Hi there!  I’m Jon Chaisson, the author of the Bridgetown Trilogy and creator of the Mendaihu Universe, as well a growing number of standalone novels. I currently live in San Francisco with my wife and two ridiculous cats.

I’ve been actively listening to music since I was a small child; my first musical memory is listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown” on the car radio during a family vacation. I started my music collection in 1978 with The Beatles’ 1967-1970 compilation soon after watching Yellow Submarine on television and seeing Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the theater. My first music collecting obsession was of course the Beatles, and my music library has grown exponentially since then.  I once had about six thousand titles in my collection in varying formats and taking up way too much space in my parents’ basement.  It’s now all in mp3 and FLAC format on a very small external hard drive on my desk.

I was in two different bands:  in high school and college I played keyboards, bass and guitar, and wrote lyrics for The Flying Bohemians.  From 2001 to 2005, I wrote, played bass, guitar, and sang for jeb!.  Neither band ever got past the jamming phase, but I do have the lo-fi tapes we made, and I’d like to think some of those songs are actually pretty good. I’m currently noodling around with solo experiments under the name Drunken Owl. I play bass (my first was a used Arbor Stilleto; I currently own a Fender Squier electric and a Dean acoustic) and guitar (a Gretsch Electromatic, and Taylor Big Baby 6-string), and have been known to noodle around on our cheapo keyboard as well.

My biggest musical influences are Peter Hook, Simon Raymonde, Graham Lewis, John Paul Jones, Simon Gallup, Peter Buck, Daniel Ash, Colin Newman, Johnny Marr, Robert Smith, Martin Gore, Morrissey, Michael Stipe, and of course the Beatles.

Thanks for visiting!