“I Was an Anxious Mess”: Kevin Jonas Reveals The Truth Behind His First Solo Performance And Why Now Was Finally The Right Time

Kevin Jonas has taken a few steps into the next phase of his career and has started to open up about what prompted him to release music under his own name for the first time. In a new interview, he detailed the pressure he felt in the run up to his debut solo performance at Fenway Park. The historic moment was seen by fans as a watershed moment, but Jonas said the day leading up to it was “terrible”. He found himself pacing in his hotel room, getting increasingly anxious, and phoning his therapist multiple times. It was a moment he had avoided for many years, and when it came, it put him face to face with the doubts that he had been trying to suppress for much of his career.

Jonas had spent the better part of two decades on stage with his brothers, but had never taken the lead vocal spot. He’s said in the past he often held back, wondering if his voice was actually cut out for such a prominent role. Fenway put that feeling to the test. As he stepped out onto the stage, Jonas said he was a ball of nerves and adrenaline, and in fact recalled little of the performance itself because he was so focused on getting through the song. He only had any real sense of the significance of the moment when he saw his wife Danielle’s reaction, and how proud she was to be witnessing it with him.

The road to that moment started months earlier when Jonas messaged songwriter and producer Jason Evigan in search of a song that might feel like it was made for him. He went a long time without a reply, but eventually Evigan texted him with news that he’d found a track he thought Jonas should hear. He listened, and knew right away that it was the right song. Jonas flew out to Los Angeles to record vocals for the track and walked out of the studio knowing that it was time to release something on his own.

It took him years to feel that clarity. Following the Jonas Brothers’ first split, Jonas went through a period of depression and a sense of having to figure out who he was when not performing with the band that had been his main outlet since he was a teenager. Returning to the band helped him get some sense of balance back in his life, but he said therapy he underwent in the aftermath of their most recent tour recalibrated him both emotionally and creatively, helping him to see that he needed time to reset and be present at home and to reevaluate what he wanted for himself as an individual rather than as part of the Jonas Brothers’ never-ending touring cycle.

He is quick to say that this upcoming solo project is not an attempt to reinvent himself. This is just the next step now that he has reached a point where he is ready to take it. Fenway proved to him he could handle the pressure of taking that step, and the new song he recorded proved to him that he was finally ready to make a choice that he had avoided for so long. Jonas has since recorded more material, and he approaches this moment not as a break from the Jonas Brothers but simply as the right time to finally pursue something of his own.