London Born, Nova Scotia-Based Singer-Songwriter Jont’s New Single “The Next Ramana Maharshi” Brings Raw Emotion and Melancholic Beauty to Indie-Folk Rock
Jont’s new single, “The Next Ramana Maharshi,” is an introspective anthem about spiritual growth and the search for meaningful connection. Born Jonathan Whittington, Jont reflects on his journey—not for fame, but to understand what to do with “all this love I got.”
Inspired by the call of songbirds and written during a transformative session in Thailand, the track captures raw emotion through a live recording with his band, The Fish. Join us as we explore the story behind this deeply personal song.
Care to introduce yourself to our readers?
Sure! My name is Jont, and I am a UK singer-songwriter, now a Canadian Citizen, living in Western Cape Breton. In 2012, I was blessed to discover I had an 8-year-old daughter living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and I emigrated here so I could come and be her dad. She’s now grown up, and I have put the best band together of my career and am putting new music out into the world with the verve of pod of dolphins and the joy of a murmuration of starlings.
The Next Ramana Maharshi is such a personal and introspective song. Can you take us back to the moment you first started writing it? What was going through your mind?
I was melancholy, alone, living in a small cabin back from a beach on the north east coast of Thailand. Ok ok, it was a tourist beach, but a kind of remote one. And it was the same old crap – yearning for a love to come and save me. I was so invested in that story. Instead this song came in and swooped me up like a lover, made me cry, made me dance and made me understand what music at its best always makes us understand – that I have the love, the song, the feeling, inside of me and it’s the singing of it and sharing of that song that is our gift this lifetime…. However, it is received!
You’ve mentioned that the song emerged during a transformative time in Thailand. How did that environment influence the writing process?
I had the time and space to sink into the melancholy I was feeling. I had the emptiness and solitude to trigger this contemplation of connection.
The call-and-response of the Asian koel bird played a pivotal role in the song. Can you describe that moment of realization and how it shaped the song’s message?
Yeah, it was unthought out. I simply went to the Dm7 of the bridge, and thought where do we go from here? We’ve had a story so far about this search, zoom out, where are we? Oh, we are here on the deck of this small cabin, surrounded by palm trees and this incessant bird call, this exchange….the words came first and then, I cried as they came through, both things unconscious acts and then I assessed the words afterwards to work out what had been given. So, the first bird sings – “I’m here, I’m here”, then the second replies “Yes, I hear you, I hear you, – ” and this is where I choked up – “and I’m on my way….”. And of course as I reflected I realised it was this perfect metaphor for connection, the same way this song was being sung to a muse or as yet unmet lover…
The song was recorded as a live take at Sonic Studios with your band, The Fish. Why did you choose this approach, and how did it impact the final sound?
The whole album of 14 songs was recorded in one day. It was the last day Sonic Temple – a famous Halifax studio over the years where a bunch of Matt Mays albums and various other classic stuff has been made – was open before it moved out of Halifax to another location. It felt auspicious. And we only had one day to record when our pianist, Robert Sherwood, was in town from Massachusetts. So we prepared assiduously and just got on with it, a band in a room playing songs with feeling. It’s the way I wanted to make the record anyway. The night before had been an album launch gig in a theatre for my acoustic album Old Traveller, so Robert and I were really in the zone anyway, and that energy of the community singing along to the songs the night before carried over into this new work we were creating. It was really one of the most magical recording experiences I have been part of.
How does The Next Ramana Maharshi fit into the bigger picture of your upcoming work? Is it part of a larger project?
Yes, it’s the first of several singles we’ll be releasing this year from the as yet unreleased album Walk Right Through.