An interview with producer,
composer, and bassist Jon Evans
By Patrick Flanary
PhotoGRAPHY by Joe Navas/Organic Photography
Until Jon Evans returned to Cape Cod after 20 years in California, he’d mostly worked in windowless recording studios.
But at Brick Hill, the Grammy-nominated producer’s private workspace in Orleans, there’s plenty of woodsy scenery to inspire a day’s work. Tall windows frame pristine views of falling snow or autumn leaves and even the occasional coyote milling around the pond.
Chances are good that a singer-songwriter you’ve seen around the Cape has come through Brick Hill at some point to record. And while Evans, 55, is praised for his deft touch behind the console, he’s also an in-demand bass player who has collaborated with an endless roster of internationally successful artists, including Linda Perry, Sarah McLachlan, Chris Cornell, and Tori Amos.
“People talk about how everybody tenses up in studios when the recording light goes on. But I like to think this is a space that feels welcoming and gives people room to stretch and just create.”
— Jon Evans
Evans got his start early—he was only five when he first picked up the bass guitar. It belonged to his dad, a Yarmouth grocer and butcher who often jammed with his band in the family basement.
Those surroundings inspired the boy to pursue music relentlessly, an ambition that eventually equipped him to perform around the world. (More on that later.) Evans opened his Cape Cod home studio after moving back from the San Francisco Bay Area in 2012.
“People talk about how everybody tenses up in studios when the recording light goes on,” Evans says. “But I like to think this is a space that feels welcoming and gives people room to stretch and just create.”
Garrett Dutton, the bestselling musician known as G. Love, lives nearby and has recorded three Christmas albums with his close friend.
“It’s really important when you’re working with people to trust them,” says G. Love. “Jon truly loves what he does, and he’s a wizard in the studio.”
Going to California
For most kids, the bass guitar is a heavy lift. But Evans remembers how “it instantly made sense” as he played along with the radio in the early ’70s. Records by the Beatles, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, and Elvis were in heavy rotation at his house.
And he couldn’t get enough: Evans later took up the saxophone and piano, and in high school played trombone in the Dennis-Yarmouth marching band. By the time he graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1991, the bass was his world. He left Massachusetts for the first time and headed for California.
But he had to cover the Bay Area rent, which wasn’t exactly peanuts, even decades ahead of the tech boom. Evans found work with a moving company, and for a while was pulling 50 hours a week on top of nightly gigs. Live music was thriving, and he couldn’t wait to quit his day job. It took a few years before he could.
“That freed me up to become a full-time musician,” he says. “And that was a real turning point for me. As scary as that was, it was the best move I ever made—to have faith that I could do it on music alone.”
The leap paid off. Small club shows gradually landed Evans in front of much bigger audiences. His first break was backing Linda Perry, a solo artist known for her past work with 4 Non Blondes. The tour transported Evans to Europe, where Perry’s band opened for The Who. That momentum led him to an audition with Tori Amos, who is still a close friend and collaborator over 25 years later. (They last toured together in 2023.)
“We have developed our own language and shortcuts,” describes Amos of working with Jon. “On this latest tour, we had so much fun taking the catalog to places I never knew existed.”
“Working with Jon, we have developed our own language and shortcuts. On this latest tour, we had so much fun taking the catalog to places I never knew existed.”
– Tori Amos
Coming Home to Cape Cod
Somewhere amid all this West Coast excitement, Evans met and married Alison Supple, also from Massachusetts. She joined her husband on tour and spent months researching skincare in Europe and the U.K. The venture led to opening a business in the Bay Area—and another on Cape Cod when the couple decided to relocate closer to family.
“We lived for a long time with one foot here and one foot there,” admits Evans. “And I think that both of us just wanted a change.”
That change yielded fresh opportunities with his writing partner, Matthias Bossi, who also moved back to Cape Cod after a stint in California. Under the moniker Ridiculon, Evans and Bossi compose music for video games; as Stellwagen Symphonette, they create music for NPR programs.
For Evans, Brick Hill represents the realization of a lifelong dream and the chance to help musicians fulfill their own.
“It’s never about you,” he says. “It’s about the music and all the people who come together to make it what it is.”
@jonevansmusic