Jonathan Wilson Announces New Album & Shares 'Charlie Parker'

Los Angeles, CA Acclaimed singer, songwriter, and producer Jonathan Wilson today announces details of his new album, Eat the Worm, which will be released Sept. 8 by BMG. The album is available for pre-order now here.  

Following the arrival of first single “Marzipan” in March, the latest track from the upcoming project is the six-minute “Charlie Parker." The song is accompanied by a dazzling video created by Wilson’s wife, artist Andrea Nakhla, using stable diffusion Artificial Intelligence technology.

“‘Charlie Parker’ is one of my favorite songs on Eat the Worm. It’s a fantastical and fictitious flight of fancy and fantasy,” says Wilson of the song, which draws from experiences in Boston in the 1980s, North Carolina in the early 1990s and an early 2000s-era European jazz festival.

“It also touches on the ups and downs of my life over the past decade as a touring musician, and more. It's filled with strings, horns, fuzzy guitars, tubular bells, and a few bebop elements as well, hence the name. In a way, ‘Charlie Parker’ encompasses what the new record is all about: adventure, fidelity and fun. We’ve created another amazingly trippy AI video to accompany it, and I think it captures the mood of the tune perfectly.”

As he did throughout Eat the Worm, Wilson produced and played most of the instruments on “Charlie Parker,” including guitar, piano, drums and keyboards. Jake Blanton (The Killers) handled bass, while the string and horn sections feature venerable musicians such as C.J. Camerieri (Bon Iver), Rita Andrade (Kanye West), Wynton Grant (Miley Cyrus, Hans Zimmer), and Paul Cartwright (Lana Del Rey, Mary J. Blige).

“A lot of this batch of songs is a reaction to the production stuff that I do,” Wilson says of the new album. “I would be in the studio, doing long days with folks, and I’ll have some wild off-the-wall ideas and they’re like, ‘no, no, no, that sounds crazy, JW.’ So I would save them up for my album. I’m finally at a place to feel totally free to take chances and resist the urge to dumb things down. It’s got to be kind of strange.”

To that end, Wilson gave himself plenty of time to let the songs unfold over the course of the last two years. Having his own Fivestar Studios in Topanga Canyon, Ca., also allowed him to devote as much time as he wanted to fine-tuning the tracks. “There are a lot of details to the songs. I felt like this album was also time for me to expand my sound, so there are way more strings and horns than I’ve ever done before,” he says. “I wanted to apply some of the sonic palette of some of the productions I’ve worked on to my own s. There's a lot of experimentation, and almost none of the songs started as me with a guitar. I really wanted something that sounded fresh and new.”

Wilson, a North Carolina native, moved to Los Angeles 15 years ago and became an integral part of the music community as a respected artist and producer. It was there he recorded and played most of the instruments on his celebrated albums Gentle Spirit (2011), Fanfare (2013), and Rare Birds (2018).

Just prior to the pandemic, the multi-talented artist went to Nashville to record at Cowboy Jack Clement’s legendary Sound Emporium Studio for what would become Dixie Blur (2020), a collection of songs that harkened back to his Southern roots, both musically and personally. Dixie Blur found Wilson reaching back to the musical foundation of his upbringing while simultaneously moving forward by infusing the music with modern textures and aesthetic soundscapes.

Having joined Roger Waters' touring band as a guitarist and vocalist on his epic 2017-18 US + THEM tour, Wilson continues in the same role on the current This Is Not a Drill tour. When not touring with Waters, Wilson has produced albums for Father John Misty, Margo Price, Billy Strings, Conor Oberst, Roy Harper, Dawes and Angel Olsen, to name a few.

Photo Credit: Andrea Nakhla

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