Onelinedrawing 'Sketchbook'

Jonah Matranga has been making music for more than 30 years, building one of the most distinctive careers in emo, post-hardcore, and independent music. Moving comfortably between the underground and mainstream, Jonah has released music through labels including Jade Tree and Atlantic and fronted Far, New End Original, and Gratitude, while developing his deeply personal solo work as onelinedrawing.

His music has influenced generations of artists, and Jonah was there as bands like Thursday and Dashboard Confessional were beginning to find their audience, bringing them on tour and helping connect different corners of the emerging emo and post-hardcore community. His work has always existed on its own terms: intimate, vulnerable, melodic, and difficult to separate from the scene that grew around it.

That approach is perhaps most clearly expressed through onelinedrawing, where Jonah stripped away the distance between artist and audience. Whether performing in a basement or on a festival stage, the songs retain the same directness and intimacy, often delivered with little more than a guitar and his familiar R2D2 companion.

Sketchbook is a 2xLP archival collection of onelinedrawing recordings from Jonah’s early solo years, 1999–2001. The album brings together original songs, rare recordings, and interpretations of material by 7 Seconds and Jawbox, along with the Sense Field split honoring the late Jon Bunch of Sense Field and Further Seems Forever.

The collection also includes extensive liner notes and a companion zine by Norman Brannon of Texas Is the Reason and New End Original, adding context to an important period in Jonah’s creative life.

Sketchbook works as both a time capsule and a thank-you letter to the people and music that surrounded onelinedrawing from the beginning. It captures the period when Jonah first stepped fully into his solo identity while documenting the intimacy, experimentation, and sense of community that have remained at the heart of his work ever since.

“Onelinedrawing is a diarist at heart... a loose, free-roaming approach to confessional songwriting that pushes his music well beyond the normal sad singer/songwriter clichés.” — Pitchfork