Jonathon Penn kept writing songs the whole time, just not in a way anyone else could see. They stacked up quietly while he moved deeper into a finance career, started a family, and let that earlier version of himself slip into the background without fully disappearing.

When things broke, they sadly broke all at once… His father died. His children were born. The life he’d been maintaining stopped lining up with what the songs were asking of him. So he walked away. Most of that history stays in the background on ‘It Took A Long Time To Get Young,’ and ‘Thick and Thin’ barely touches it. It’s one of the loosest songs here. It’s not pinned to a backstory. The setup is simple with electric guitar out front, piano tucked into the gaps, drums and bass doing their job without drawing too much focus. They cut it at Sonic Ranch with Adam Nash producing, alongside Max Miller, Laura Jean Anderson, Garret Lang, and Alex Nash.

Jonathon Penn: ‘Thick and Thin’ was one of the last songs I wrote for the record, and the first where I felt like I understood what the whole thing was trying to say.

I kept circling this idea of getting older. Not doing it well, exactly, just not lying about it. I landed on the word “patina.” Things that don’t fight time. They take it in. A leather couch that’s softened and cracked in the right places. A doorknob worn down by hands. A kitchen table that’s picked up scratches and stains. A tree that’s been standing long enough to look like it belongs exactly where it is. None of it is trying to stay new. It just becomes what it is.

That felt solid to me.

The song moves through pieces of a relationship, but that’s not really the point. It’s about what happens to a relationship over time. What stays. What changes. What gets worn in. The marks matter.

In the studio, this was where the band finally locked. Adam Nash on electric guitar, Max Miller on electric piano, Laura Jean Anderson singing harmonies, Garret Lang on bass, Alex Nash on drums. You can hear it settle into place. A lot of the record carries some weight. This one doesn’t. I remember sitting in the control room, listening back, and thinking, huh, this is actually fun.

<a href="https://jonathonpenn.bandcamp.com/album/thick-and-thin">Thick and Thin by Jonathon Penn</a>

“It’s a song about growing up,” Penn says. “Not fighting gray hair or wrinkles. Just trying to grow into a deeper person over time.”

‘Thick and Thin’ sits on the lighter side of the record. It moves at a steady pace, built around a simple rhythm section, with guitars that keep things open and easy to follow. The song picks up on small, ordinary moments and lets them add up. There’s a sense of looking at your life from a bit of distance.

The album it comes from, ‘It Took A Long Time To Get Young,’ takes its title from a quote often tied to Pablo Picasso: “It takes a long time to become young.” The idea behind it is pretty straightforward. Over time, you let go of what isn’t needed and end up somewhere simpler. That’s the thread running through the record.

Headline photo: Jonathon Penn (Photo by Robbie Bruz)

Jonathon Penn Instagram