Folk rock singer-songwriter Jonatha Brooke is the next special guest for The Flagpole Radio Café on Saturday, May 10. The event will be held at Edmond Town Hall, 45 Main Street. Doors open at 6 pm, with the show starting at 7.

Flagpole Radio Café is a live variety show presented up to six times a year at Edmond Town Hall. It blends live music, comedy sketches, and other performances.

Over the years, Brooke’s relationship with music has only grown and deepened. Brooke said she never expected to be doing what she does now back when she started. Her early career saw Brooke juggling being a dancer and songwriter with playing the guitar and being a singer.

“Then when I got a record deal, that kind of made the decision for me,” Brook explained.

After that, Brook went on the road and started making records. She started in the early 90s as one-half of the folk rock duo The Story before later flourishing as a solo artist. Brooke has not only gone on to release numerous albums under her own name, she has also co-written and produced songs for Katy Perry, Jessica Simpson, and the Court Yard Hounds (a side project of The Chicks members Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer).

Brooke told The Newtown Bee that she is now working on three musicals simultaneously, which has been a big surprise for her. Venturing into these other avenues of music and performance, she said, has been an amazing broadening of her musical skills and even for vocabulary.

Within the last 10-15 years, Brooke said she’s been on a sudden foray into musical theater. In 2014, she wrote, produced, and starred in her own one-woman show, My Mother Has 4 Noses, which ran off-Broadway to rave reviews and was critics’ pick in New York and theater press, including The New York Times and Time Out.

Beyond her solo career, Brooke uses her experience with songwriting and recording to offer Master Classes online and in person. She has also written for Disney films and TV shows.

Brooke also received a McKnight Artist Fellowship Grant in 2018 and won the 2019 International Acoustic Music Award for Best Female Artist for her song “Put the Gun Down,” later being crowned the competition’s overall grand prize winner.

A self-taught musician for most of her life, Brooke said she had to relearn “how to speak the language to other musicians.” She thrust herself into making charts for people and writing down music the traditional way. Nevertheless, she loves the journey her career has taken her on.

“It’s just been really incredible,” Brooke said. “I love that I’ve not repeated myself. I’ve been trying to do something different each time. I’m always out doing a new thing.”

Brooke said it is exciting to share with people that she is self-taught because she doesn’t necessarily see it as a limitation. If people are squeamish or scared to attend a songwriting event because they don’t play an instrument or read music, Brooke tells them “it doesn’t matter.”

This is because “the very thing that you think is your limitation could be your superpower.”

Brooke added, “That could be the very thing that makes you incredibly unique, that I will just be drawn to, because you might not have taken singing lessons and so you have a really interesting, cool voice.”

Since Brooke never learned how to play the guitar, she said she just made things up as she went. From making up her own tuning to making up her own way of playing, Brooke said that was how she found her signature sound.

The Beauty Of Live Performance

As for how her upcoming Flagpole Radio Café show came about, Brooke said Edmond Town Hall staff reached out to her booking agency and she loves the multi-media approach of the show.

What has kept Brooke performing after all of these years, she said, is the energy of live performance. To Brooke, there is nothing more magical “than music in a room, live, with people listening and responding in real time.

“It’s a conversation. It’s a connection. It’s a really sacred thing, and there’s nothing that compares to that electricity,” she said.

Part of what makes live performance special to Brooke is that it’s never the same twice. She described the process as “still so addictive” to her. Songs Brooke has been singing for 30 years still have a newness to them because she finds a different way to sing it or play it each night.

“It’s just an incredible part of my life,” Brooke said. “I can’t quit it, as much as traveling and the logistics of it all is grueling ... singing songs in a room for people ... it makes me feel like I’m the luckiest girl in the world.”

Tickets for Flagpole Radio Cafe are $45. They can be purchased at flagpoleproductions.org.

Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.