The phenomenon that was – and still is – the Jonas Brothers has been going on for two decades, and the brother triumvirate – Kevin, Nick, and Joe – have been in the limelight for just as long.
In 2005, the trio recorded their first song, Please Be Mine, which caught the attention of the Columbia Records president at the time. Tours with artists the likes of Kelly Clarkson and the Backstreet Boys followed, with the teen band going from strength to strength and quickly becoming Disney Channel staples.
Since reuniting in 2019, the band has managed to recapture the mid-aughts nostalgia, while, naturally, leveling up their chops.
“I taught myself guitar early,” guitarist and singer Kevin Jonas tells Guitar World, as he looks back on his band's journey. “I was home-sick from school one day when I was 13 or 14, and we had a red knock-off electric guitar in the house and a ‘teach yourself guitar’ book in our piano bench.
“I just looked at it and was like, ‘You know what? Maybe I’ll play guitar,’ because I was already fooling around with the bass at that point.”
As Jonas relates, opening up that book just “changed everything for me.” His dad quickly noticed his son’s passion and graft, and Jonas graduated to what he calls his “first real guitar”.
“He bought me a Takamine that had the tuner included. I loved that guitar, and I learned to play everything on it. We wrote our first song as Jonas Brothers, Please Be Mine, on that guitar. And because of that guitar, I got into players like John Mayer. I was obsessed with his album Room for Squares.”
He's since graduated to Gibson acoustic, Les Pauls, and a custom Baranik – but Jonas credits the humble Takamine for his songwriting chops, and well, his career.
“It really spoke to me from a songwriting perspective,” he concludes.
For more from Nick Jonas, plus new interviews with Marcus King and Lenny Kravitz, pick up issue 600 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.
