For those unaware, folksinger Michael Johnathon completed his 20th studio album, Garden of Silence, due out March 24th, 2023 via PoetMan Records USA.

Johnathon composed ten of the eleven songs, produced and arranged all the music using his Martin guitar, his long neck banjo, textured string quartets, Gazebo horn sections, piano and more.

Garden of Silence starts with a song about the day Vincent van Gogh passed away and concludes with a tribute to folksingers everywhere. On the journey between those two musical bookends are songs about Henry David Thoreau (Winter Song), the spirit of the front porch (Front Porch Symphony), Narcissism (Narcissistic Blues), dancing with your lover (September Eve), a tribute to Johnathon’s musical hero Pete Seeger(Seeger Mashup), and the banjo-driven instrumental about the fragrant scent of earth following a rain fall (Petrichor).

1. Garden of Silence (3:06)
2. Hurricane (3:24)
3. September Eve (1:50)
4. Prodigal Son (2:34)
5. Front Porch Symphony (3:09)
6. Winter Song (2:48)
7. Petrichor (2:55)
8. Narcissistic Blues (2:27)
9. The Farewell (3:01)
10. Seeger Mashup (3:23)
11. FolkSinger (2:52)

This delicately humanized, wholeheartedly-organic new recording opens on the astonishing beauty of the titular Garden of Silence and the slightly more concrete Hurricane, before we are brought forth the short, but sweetly embellished September Eve, the free flowing gossamer of Prodigal Son, and then come the foot-taping folk of Front Porch Symphony and the luxuriously textured Winter Song.

Along next comes the atmospherically-charged, rain falling, lightning crashing, banjo-led instrumental Petrichor (which is the pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather) and that is in turned followed by the harmonious folk-rock of Narcissistic Blues, the impassioned storytelling within The Farewell, the album rounding out with the soulful musings of Seeger Mashup, closing on the ornately sculptured FolkSinger.

Never before in the history of the world has the need to revisit the meaning and spirit of the front porch been so needed, and to me that’s what this album is, Jonathan says. Garden of Silence is a deep dive into the music and art, the peace and power, the life and emotions of America’s front porch.

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