Jon Gomm - cancelled

I have been struggling with my voice recently. I thought I had a recurring sore throat, for months. I figured it was tonsillitis or maybe even covid. Then it got bad pretty much all the time, and so I went to get it checked and it turns out it’s “LPR”, or Silent Reflux, which I hadn’t heard of before, but it seems to be a common singers’ curse. 

Struck down. 

I am heartbroken to say that the socially distanced UK gigs in May are not gonna be able to happen. After rearranging them 3 times, all the build up and then disappointment over and again, now to not be able to do them for a reason totally unrelated to the pandemic, is kind of a blow. 

I can’t tell you what it’s been like not to be able to sing my songs the past few months. I feel like the story of who I am, the story I tell myself and the world, has been silenced. 

The good news is that I finished filming a bunch more videos of songs from the new album before all this, so I’ll be releasing the next one soon. 

I have an endoscopy in a couple of weeks. Can’t wait to see my insides. I wonder if there’s anyone hiding in there, as I’ve always suspected. 

I’ve had blood tests which are all healthy and glistening, and tried eliminating various foods from my diet, but it seems I am, just as I strive to be in life, tolerant of all things. So now I’m on a low acid diet and doing this neuromuscular training thing and between all that and whatever the endoscopy shows up (probably that everything I have ever eaten is growing back up until flowers will soon bloom from my mouth) - I am 100% confident that I’ll be better long before the Autumn UK tour. Because I NEED TO PLAY. 

I love everyone. Thanks for reading. 

 

 

 

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Jon Gomm, based in Yorkshire in the UK, is an acoustic singer-songwriter with a revolutionary virtuoso guitar style, where he uses one acoustic guitar to create drum sounds, bass lines and twisting melodies all at the same time. The emphasis is still on the soulful vocals and songwriting, and his original material is influenced by everything from Robert Johnson to Radiohead. 

His live shows combine deeply personal, emotive performances and a natural wit, with a once seen, never forgotten two-handed guitar style, both physical and complex, producing sounds people can barely believe are coming from a humble acoustic guitar. 

Jon first laid his hands on a guitar at the age of two (actually it was a ukulele - his parents couldn’t find a guitar small enough). He wrote his first song at the age of six, and was soon accompanying his father, a music critic, to gigs in his hometown of Blackpool. Touring musicians would often stay at the Gomm household on the understanding Jon would get a guitar lesson, meaning he had one-to-one instruction from such blues legends as BB King and Jack Bruce of Cream. 

Nowadays, Jon tours worldwide. In January 2012 his song Passionflower went viral online, with the video passing 6 million hits, resulting in national TV appearances in the UK, Portugal, Holland, Brazil and Turkey,

Suddenly being catapulted from cult obscurity to mainstream acceptance has been a strange experience for someone so devoted to his craft, and Jon is an unlikely star and remains very much true to his roots in the acoustic circuit of the North of England.  

Jon is a truly and fiercely independent artist, with his own label and no mainstream industry support, but using mostly online social networks for promotion, he has defied the odds with a huge, truly supportive fanbase resulting in headline tours on all 5 continents, from Australia, Canada and Europe to China and South Africa and South America. His debut CD Hypertension has sold over 50,000 copies at the time of writing, and his second CD Don’t Panic sold out within 3 days of appearing on Amazon. His videos are watched tens of thousands of times within minutes of appearing on Youtube.