Jonah’s Onelinedrawing
By Brad Oates
Photo by Dustin A. Beatty

Who needs a permit to put on a show? Who needs a dingy club, a sleazy promoter? Jonah Matranga, ex-Far front man, sure as hell doesn’t. Instead, he’s kickin’ it old school, a la Paul Simon, on a coast-to-coast den-n-fireplace tour. Jonah, his trusty acoustic, a Chevy Suburban. He’ll greet your father at the door, dip your mother as he gives her a peck. He even does diapers, just don’t call him Tony Danza. Call it rock-n-roll for the family values generation. It wasn’t always this way, though. Rewind to winter ‘99. Far show in DC. Tempers flare on stage. The End. After 8 years, the four members of Far said, “Sayonara.” For the thousands who would experience the passion of 1996’s ‘Tin Cans With Strings to You’ or 1998’s ‘Water and Solutions,’ the break-up was like losing your musical soul mate. In a decade of faux rock gods and Caucasian-hip-hop-wannabes, Far were the “get down,” rawk purists in the vein of Zeppelin and Pearl Jam.
Proud to say, I was on-board from the start. I first met Jonah Matranga when I was 15. It was 1995; I was in 9th grade. I had zits, no pussy, zero ride. Jonah had a clear complexion, a wife, a kid, and a major-label deal with Sony. We bullshitted at some all-age shows.
He wanted a web-site; I wanted to be web geek. Soon the first “official” Far site was up and rolling on the internet’s world wide waste of time. Arenas, theaters, clubs, coffee shops, skate parks, Far played it all, but their demise didn’t diminish Jonah’s passion. The goal was still to make music that inspires and uplifts.
In less than a year since the break-up of Far, Jonah Matranga has continued to inspire us, releasing two phenomenal EPs of wonderfully rich acoustic vibrations. Do yourself a favor and check out ‘Sketchy #1’ and it’s sequel, ‘Sketchy #2.’ Jonah Matranga is a survivor. He’s made it through scummy record executives, a nasty divorce, and a shitty band break-up. He has emerged reborn, resurrected at your front door, saying hi to the Mom’s and Pop’s and settling down in your living room, mic-less, just a man and his acoustic guitar, to play a few songs for anyone willing to lend an ear. Jonah’s Onelinedrawing, coming to your living room soon. Wait by the front door for the knock.

So, have you been able to get rid of the custom fitted earplugs?
Totally, I haven’t worn earplugs in forever. That’s been one of the greatest things about this.

While many fans of Far may be surprised by a shift towards a more mellow, acoustic guitar/singer/songwriter sort of thing, for many people close to you this is nothing new.
No it isn’t. I’ve always wanted to do this sort of thing for years, and for years I was really convinced that Far could do enough of it that I would be satisfied, and It just didn’t work out that way. Far had quite a soft side that shined through on numerous occasions. ‘Girl’ was really soft and that was on ‘Tin Cans with Strings To You,’ and if you look back even farther at our earlier stuff, we had acoustic stuff on the first record, ‘Listening Game.’ Now, I’m writing more mid-tempo pop tunes, and if you look back at Far you could definitely hear the melodies in the songs, but no, we were a rock band and that’s totally okay. I will always treasure what we as a band had together, and I’m never going to try and do what we did with any other people, but I think I came to the conclusion that there
were some shortcomings with hard rock. Even though I could see hard rock as this universal everything, and I wanted people who loved Simon & Garfunkel to listen to Far, I guess it hit me after awhile that it just wasn’t going to happen.

Far called it quits early 1999. Since then you’ve recorded and released Sketchy EP #1, and the follow-up, Sketchy EP #2 just came out. How’d you get back on the pony so quickly?
I know, things have happened very quickly. But its not like I sat down in a fit of post-Far whatever and wrote these songs non-stop.
Some of these songs are like four years old, and some are new works. The response has been amazing, and a great deal of this newfound energy and interest has been sparked by my website, onelinedrawing.com.
So many people came quickly and were interested in hearing my new stuff. It’s been so amazing these last couple of months.

Jonah you’ve done a complete 360. You were signed to the major label corporate conglomerate thing, you did the American and European concert circuit, and now you’ve done away with all of that. Instead you’re now playing as many small and intimate settings as you can play. Tell me how playing living rooms and houses started?
I don’t know what it was; I literally played someone’s bedroom. Awhile before this happened I had a talk with Kevin Seconds and we both talked about how fun it would be to play living rooms. It’s gone from there and playing small, intimate living rooms has been one of the most musically rewarding things I’ve done in a long time. The first show I had no mic, cars were parked right outside the window, and I just played-played and talked as long as I wanted, talked to the crowd as much as I wanted. No boundaries. It was just the best feeling. It’s really hard to describe the feeling of walking into someone’s house, meeting their Mom & Dad, sitting down with
a guitar, and watching the walls come down.

How did the first sketchy EP come about?
I got two shows on these festivals in Germany. These were my first two official shows, so I was like, ‘I’ve got to have music to sell there.’ I literally pick six songs from all the demos I have, burn them onto a CD-R, and take them with me to Germany. In Germany I gave the CD-R to a production guy at Sony, he burns a 100 copies for us, we went to the German equivalent of Kinko’s, did this little drawing that is still the cover for ‘Onelinedrawing,’ and that was that. We had 5 hours to get to the first show, we made it, and sold every single copy we had.

The Germans loved you?
Yeah, I think people everywhere are really interested in the idea of simplicity. Someone getting up their with a guitar and just playing songs, and not doing it in a stupid-ass, wimpy, folk guy way - I think people are really psyched on that.

Jonah, you embody a great deal of the DIY ethic.
With Far we’d do stuff like cook our own t-shirts in the oven-stuff that a lot of bands have done, but I think it’s sort of a lost art. It’s not that it’s so cool or whatever, but DIY is fun. It was fucking cool when I was making those EPs and gluing the covers on, it made selling them feel so good.

Would you say there’s a great deal of intelligence put into your music?
I just feel like I treat people with respect. I give the listener something that’s not dummying down to them, that’s not trying to push their buttons-make them happy, sad, whatever. And, yes, thank you for saying that, because I think intelligence is the thing, and not intelligence meaning book smart, but intelligence meaning that if you care to look a little further, read into the lyrics, yes, you will find that. I’ve got an intelligent audience and I think it’s great. I never have to have the “you rock” conversations.

Where do you see yourself heading in this new millennium?
By definition, all I want onelinedrawing to be is my life’s work. It’s me making shit. All I want to do is be the greatest potential of what these ideas could be, which is a pretty tall order. I think I’m going to do another record with a major label. I still enjoy the idea of getting my music out there in a big way, like with a ton of people helping out. I love that, and I’m not like Tom Waits, I write sort of populist, big tunes. This is what I love, so this is what I’ll keep doing.