Jon McLurg

Jon McLurg is a singer-songwriter based in Kingston, Ontario. Jon has been a staple of the local folk music scene for more than 15 years as a solo performer and member of Turpin’s Trail, Crooked Wood, and The Goodnight Irenes. He has recorded four solo albums of original material, including his most recent album, North Star, released in 2020.

An accomplished and prolific songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, this quietly confident artist was noticed on the international scene in 2010 when he was chosen as one of only 10 performers for the songwriter showcase at The New Jersey Folk Festival. That same year, he also won won American Songwriter Magazine's lyric contest in their July/August 2010 issue with Someone Thinks of You from The Auctioneer.

"Jon McLurg has a very gentle, soft, and delicate voice, almost whispery, and the music surrounding him plays to that, never hurrying even when a tad up tempo, forever attentive to fading snapshots from the old days."
~ Mark S. Tucker, Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange

Jon is also a masterful interpreter of song, with a dizzying mental catalogue of 100s of cover songs spanning traditional and contemporary folk, classic country, bluegrass, Celtic and much more. A Jon McLurg performance can touch on dozens of legendary songwriters such as Townes van Zandt, Elizabeth Cotten, Woody Guthrie, Carter Family, Lead Belly, Mississippi John Hurt, John Prine, and Hank Williams, along with songs and melodies from time immemorial.

As one of southeastern Ontario’s busiest performers, Jon McLurg has opened for Fred Eaglesmith, Tom Wilson (Junkhouse, Blackie & The Rodeo Kings), and David Francey. He’s also collaborated with J.P. Cormier, award-winning fiddler Jess Wedden, Teilhard Frost (Sheesham & Lotus), and many other area musicians. In the summer of 2022, Jon completed a 7-week tour of the east coast which included 36 shows in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.