Lonnie Holley – Tonky
It’s still early in 2025, but “Seeds”, the opening track from Lonnie Holley’s fifth studio album Tonky, might be one of the most powerful and affecting pieces of music you’ll hear all year. Across its nine minutes, the 75-year-old artist and musician tells the tale of his formative years at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, a juvenile correctional facility that was run in conditions not far off those of a slave plantation. THE APRIL 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT, STARRING LED ZEPPELIN, JASON ISBELL, BRYAN FERRY, MARIANNE FAITHFULL, THE WATERBOYS, DAVID BOWIE, MADDY PRIOR AND MORE, IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW Advertisement Over a minimalist pulse that gently builds in intensity, accruing layers of twinkling synth, strings and choral chants, Holley remembers it all. Picking cotton in the endless rolling fields. The savage beatings that left his bed sheets stained with blood. That feeling of being all alone in the world. The music is as rousing and beautiful as the lyrical content is unconscionable, unbearable. Then, right at the moment the music peaks and slowly begins to fade, Holley pauses to reflect: “Oh I wish that I could rob my memory,” he intones. “I’d be like Midas, and turn… Read More →





















