The son of a jazz drummer and a high school math teacher, JON TIVEN was born to play many music's. "There was always Basie and Ellington playing in our house when I was growing up," explains Tiven, "and I was taught to play the piano although I didn't feel the instrument was really my forte. So when I was ten I picked up the saxophone, won all sort of awards, and was well on the way to becoming a jazz soloist. Even doubled on flute." But a freak baseball accident curtailed these plans, as one day Tiven stood as catcher behind the batter. The bat come back and destroyed his embouchere, forever curtailing his plans for woodwind immortality. "I was ready to take on the guitar at this point, and now I had no excuses." At age fifteen, with much theory and practical experience behind him, Jon Tiven decided to teach himself how to play guitar.
This was pivotal, because guitar was an instrument you could play while singing, thereby putting songwriting in the conventional sense within his grasp. He had also started his own magazine, The New Haven Rock Press, and gained a cult audience as a spokesperson for his generation. Major magazines pursued him, and by the time he was sixteen he found himself writing for Rolling Stone, Melody Maker, and Creem. He was learning about the record industry from his acquaintances at record companies and musician friends, most of whom were ten or twenty years older than he. Still, he was most devoted to his instrument, and would soon be making appearances onstage with names he could only dream about.
At age seventeen he started his higher education at Yale, but having grown up in New Haven there was very little of a cultural nature that Yale could offer. "Yale had gone through its counterculture period, and by the time I got there it as 99 percent pre-law/pre-med so I had to get out." He escaped to the bohemian Sarah Lawrence College, and by now he was a considerable musician in his own right, skipping out on classes to jam with the legendary Big Star at Max's Kansas City. Still, Tiven felt he was simply killing time in college, so he dropped out midway through his third year and went to work for Chess Records in New York, occasionally playing session dates for his friend Andrew Loog Oldham on albums by artists such as The Rolling Stones. When Chess shut the doors of its New York office, Tiven moved lock, stock, and barrel to Memphis, Tennessee where he produced the debut album by ex-Big Star/Box Tops lead singer Alex Chilton, played on sessions for Major Lance, and began his first group project, Prix. Taking this work back to New York City after a year of intense sessions, he was able to partner up with punk rock/New Wave entrepreneur Terry Ork, who had already become an underground legend managing Television and starting his own label, Ork Records. Tiven became a staff producer for them, bringing these Memphis recordings to the label roster, but didn't stay long. "I didn't get into music so I could shoot heroin, participate in orgies, and not get paid," Tiven explains, "so I found new partners." Tiven started a new label, but again found his partners were unsuitable. Fortunately he found a partner in Sally Young, who would become his songwriting partner, bass player, and wife.
The two of them formed a band called The Yankees whose album High 'n' Inside was not only a critical favorite but the #1 most added record on rock radio. Tied to a record label that couldn't capitalize on the interest butt which insisted on holding them to their contract, The Yankees floundered for several years, but Tiven eventually disbanded the unit and join The Jim Carroll Band. He played guitar and keyboards on their second album Dry Dreams, for which he wrote the title song, but left to concentrate on songwriting. Several artists who he liked had recorded his songs (Barrence Whitfield & the Davages, Rick Derringer, The Symptoms), and he was placing songs in films through his associations with John Belushi and the comedy team of Franken & Davis, but he needed some mentoring in the songwriting/song plugging department.
Fate smiled upon Tiven in 1985 at an unlikely New Year's Eve party when he ran into Son Covay, who he'd met years earlier at Mercury Records when he was a journalist. Don was just coming off a dry spell when he had given up music saddened by his wife's untimely passing, and Jon Tiven and wife Sally were the fresh faces he needed to reenergize him. Likewise, Don became a rabbi to Tiven, the voice of experience in both the craft of songwriting and the art of the hustle. It wasn't long before the three of them had Huey Lewis & the News singing their song "He Don't Know," and the demos they'd cut had secured Don a new recording deal.
Meanwhile, Tiven was progressing as a writer, landing a song on the debut album by The Jeff Healey Band which sold over two million copies worldwide and got the Tiven name around to a wider audience. Soon he would be producing B.B. King singing four of his songs, and producing a spate of tribute albums to his favorite r&b writers: Don Covay, Curtis Mayfield, Arthur Alexander and Otis Blackwell. Spawning top five singles and winning NAIRD Awards for best r&b/rock album of the year, these albums would bring Jon Tiven to a wider audience, as well as provide him the experience to work with artist such as Iggy Pop, Chrissie Hynde, Robert Plant, Paul Rodgers, Kris Kristofferson, and David Sanborn among others.
In 1996, Jon Tiven was approached by a small label to make his own record with his own group, which he called Jon Tiven's Ego Trip. Although the critics liked the music, the name of the band was not appreciated, so for European releases it was changed to the Jon Tivan Group. Tiven's reputation as a songwriter and producer brought him to the attention of such diverse artists as Donnie Fritts, Graham Parker, David Bowie, and Paxton. But the big move came when one Sunday morning Wilson Pickett called and asked Tiven--from out of the blue---to produce his first album in over a decade.. The resulting album, It's Harder Now, features Pickett backed by the Jon Tiven Group singing eleven songs written by Tiven himself, and was recently nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Traditional R&B (male). It also was voted #1 Blues Album of the Year by Tower/Pulse magazine and received universal acclaim by the press. 1999 also saw forty-five of Jon Tiven's songs recorded and released, an amazing accomplishment with out the benefit of a publisher working the songs!
2000 looks even brighter for Tiven, who has three albums in production in the first half of the year, songs recorded and set for release by B.B. King/Koko Taylor (a duet), Shemekia Copeland/Ruth Brown (a duet), Tinsley Ellis, Son Seals, Billie Ray Martin, and Mason Casey. He has also served as music producer for noted documentarian D.A. Pennebaker's latest film about soul music, Only the Strong Survive due for release later this year. "It's simply amazing what is happening to me," confesses Tiven, "this is the stuff dreams are made of."
Jon Tiven lives in New York City with his eight-year-old daughter Lucy and his wife Sally.