Jonas Friddle is a Chicago-based singer, songwriter, arranger, and banjo player; he also plays guitar, fiddle, mandolin, and several other instruments. His compositions have won awards, including "Belle De Louisville," which won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest award for Song of the Year for 2012. Friddle says he composed the song on the banjo which helps give it its rolling feel, appropriate for a song about a steamboat. Then in 2014, his song "Man Was Made To Fly" from the 2013 album, Use Your Voice, won the "Folk" category in the Great American Song Contest. That album was also nominated as Album of the Year for the Independent Music Awards. His original songs have been described as "a mixture of rock and old-time, New Orleans trad and bluegrass, country and blues."