THE BAND
Elara Vance | Cal Finnegan | Selah Vance
Jonah Briggs
Jonah Briggs | Acoustic & Electric Guitars, Mandolin
Jonah Briggs grew up in Austin’s Bouldin Creek neighborhood in the 1990s in a house where his father, a talented hobbyist, played fingerstyle guitar. Jonah started on a half-size acoustic at seven, put the Mel Bay book down around the age of nine and has been playing by ear ever since.
By ten he was slowing down Doc Watson records by hand. By his early twenties he was doing Nashville session work — the sort of work where producers ask for something and you deliver it, and sometimes deliver something better. He played on records that won awards and a few that deserved to. Along the way he developed an arranger’s ear rare in a guitarist: a sense not just of what to play but what to leave alone.
Kat’s Sundog found him through a mutual connection, sent him some demos, and by all accounts lost him to the music about forty seconds in. He drove up to Asheville for a weekend session. It became a week. Nobody talked much about whether he was joining the band. It just happened.
On stage he stands back and to the side, which most fans understand over time is just a session musician’s belief that the song is the point. The guitar serves the music. He’d prefer you were watching Elara.
