The new album, Bridging Divides, is available now! Click here to stream or email office@billyjonas.com to order a copy! 11 songs to help mend rifts within ourselves, our families, our communities, and the world.

Behind the Song "Open All the Doors and Windows"

Bridging Divides is a full-spectrum musical exploration of the voyage from personal to collective healing, and back again. From tender ballads to robustly percussion-driven paeans to the human experience, they are spirit-centered and philosophically rich songs to live by.

Audio: "Touch and Go"

The album is an acoustic apothecary -- tuneful tonics and sonic salves, medicinal melodies with hum-eopathic harmonies. There’s a presumption in these songs: bridging divides requires starting within. The guidance for this endeavor, and the impetus for the album, both came from a Chinese proverb:

The songs on Bridging Divides include:

1. “Open All the Doors and Windows” – an anthem of self-optimization, metaphorically imagining one’s eyes/ears/mind/heart as the doors and windows of a house – which requires life-long maintenance to balance curiosity with clarity, openness with boundaries, and self-sufficiency with interdependence.
2. “Laila Rose” – in honor of Billy’s daughter, and an homage to both the playfulness of childhood, and the second chance for parents.
3. “Touch and Go” – reorienting the colloquial phrase, to imply that life in community is a relay race, from generation to generation.
4. “Scavenger Hunt” – a song to inspire a paradigm shift towards embracing all experiences as vital clues on one’s life journey.
5. “Our Bodies Are the Technology” – back to basics, celebrating the elemental foundation of all our earthly pursuits.
6. “Weather or Not” – a weather forecast that works every day, to help one avoid being derailed by circumstance.
7. “How to Pray” – a bridging divides adventure story, navigating between different ways of engaging the spirit.
8. “To the Light” – explores three different kinds of light, and our relationship with desire.
9. “In the Beginning - Part I” – and...
10. “In the Beginning - Part II” – an invitation to view every creation story as your own creation story – whether it’s through blurry eyes at your birth, teary eyes looking at election results, or wide eyes considering the world’s inception.
11. “The Guest House” – words by the 12th century poet Rumi, music by Billy, encouraging gratitude for every emotion, “...because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

Behind the Song "Laila Rose"