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Music

The Bones of J.R. Jones Ventures Into the Wilderness for Redemption In His Video for "Ticket Home"

NYC-based one man band heads to the woods, gets a bit Blair Witch-y.

Meet Jonathon Linaberry, the man behind The Bones of J.R. Jones. A guy who was raised in upstate New York, fell in love with hardcore punk and then fell harder for Americana blues. He performs alone, foot stomping out a beat, guitar sliding, his rich, rootsy tones reminiscent but not overly reverential to a strain of folk-stoked blues that has a lineage old as the hills. He's a one man band who can hold an audience rapt, rendering the cacophony of a stage full of musicians utterly unnecessary.

Above is the premiere of his video for the hypnotic "Ticket Home," a video that traipses through the beautiful wilderness—in the summer, ah, the summer—and sees Linaberry plunged in a pond, sun shafts filtering through the water as he collects rocks to eventually build some kind of Blair Witch-like construction. Well, isolation will make you a bit cuckoo!

Linaberry had this to say about the song and the accompanying visuals: "It was originally written for a film, but the song was never picked up. In hindsight, I view it as a blessing that the studio decided not to use it. The rhythmic humming was inspired by Alan Lomax's work songs—those songs, sang in the fields by chain gangs provided the atmosphere I was after. I wanted to convey the idea of redemption from your darker side, from sins, from past transgressions and to write about that desperate desire to find your way past the hardships in front of you… something to get you to some sort of peace."

We're feeling this.

The Bones of J.R. Jones plays the Mercury Lounge in NY on 2.15 and his debut album Dark was the Yearling is out now.