Web: jonahkagen.com
Contact: kylie@jonahkagen.com
Players: Jonah Kagen, guitars, vocals; Jefferson Rinck, guitars, bass, lower register musings; Sam Johnson, guitar; Dalton Thomas, drums, percussion
Smart acts use a cool walk-on track so the audience knows what’s about to happen. The music starts, and people begin drifting in from the hallways or the parking lot.
Tonight was different. At Cat’s Cradle, the room was already flirting with full sardine mode—packed tight and breathing as one organism.
The band spread across the big stage but stayed close enough to pass the current between them. What came out was a double-super-smokin’ sound: big vocals, razor-placed slide guitar, and a floor tom and bass pedal that seemed almost untethered from gravity—charging forward like they had somewhere urgent to be, occasionally glancing back to see who was keeping up.
Answer: everyone. “Simon,” “The Reaper,” and “Candyland” popped the cork on the evening, immediately followed by a quad-pod of “You Again,” “Matches,” “Black Lung,” and “Moon,” before sliding into “Krissy.” Anyone who’s ever played a stage knows dead air is the enemy, and the Kagen juggernaut made sure the groove train never stopped rolling.
True pros, they came alive on the first note—spinning intricate melodies across the wide stage and then drop-kicking them into the rafters. Each note chased the one before it, tumbling into the sonic backwash with a snicker and a sneer.
At the center of it all was Jonah Kagen, holding the whole engine together while the band roared behind him. And what a band it was. They played like they’d been magnetized at the downbeat—atoms snapping into place, herding their collective molecules toward the same musical corral.
By the time “Same Wind,” “The Roads,” “Save My Soul,” and “God Needs the Devil” closed the set, the room was already at full boil. Then came the double encore—“Sunflowers & Leather” chained directly to “Burn Me”—which finished the job with surgical precision.
At that point the walls looked ready to burst outward, spilling the great unwashed into the parking lot—dazed, ringing, and happily disoriented. They’d just spent the evening basking in the Kagen heat lamp, and now they could navigate their way home through the Milky Way, powered by the celestial groove of Jonah Kagen.
