he had in mind when he wrote it in about five minutes. He has called it an angry young man’s complaint about the war and the way authority was running things, written after a rough draft board physical that landed him in an emergency room and a sanitarium. His dad had been with the FBI, and Edwards was out taking over ROTC buildings at the same time, so the tension was real. Still, he leaves it open so people can hear what they need to hear. That is part of why it still works for so many folks who catch it on THE ZOO.

Jonathan Edwards came up the old-fashioned way. He was born John Evan Edwards in Aitkin, Minnesota, in 1946, and the family moved to Virginia when he was six because of his father’s government job. At eight he was singing solos in church and picking out tunes by ear on the family piano. Then he got sent to Fishburne Military School, and the kid in the next room had a guitar. Edwards picked it up, made a sound, and something clicked. He started putting bands together, writing songs, and learning the folk tunes of the day while he was still in school. After that he studied art at Ohio University and played every kind of music from folk trios to hard blues in the local clubs. The music bug won out over painting, so he sold the car his father had loaned him for school, bought a van, and headed east to Boston with the band. They played around New England under names like Headstone Circus and Sugar Creek, even cut an album that did not do much. After a few years of six sets a night he decided he liked the sound of an acoustic guitar better than the loud electric stuff, so he walked out of a club in Vermont, rented a van and a PA, and started setting up in college dorm lobbies with no gigs booked. People would tell each other about the guy who just plugged in and played all night, and pretty soon he had a following.

That solo acoustic path is what led to the debut album and the accident that gave us Sunshine. He has kept writing and touring ever since, with stretches in Nova Scotia and the Caribbean, collaborations with folks like Emmylou Harris, and a long run as a steady presence in the folk and Americana scene. He still closes sets with the song that started it all, and fans keep showing up because the spirit in those words has not faded. You can find more about the man and his music over at his Facebook page Jonathan Edwards, and there is a lively fan group called Jonathan Edwards Singer/Songwriter at this Facebook group where people swap stories and concert memories. That is the kind of connection that keeps a song like Sunshine alive long after it first hit the charts. The Zoo Crew will keep spinning it for the Zoo Freaks, because some records just belong on the air.