Jonathan Rundman
Minneapolis, Minnesota7 reviews across 5 releases
Jonathan Rundman is a singer-songwriter from Ishpeming, Michigan, who began writing and performing at eighteen before establishing himself as a Chicago-based independent artist. His music joins Midwestern folk-rock with homespun pop, Lutheran hymnody, and a dry sense of humor. On the 1997 Recital, he played most of the instruments himself, building straightforward songs around guitars, mandolin, melodica, and homemade keyboard parts. The writing moved from marriage and friendship to cassette culture, small-town life, and the Sand Creek Massacre. Field Recordings preserved the loose, social side of his work through performances recorded between 1995 and 2000, while Tennesota placed his voice beside Beki Hemingway's in an acoustic Americana setting. Rundman's songs could be devotional, comic, or oddly specific without changing their conversational scale.
In 2000, Rundman released Sound Theology, a 52-song project organized around the Lutheran liturgical year. He later relocated to Minnesota, while Hemingway and her husband, guitarist Randy Kerkman, moved to Nashville; the distance led to the exchanged recordings that became Tennesota. Rundman then spent several years working in Finnish and Nordic folk music with Kaivama and developing a liturgical song cycle, while also raising a family. He returned to solo pop songwriting with Look Up in 2015 and has toured and recorded with The Silos since 2014. In 2022 he graduated from Luther Seminary and became Pastor of Worship and Music at Shepherd of the Lake Lutheran Church in Prior Lake, Minnesota. He released Waves in 2025.
5 releases reviewed
Recital
Field Recordings
Present
Public Library
