Jem Zornow’s recent album features songs drawn from personal tragedy
By Kastle Waserman
WHEN Jem Zornow was ready to put out an album, it wasn’t posting on social media that sold 175 tickets for his sold-out record release show at the Bug Theatre.
The digital marketing strategy that many of his peers follow, hoping to go “viral,” wasn’t working for him. Instead, he found success through one-on-one connections.
“I printed 300 half-sized business cards with the name of the band, event, and a QR code for tickets. I gave those away to every person I knew and literally walked up to people in my neighborhood and just said, ‘Hey, you should come to this,’” he recalls.
And it worked. While Zornow says before that, he tried going “all in” promoting on Instagram, he realized nothing on social media was sticking for people.
“There’s something about online marketing we just filter out. We scroll past the advertisements. But how often does a person come up to you and say, ‘Hey, this is important to me, would you come?’” Zornow explains.
“People want to support the arts here, but they don’t always know how. So, I thought, I’ll just tell them.”
Zornow, a multi-instrumentalist, classically trained vocalist, and music teacher, came to Denver in 2014 after growing up in New Jersey and living in New York City, which he said was just “too much.”
The slower Colorado pace and quality of life suited him. He also fell in love with the folk and bluegrass music scene, a different sound than what he calls the “basic vanilla singer/songwriter and jazz sounds” he’d been playing on the East Coast.
He was gifted a banjo and started taking lessons at Swallow Hill Music, which opened a world of jam sessions and new, like-minded music friends, eventually turning into a regular group of musicians who’ve been playing together as the Jem Zornow Band over the past year.
The band includes Steph Miller on violin and backup vocals; Paul Woods on upright bass, piano, guitar, and vocals; Sam Malin on flute and drums; and Summers Baker—a well-known Denver musician—on dobro, guitar, and background vocals.
Zornow’s recently released album, “Find a Little Light,” is filled with songs drawn from a deeply personal tragedy.
“I’ve been writing songs since I was in high school, but I never knew what I wanted to say with them,” he recalls. “Then I lost someone very close to me. It was hard. It was drawn out. It just wrecked my mental health.”
Zornow turned to songwriting to process his emotions. What came out were songs about resilience and hope.
“It’s about this recognition that I’ve seen the absolute darkest moment of my life, but I’ve still got this,” he says. “There was a narrative persistence of strength and hope after facing rock bottom.”
He didn’t realize the timing of the album’s release would coincide with a chaotic time in the social-political landscape.
“I wrote this album about your life falling apart. I didn’t write it thinking the actual world would be falling apart,” Zornow says.
“But at live performances, people are coming up to me and saying it absolutely feels like this moment right now.”
Zornow plans to continue writing songs, promoting his band in person, and maintaining an online presence, but mostly he creates music for himself.
“When I sit down, and I write something I’m proud of, I can’t think of anything else that brings me that kind of joy. I think creativity is magic; it really is.”
Learn more at jemzornow.com
