Jon Brooks was originally a Hammond organ player and leader of The Norge Union in the Toronto area. In 1993, The Norge Union recorded ‘Bulldozer’ and shared the stage with The Pariahs, The Phantoms, Days Of You, The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, and The Headstones, which led to Brooks playing organ on The Headstones first album.
When The Norge Union disbanded in 1995, Brooks moved to Krakow, Poland. Brooks travelled and played solo shows throughout Poland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, and Belarus. In 1996, he hitchhiked throughout Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina the former Yugoslavia recently devastated by civil wars and ethnic cleansing. The experience inspired 1997s The Latest Great Embarrassment, recorded in Strumiani, Poland with producer, Jurek Piastowski, a well-known name in the esteemed Polish jazz scene. The independent EP garnered critical plaudits and Brooks continued to establish himself as a subtle writer of literate story songs with a social conscience.
At the end of 2005 Brooks released his first CD, ‘No Mean City’, produced by New Zealand native and Irish music multi-instrumentalist, Pat Simmonds. ‘No Mean City’ bears full witness and indictment to what Brooks saw as the modern urban disaster as seen through Toronto’s example.
On May 3, 2007, Brooks released ‘Ours And The Shepherds’, a collection of songs examining Canadas war experience. From WWI with a new musical translation of In Flanders Fields, Brooks moves through the 20th century up to the recent peacekeeping missions of Kigali; Rwanda; Bosnia; Somalia; and Kabul, Afghanistan to advance the prophetic vision of Ours And The Shepherds. The CD’s title is taken from a Dorothy Day quote: “Whose fault is it? Ours and the shepherds.”
Brooks is also a published essayist. His contribution of ‘Two Story Town’ to ‘Barry Callaghan – Essays on His Works’, was released on July 14, 2007 with the likes of Margaret Atwood, William Kennedy, Patrick Lane, Joyce Carol Oates, Noah Richler and others.
Brooks will be recording his next cd, ‘Moth Nor Rust’, at the end of 2007.