Jam Space Confidential with Jonathan Personne

Inside the Montreal songwriter's creative space where fashion and music collide - with our friends at Brixton.

by Stephan Boissonneault

Photos by Loïcia Samson

Published on March 14, 2025

Being a Montreal musician comes with its own set of challenges, but there are none quite as relentless as the city’s brutal winter. Hauling gear through unshoveled sidewalks, braving icy roads to make it to gigs, praying your hands stay dry and warm enough to play—the snow becomes an unavoidable part of the experience. Jonathan Robert, who goes by the stage name Jonathan Personne, knows this. It’s why he has outfitted his newest jam space in the Old Rosemont neighbourhood into a warm, creative refuge, a space where he can unwind and make his art. During this current record-breaking snowstorm, though, nature had other plans and has left a bowling ball-sized hole in the top of the ceiling.

“It’s just kind of the reality in Montreal,” Personne says, pointing to the constant drip from the ceiling as he slouches back on a rickety piano bench. “These buildings are old, but as long as I stay dry, it’s okay.”

Being the guitarist/vocalist of the well-known indie psych rock project, Corridor, Personne has been making music for quite some time and whether it’s touring with the band or writing for his solo project, he is always on the move. His upcoming solo album, Nouveau Monde, was recorded in four different places: his friend’s basement and three different studios. “I like to hop around, especially with this one.”

He doesn’t need much to feel creative, just his Road Worn, dark brown 1997 Fender Telecaster Deluxe. “Yeah, I need to have my own items,” he says. “I’ve had this guitar on many tours with Corridor and I’ve dropped it a few times, but it still sounds good.” He confesses that even after Corridor received a brand-new Telecaster directly from a Fender sponsorship, he liked the sounds from his beat-up Tele more.

Personne also needs warm, ambient, lighting in his jam space. “The lighting definitely has something to do with it,” he says. “It sets the mood and I have a big bright window near the entrance that I can look out of when it all becomes too much.”

In contrast to the usual, constant frenetic indie psych of Corridor, Personne’s solo project has always had a sense of whimsicality, a childlike kind of wonder if you will. “La Vie, la Mort,” the opener of Nouveau Monde, plays like the theme song to an unwritten Sunday morning cartoon. Think Spider-Man: The Animated Series from the ‘90s.

“There’s always a cartoon influence on everything,” Personne says, scratching his head. “I don’t know why, but I’ll be sitting with my guitar or by a keyboard, and a random theme song from an old anime cartoon I watched as a kid pops into my head.”

Personne has never released anything quite like Nouveau Monde before. There are bits of psych, indie rock, ambient rock, and some noise; it’s a culmination of all the different sounds that make Jonathan Personne who he is. “You know when you make a recipe with what’s left in the fridge?” he asks. “That’s what I did and the goal was to do something great with it.”