Photo by Rhianna Hajduch
Lutalo Jones
Lutalo Jones is a musician with an immersive, acoustic sound. This fall, he’s joining another homegrown rising star—Adrianne Lenker, the Big Thief guitarist and vocalist who grew up around Minnesota—on her solo tour this fall. As of this May, the pair are cousins through marriage, and their acoustic tunes certainly resonate. Think of Jones’ music as less ambient than architectural: its roof and walls held up with soft, driving percussion, a lattice of guitar strums giving it color and form. His melodies fit together with a kind of perfect mathematics.
“I’ve heard songwriting described as hearing the music in a separate room. It’s muffled, and you can barely hear it. You’re trying to make it out to the best of your ability, and basically transition into that room,” says Jones. “I’m just channeling whatever this ethereal world around me is—there’s a collection of sounds all around me. I want to be able to tap into those and organize it.”
It takes an intuitive musician to do that. Jones was never classically trained—he grew up in Minneapolis going to African drumming and dancing classes with his dad in Uptown, and eventually learned to play drums himself. At home, his family listened to all kinds of music: Bossa nova, jazz, rock. Jones’ dad taught him about hip-hop—that’s where he learned to love beats.
“He educated me a lot on the Black experience in America, through storytelling [and] through hip-hop. That's where I would fall in love with break beats, and rhythm, and syncopations and such,” says Jones. “Even if I'm making like acoustic stuff, rhythm, African fundamental beats—or polyrhythms and stuff like that, which are just like layered rhythms, mathematically intertwined, basically—I feel like that was really the basis of how I work with my music.”
At school, Jones played in orchestra, but didn’t read music. “I kind of BS-ed my way through that,” he laughs. But as a solo musician, learning by ear has come in handy. Jones does all his own production, vocals, and instrumentation: guitar, percussion, bass, whatever shows up in his music. On guitar, too, he’s self-taught. He says he’s created his own relationship with each instrument—and through them, he channels a sound that’s warm, fuzzy, and layered.
“What helps me make the type of music that I really like is tapping into that uneasiness, the eeriness of just being alive,” says Jones. “I'm always looking for that warmth—it's a certain vibration.” The vocal melodies come later, their lyrics often muted, fitting the puzzle pieces together.
Jones used to play in a local band—Good Luck Finding Iris—but lately, he’s been focused on his solo work. This November, he’s heading out on a month-long tour with Lenker, who, as of this May, is his cousin-in-law. Jones says she’s an inspiration.
“Seeing how authentic and raw her music—her work with her linguistics, her words, is absolutely beautiful. And it's been really inspiring, and has pushed me to be like, I can do better. I can always do better,” says Jones. “I feel like she's like a legend in our time, for sure.” Lenker has given him insight on working in the music industry—when she comes into town, they mess around on the guitar, showing each other new chords they’ve discovered and sharing new songs. They’ve talked about making music together in the future, but no collaborations have emerged yet. Jones is excited for the tour, and nervous—but even Lenker still has nerves, he says.
For now, new music is in the works. The new single “Darkeve” is live on Bandcamp, and another, “Bad Man,” is forthcoming June 25. Check Jones out on Instagram, and if you can, catch his tour with Lenker this fall. Their home state show at the Cedar is already sold out.
