Recommended Tracks: “Burn Me,” “The Reaper,” “Enough”
Artists You Might Like: Chance Peña, Cameron Whitcomb, Noah Rinker
Making yourself uncomfortable is never easy. After a year spent in Miami, Jonah Kagen packed up his things and returned to his parents’ home in South Carolina until he got into a car crash that changed everything. After removing the couch and turning an Airstream trailer into a makeshift, mobile studio, he traveled across the country and returned with his debut album, Sunflowers and Leather. The album took shape as he traveled from South Carolina to Montana, soaking in stories, landscapes and heartbreaks along the way, with sunflowers standing for beauty and hope, and leather representing pain and resilience.
“I want to go chase these beautiful flowers, but I want to suffer too. That’s what Sunflowers and Leather is to me,” he says.
The album opens with “When My Ashes Turn White,” which sets the tone, seeing Kagen travel far and wide and ultimately letting his guard down across the country — from Miami to South Carolina to Montana and everywhere in between — to establish such a cross-country experience. On the title track, Kagen describes how he was born in sunflowers, shining a light on this home and beauty you’re trapped in when you’re a kid. Perhaps because the outside world, or the real world, feels so out of reach. He continues to describe this exciting kind of weary excitement on “Candy Land” as he finds someone he cares for but instead feels like a sore thumb (“You’re a bandaid I don’t stop to bleed”), saying that he’s just holding onto Candy Land, but it’s more of an illusion than his reality.
As he soon realizes how fast life moves, we see a glimpse of the leather Kagen has been describing. Kagen compares emotional pain and inner struggles to the old mining disease, black lung in a song fittingly titled “Black Lung.” As old miners suffocated underground, he describes feeling consumed by emotional turmoil and destructive relationships. Ultimately, his feelings are dismissed (“It ain’t real, boy, you’ll be fine”). Meanwhile, on “Anvil,” Kagen describes a mental low for him, feeling like the tool and singing, “This lesson can’t be worth all this goddamn mess.”
On “The Reaper,” Kagen also faces this self-destruction as he looks for freedom and meaning, told through the lens of someone running from home, chasing escape and colliding with danger along the way. He perfectly describes his travels out west as he only encounters confusion. He sings, “Slow up, child, you’re gonna get burned… you got nothin’ but time, you’re gonna live a long, long life.” Trying to outrun his demons, he is constantly reminded that life is long, and consequences always catch up — so as a result, he feels like he’s living like someone inviting The Reaper in.
Probing all aspects of the human experience, Kagen questions who is on “Belong,” describing how he’s feeling foolish and wondering where he belongs to begin this soul-searching album, starting to close the chapter of leather. Still finding it hard to move on, to let go of his pain, his self-destructive tendencies and his ghost in the wind, “You Again” sees Kagen remain haunted by a love that hurt him but still takes up space in his heart. That is, despite waking up next to someone else who should feel happy and whole. He sings, “I would love to love you, but this heart isn’t mine / ’Cause I gave it away to somebody who never gave it back,” showing how deeply that old wound runs. He’s essentially trapped between his past and his future — a haunting presence that feels like a ghost of his ex (“I feel you again”). The song is Kagen’s favorite song he’s ever written.
He’s finally told by someone, amid his travels, that yes, there will be light at the end of the tunnel on “Light in the End.” He sings, “She said, ‘One day you will grow up and one day you will find love and everything will be okay.” He somewhat comes to peace with the fact that it won’t always be perfect and that despite his past and his mental health, he will eventually reach the other side when he “grows up,” he sings.
Kagen admits he doesn’t have all the answers about what happens after death, but he’s not afraid to ask. That tension comes through on “Burn Me,” a standout from Sunflowers and Leather co-written with Sam Barber. The acoustic-based song centers on deciding what is considered right or wrong. Their folksy timbres blend well together, as they sing about conflicting values — for Kagen, the differing religious views of his Catholic mother and his Jewish father.
“I grew up going to a Baptist school and they would blatantly say, ‘If you haven’t accepted Jesus, then you’re going to hell,’” he recalls. “That made me think about my dad, whose faith is focused on life right here and now, while my mom’s is focused on an afterlife. I don’t know what to believe, but I do know that my dad’s a good man, and like the song says, ‘If you’re going to burn him, then you can burn me.’ And Sam really bought into that idea.”
Kagen finds some peace on the track, “I’m Around,” saying that if this other person gets lost, he’s still be there. The album finishes off with “Enough,” which sees Kagen reflect on a traumatic car accident from his youth involving his friend Tanner, pondering if he’ll ever do enough. As he faces the passage of time, he sing, “Would he want everything I have loved and I have lost? / Would he still go and get them sunflowers and leather?”
He says that even though these songs are based on his journey from South Carolina to Nashville and onward to Montana, and also Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Texas, he says this album is not only for him. With more songs written and a documentary coming about this creative process in the trusty Airstream, Kagen says that it was a unique moment in time.
Kagen’s debut album, Sunflowers and Leather, captures his restless journey through heartbreak, faith and self-discovery — as one watching life pass him by — blending beauty and pain into a 16-track album fueled by grit, glory and meaning.
“I want people to feel like the songs are theirs. It’s time for them to connect with them in their own way,” he says. “Once the songs are out, they’re not mine anymore.”
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