A one-line drawing is when you start drawing
and don't pick up the pencil 'til you're done.
onelinedrawing (spelled with a lowercase "o") is the current project of musician/singer-songwriter Jonah Matranga. onelinedrawing's music ranges quite a bit, but is generally described as emo. The general feel tend to be rather light, and songs feature Jonah singing and playing guitar, with occasional contributions by others, including a toy R2-D2 that plays the drums. (Yes, it actually has a tape player hidden inside it. It's still cool.) onelinedrawing tends to be on the slow, calm side of the modern rock spectrum, but this is not a rule. As Jonah said at a show I saw, "I like to take loud songs and make 'em quiet and quiet songs and make 'em loud."
Jonah began recording and performing as onelinedrawing in 1998, following the breakup of the band Far, in which he sang. He has released six CDs as onelinedrawing, of which two, Visitor and The Volunteers, are album-length, as well as splits with Sense Field and Rival Schools. Jonah has also been involved in one other project in the last few years: He and three others released the CD Thriller as New End Original in 2001. They toured for some time after this release, but it appears that New End Original has since fallen apart. In response to a recent question on his message board about whether he wrote all of the songs on Thriller, Jonah wrote that "all the New End songs are onelinedrawing songs, in that I wrote them long before the record was made. Really, it should have just been a onelinedrawing record, but I'm a freak. All these songs…."
onelinedrawing tours frequently. Jonah is an absolutely amazing musician to see live, in part because of his boundless enthusiasm for performance and emotion on stage. He also has a sense of humor that might be described as wacky; at a recent show that I saw, at which he was playing with a band, he announced that he has been working on creating a new boy band, The Aksh'n Pak, and was going to play us one of the songs. He assigned a new name and personality to each member of the band, and they played an intentionally bad but catchy pop song entitled "I Can't Resist (Messin' With My Baby)."
Jonah has a website at jonahmatranga.com at which one can listen to some of his music.
Releases
- Sketchy e.p. #1, OLD Records/Crank!, 1999
- Sketchy e.p. #2, OLD Records/C.I. Records, 2000
- Always New: Jan - Jun 00, OLD Records/C.I. Records
- Always New: Jul - Dec 00, OLD Records/Goldenseal
- Visitor, Jade Tree, 2002 (on CD and colored vinyl)
- The Volunteers, Jade Tree, 2004