Hezekiah Jones is playing at the Lost Elephant Brewing Company tonight. The show is sold out, and I’m not at all surprised. I had written this when I got the news and waited to post it until after we bought our tickets. They sold out the same day they went on sale, and for very good reason.

It excites me that they are playing a show in my back yard. Besides being great original music, for me Hezekiah Jones represents a certain magical inter-connectivity. It emphasizes how much my life has changed for the better through music. I met Hezekiah Jones at Philadelphia Folk Festival this past summer, just before I became a fan for life. Being a fan for life is difficult, because looking people up on the internet to see where they are going to be so I can go see them feels a bit unhinged at times.

I had honestly only attended Folk Fest as Paul Wilkinson‘s groupie. Paul is wonderful mentor and a phenomenal musician. I wanted to see him play with his band Mason Porter. I also wanted to see Pocono Jones, AKA Brad Hinton, play in Paul’s other band The Keystone Breakers. At the time, I didn’t know where Brad had gotten the cool nickname. I had only met Brad a few weeks before, when he and Paul opened, as Pocono Jones and the Bear, for Cordelia Blue ‘s record release party at 118 North for their album Limbo. I was kind of stalking Paul’s gig schedule, trying to make all the shows within an hour’s drive. Warren was really familiar with Paul and Brad’s music by this time because I had given him their Pocono Jones and the Bear CD for Christmas. I had bought it at Woodstown Music long before I even met Paul, before I started taking guitar lessons with him or playing at the Bluesday Tuesday jam he hosts at the Woodstown Hotel. I had never even listened to the CD until those other things started to happen. Frankly, I had forgotten about it, busy with what I thought was “real” life. The CD had gotten stuck in Warren’s truck stereo so it was the only music he could listen to for a while. I didn’t know this had happened to Warren. Imagine his surprise when we made the connection at the Limbo show! Now the CD sleeve sits on my mantle so I can see it when I practice, hoping the magic rubs off on me. This is all relevant, I promise. It’s part of the magic.

I really wasn’t at all prepared to come away from Folk Fest a fan for life for four other acts out of Southeastern PA, all kind of tangled together. The frontman of Hezekiah Jones, Raphael Cutrufello, was in like three of them, I think. It’s all kind of a blur. I imagine all of these people must live together in a big fun farmhouse with two kitchens, jamming around a permanent campfire somewhere on the other side of Chester. Seeing them all play at Midnight Mountain Music Show only solidified my head cannon. They must know by now how much of a groupie I am, so I’m not ashamed to profess it to you, the public, here on the internet. Plus, I like to document how I’ve met my heroes. Back to Raph.

So, there I was, sitting alone, front and center in a mostly empty audience for the sound check at the Folk Fest camp stage, like a good little groupie, and Raph sat down next to me and offered me a clementine, which I gladly accepted. One of my favorite people offers me clementines on the regular, so I took it as a good sign. Sound check is one of my favorite parts of a good show. I was in my happy place, and here was another lovely human (and he really is a lovely human) who seemed to share the same happy place. Of course I didn’t know at the time that he was the shining star of a musical constellation called Hezekiah Jones, where every band member gets a cool nickname (see also: Pococno Jones).

Any words I use to describe the prolific and ethereal fever dream that is Hezekiah Jones will not do them any justice, so I will leave that to the professional critics and merely offer a video that I found while stalk…searching for something to share out to you. This video is good intro, because it is part of a documentary series on the creative process: Hezekiah Jones (with Bruce Warren of WXPN) – Pt. 1, Borrowed Heart | Shaking Through. It also explains a little bit about how the tangled web of musicians is integral to this story. About how surrounding yourself with magic allows more magic to happen. People like Raph, Brad, and Paul are conduits for the magic. I am glad to have met them all, and all of their fabulous friends, too.