A Portland Songwriter Finds A Way Back Through Pandemic-Era Divisions
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Jojo Gold returns to original songwriting after six years with Parachutes
, a single shaped by the divisions of the pandemic. The Portland-based artist draws on the fault lines that ran through workplaces, friendships and family circles when ordinary conversations became difficult ground. It gives the return a particular emotional weight: this is a song about finding strength while the struggle is still close enough to feel.
The track’s folk roots sit within a wider field of influences. Gold cites The Lumineers, The Head and the Heart and Caamp alongside Foo Fighters and Oasis, connecting acoustic intimacy with a more expansive rock sensibility. That is fertile territory for a song concerned with distance and connection. The private scale of a folk confession can hold a shared experience, allowing the personal hurt behind Parachutes
to reach beyond the circumstances that first prompted it.
The story behind the track keeps the scale personal. Familiar rooms and relationships could suddenly feel less secure, leaving people to find their way back to conversations they once took for granted. Parachutes
keeps its focus on that effort to find steadier ground. Its central idea leaves space for hope without requiring the difficult part of the story to disappear. There is something quietly affecting about returning to songwriting with that question still open.
Gold points to the bridge’s build back into the chorus as a defining moment. It gives the song’s emotional movement a structural focus, gathering momentum before returning to familiar ground. That sense of return also runs through the circumstances of the release. “This is the first song I wrote after a 6 year hiatus”, Gold explains. The statement is simple, but it places Parachutes
at the beginning of a renewed conversation with songwriting.
The recording process was equally direct: acoustic guitar first, with bass and drums added separately. It is a useful detail, keeping the song’s acoustic foundation in view even as the arrangement takes fuller shape. The guitar provided the starting point; the other parts followed. Against a subject as tangled as the divisions between friends and family, that straightforward approach gives the project a clear centre.
Released on March 30, 2026, Parachutes
marks a return with something specific to say. Gold revisits a period of separation through the act of making a new song, carrying its uncertainty into a more hopeful frame. The six-year gap gives the release its backstory, but the effort to find connection gives it a reason to keep travelling. A song about distance becomes a way of reaching out again.
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