Re: AotW 5/8/11 - Magnolia Electric Co. RIP Jason Molina
Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 10:48 pm
StormandStatic wrote:Don't listen to Let Me Go if you don't want to end up bawling. It's almost unbearably sad for me right now.
Too late.
The place for all things HeAthens
http://www.threedimesdown.com/forum/
http://www.threedimesdown.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2318
StormandStatic wrote:Don't listen to Let Me Go if you don't want to end up bawling. It's almost unbearably sad for me right now.
Musical fulfilment aside, the end of Songs: Ohia coincided with the beginning of the War on Terror / War for Oil. The two days to either side of September 11th 2001, Jason Molina spent with Will Oldham and Alasdair Roberts recording as The Amalgamated Sons of Rest. With its cover image of a whale being harpooned, and rear image of three mourners (who themselves appear un-dead) standing over the glass coffin of a princess, the album invokes the peaks of 19th century American literature: Melville’s Moby Dick and the stories of Edgar Allen Poe (perhaps 'Ulalume' or maybe 'Berenice'). Clearly they felt it was too early to respond any other way than by Doing What We Do Everyday and Fuck the Terrorists! – like so many American citizens and artists at the time; Oldham’s second song (credited to Owen Hand) manages to be sad and sperm-drenched all at once (yes, the narrator is a whaler’s wife), while Molina gives a solo-version of the Didn’t It Rain-sound on 'Jennie Blackbird’s Blues', and then all three join in for a gleeful chant on the flipside. Whether Molina felt the weight of American cultural history on his shoulders – that he, and Oldham, and Roberts were part of a sacred lineage, being the foremost folk singers of the day – it would soon become apparent that he felt the weight of America’s neo-imperialist legacy. The sleevenotes to Magnolia Electric Co. (2003) – the last album under the Songs: Ohia imprimatur – make it clear to everyone what they’re talking about, but can’t bring themselves to actually name the victims or the perpetrators: "...it’s a dark time..."
Discreetly, the lyrics of Magnolia Electric Co. don’t seem to be about geo-politics at all. There’s no condemnation of Neo-Conservative war-mongering, nor Islamic extremists; there isn’t any symbolic attempt at reconciliation as there had been on Bruce Springsteen’s contemporaneous The Rising (2002), with its foray into Arabic muezzin singing. Instead, Molina turns to Jesus – not for hope, or moral authority – but because in trying to imagine Him, to put a human face on ‘Heaven’ (as he phrases it), the high price and high responsibility for the individual in these times can be established. This mythic sensibility isn’t a flight from history though (as High Modernist re-appropriations of myth between the world wars have sometimes been theorized), but a re-engagement with society. Just who are you betraying when you betray your brother... and whose example are you following when you help him? It makes more sense to discuss the album’s straight-up country-rock with the Magnolia Electric Co. records [COMING SOON], but slip in that closing track 'Hold on Magnolia' was yet another surprise when you thought Molina had written the song that could never be bettered.
Hold on Magnolia to that great highway moon / No one has to be that strong / But if you’re stubborn like me / I know what you’re trying to be / Hold on Magnolia I hear that station bell ring / You might be holding the last light I see / Before the dark finally gets a hold of me / Hold on Magnolia, I know what a true friend you've been / In my life I have had my doubts / But tonight I think I’ve worked it out with all of them / Hold on Magnolia to the thunder and the rain / To the lightning that has just signed my name / to the bottom line / Hold on Magnolia, I hear that lonesome whistle whi--ne / Hold on Magnolia I think its almost time"
RIP Jason Molina- For the Miner
By Samantha Crain
I found The Lioness in a bargin bin at Size Records in Oklahoma City when I was 17. The cover looked weird. Purple sky, palm trees. No lion. I had to get back to Shawnee and I had to pee so I grabbed it and payed the man 5 bucks. Back then, in high school, before being a touring musician that writes records had even entered my brain, I was a music loving kid with a cool car (cherry red 1967 Ford Mustang), not many friends, and a penchant for driving around--just driving around Pottowatomie and Lincoln county with no destination, burning gas and time. I got going on Interstate 40 and once I was clear of Midwest City, past the air force base, I popped the CD in my cheap blue neon glowing after market CD player in car. It was dawn, my speakers were loud, and then, I hear it. The heavy sparse chords of "The Black Crow" rang through me, filling all the dark air in the cab of the car. Then his voice, this Jason Molina guy, yelps out, sounding like he is lying on the concrete outside a gas station at night, bleeding out of a wound. For 7 minutes, this song terrified and comforted me and, ever since then, I've been buying Jason Molina albums, Songs: Ohia albums, and Magnolia Electric Co. records. And when I started writing songs, I began speaking to Jason through an imaginary comradery, replying to him in my own music. He has been the single most influential musician to me and I am overwhelmed with saddness at his passing. I had felt something additional in the past year while listening to his records, something different and eerie. It felt like I was hearing the music of a ghost and so, last year, I wrote "For the Miner" pleading with him "don't go now". Perhaps I expected too much of him. I even feel guilty in a strange way. I loved his music, his pleading voice, his jangly guitar, his winced face, and most of all his candor. I am, in a huge way, a musician because I wanted to connect with him in his own language. I will miss you Jason Molina.
-Samantha
(The picture of Jason was taken by my friend, John Vanderslice)
Jason is the cornerstone of Secretly Canadian. Without him there would be no us – plain and simple. His singular, stirring body of work is the foundation upon which all else has been constructed. After hearing and falling in love with the mysterious voice on his debut single “Soul” in early 1996, we approached him about releasing a single on our newly formed label. For some reason he said yes
It's important to note that Autumn Bird Songs is not new material. Jason Molina made these recordings of just himself and an acoustic guitar several years ago, before he abruptly canceled a tour with Will Johnson, before he shuffled between hospitals and rehab centers, before his health problems led to dire financial problems (like many musicians, he had no insurance), and before he started working on a farm in West Virginia raising sheep and chickens. Anyone who approaches the material looking for insight into his condition may end up reading too much into the lyrics and possibly missing the point of this modest release.
StevieRay wrote:
Also, there was a Molina solo record released just s few months back which had been presciently entitled Autumn Bird Songs. Pitchfork's review explains this release is actually stuff he recorded before he became to sick too work:It's important to note that Autumn Bird Songs is not new material. Jason Molina made these recordings of just himself and an acoustic guitar several years ago, before he abruptly canceled a tour with Will Johnson, before he shuffled between hospitals and rehab centers, before his health problems led to dire financial problems (like many musicians, he had no insurance), and before he started working on a farm in West Virginia raising sheep and chickens. Anyone who approaches the material looking for insight into his condition may end up reading too much into the lyrics and possibly missing the point of this modest release.
dime in the gutter wrote:stumbled across this primer for molina works.
http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4132494
not sure i am smart enough to understand what author dude is saying, but it is fascinating.Musical fulfilment aside, the end of Songs: Ohia coincided with the beginning of the War on Terror / War for Oil. The two days to either side of September 11th 2001, Jason Molina spent with Will Oldham and Alasdair Roberts recording as The Amalgamated Sons of Rest. With its cover image of a whale being harpooned, and rear image of three mourners (who themselves appear un-dead) standing over the glass coffin of a princess, the album invokes the peaks of 19th century American literature: Melville’s Moby Dick and the stories of Edgar Allen Poe (perhaps 'Ulalume' or maybe 'Berenice'). Clearly they felt it was too early to respond any other way than by Doing What We Do Everyday and Fuck the Terrorists! – like so many American citizens and artists at the time; Oldham’s second song (credited to Owen Hand) manages to be sad and sperm-drenched all at once (yes, the narrator is a whaler’s wife), while Molina gives a solo-version of the Didn’t It Rain-sound on 'Jennie Blackbird’s Blues', and then all three join in for a gleeful chant on the flipside. Whether Molina felt the weight of American cultural history on his shoulders – that he, and Oldham, and Roberts were part of a sacred lineage, being the foremost folk singers of the day – it would soon become apparent that he felt the weight of America’s neo-imperialist legacy. The sleevenotes to Magnolia Electric Co. (2003) – the last album under the Songs: Ohia imprimatur – make it clear to everyone what they’re talking about, but can’t bring themselves to actually name the victims or the perpetrators: "...it’s a dark time..."
Discreetly, the lyrics of Magnolia Electric Co. don’t seem to be about geo-politics at all. There’s no condemnation of Neo-Conservative war-mongering, nor Islamic extremists; there isn’t any symbolic attempt at reconciliation as there had been on Bruce Springsteen’s contemporaneous The Rising (2002), with its foray into Arabic muezzin singing. Instead, Molina turns to Jesus – not for hope, or moral authority – but because in trying to imagine Him, to put a human face on ‘Heaven’ (as he phrases it), the high price and high responsibility for the individual in these times can be established. This mythic sensibility isn’t a flight from history though (as High Modernist re-appropriations of myth between the world wars have sometimes been theorized), but a re-engagement with society. Just who are you betraying when you betray your brother... and whose example are you following when you help him? It makes more sense to discuss the album’s straight-up country-rock with the Magnolia Electric Co. records [COMING SOON], but slip in that closing track 'Hold on Magnolia' was yet another surprise when you thought Molina had written the song that could never be bettered.
Hold on Magnolia to that great highway moon / No one has to be that strong / But if you’re stubborn like me / I know what you’re trying to be / Hold on Magnolia I hear that station bell ring / You might be holding the last light I see / Before the dark finally gets a hold of me / Hold on Magnolia, I know what a true friend you've been / In my life I have had my doubts / But tonight I think I’ve worked it out with all of them / Hold on Magnolia to the thunder and the rain / To the lightning that has just signed my name / to the bottom line / Hold on Magnolia, I hear that lonesome whistle whi--ne / Hold on Magnolia I think its almost time"
Shakespeare wrote:not sure how long this'll be up, but this is pretty godamn badass
http://live.magnoliaelectricco.com/
visit http://live.magnoliaelectricco.com
i've posted nearly everything jason released physically on cd or vinyl to stream over on the bandcamp site. i cleared it with secretly canadian on the condition that it's only up for a little bit- i imagine a couple weeks at most.
of particular interest to folks on here will be the compilation of one-offs and split singles:
http://live.magnoliaelectricco.com/albu ... r-one-offs
i unfortunately can't provide downloads of any of these. i know there's a compilation out there of the pre-2004 singles/etc. if someone wants to spread that around privately i certainly can't stop you.
tinnitus photography wrote:Shakespeare wrote:not sure how long this'll be up, but this is pretty godamn badass
http://live.magnoliaelectricco.com/
and all his studio stuff for a short time:visit http://live.magnoliaelectricco.com
i've posted nearly everything jason released physically on cd or vinyl to stream over on the bandcamp site. i cleared it with secretly canadian on the condition that it's only up for a little bit- i imagine a couple weeks at most.
of particular interest to folks on here will be the compilation of one-offs and split singles:
http://live.magnoliaelectricco.com/albu ... r-one-offs
i unfortunately can't provide downloads of any of these. i know there's a compilation out there of the pre-2004 singles/etc. if someone wants to spread that around privately i certainly can't stop you.
I am forever changed and forever grateful for having known Jason Molina and his music. The last 3 Dreamend records would not have existed without him. He was a unique and amazing soul. I am heartbroken.
William Schaff and I have an announcement coming in the next 24 hours in regards to Molina.
Take care of each other.
Late one night in March of 2004 I was introduced to Jason Molina at the northwest corner of 6th and Red River in Austin, Texas. He was wearing a green military style jacket with a black t-shirt underneath that had some sparkly script on it. I think it had something to do with country music. When we shook hands, he said: "Songwriter, right?" I said yes. We talked for a few minutes, realized a mutual admiration and connected some dots through various folks that had previously linked us from afar. I'd been a fan of his work for five or six years by that point. Before we parted ways I made sure to convey to him that on a recent, very long tour around Europe, the Songs:Ohia Magnolia Electric Company LP had become a place of musical sanctuary for me. His expansive, remarkable voice, and those songs became a crucial source of counsel over those miles and nights. A needed and regular companion just before sleep.
We didn't keep in touch but we'd see each other around here and there, usually in some South by Southwest stew of haste; in a club or makeshift venue we'd never been to before, and probably wouldn't return to again. During those years I was dedicated to seeing Magnolia play any chance I got. They'd fast become one of my favorite bands, and their recordings were usually in regular rotation on my pickup truck solo tours. I went to see them at Emo's on September 13, 2007, and they were in astonishingly good, mid-tour form. Afterward Jason and I wound up talking at the merch booth for a while. We discussed the types of hats we were comfortable enough wearing onstage, and found we both had long-running affection for the color of pumpkin orange. He had strong opinions on both topics. He seemed to have strong opinions on everything. When the 2am house lights went on and we started into our farewells, he flatly said that we should make a record together. I agreed. He suggested that we start the session during the first full moon of 2008. We swapped email addresses on scraps of paper and said goodbye. I drove home inspired.
Jason emailed to follow up on it within 48 hours. I didn't know him well, but I liked him a lot. Over the next few weeks I came to find out fast that he was very dedicated to this idea. We missed the first full moon of the new year, but secured his plane ticket and reserved our dates for February 2008 at the Echo Lab in Argyle, Texas. The idea we talked about on the followup phone calls was each bringing five songs in, then seeing where it went from there.
When I arrived to the studio he was on the back porch with a cigarette in hand, at the ready. He'd come all the way from London, and I was the one that was late. He wanted to get a thesaurus, so I drove us into Denton. We found one that was suitable, along with guitar strings and groceries for the next few days. After that we drove south to the Swisher Road Wal-Mart, where we filled a shopping cart with various types of notepads, packages of colored construction paper, Post-It notes, a box of Sharpies, a box of Mirado Black Warrior pencils, a case of Lone Star beer, a Daisy BB gun, and plenty of BB's for the week. He was very specific about the Black Warrior pencils.
I'd rented a cabin in Mississippi a few weeks earlier to write toward our record. I came back to Texas with a handful of songs I wanted to try, and realized after we each tracked one apiece that first night that I would shelve them all for another time. He recorded a version of "Wooden Heart", and I recorded something that I later wrote off as a bad fit, and about 60 percent shitty. Overall there was a feeling of great happiness between us that night. We had porch beers late, and slowly concluded that the record would be better suited by writing in the moment, on the premises. Clean slate. The next day he set up a writing station in the band apartment, and I set one up in the iso-booth. For the next nine days we workshopped everything, backing each other readily, working diligently together, and at times alone. We tried to be the best singers, multi-instrumentalists and side-people we could be for one another. We were industrious, prolific, and inspired. We barked at each other when a line wasn't right, and left our politeness at the door when it came to the writing. His humor was great, and there was a good balance and rhythm to our days. It felt like camp. Any time there was a needed moment of therapy we stepped out back and shot the BB gun into the woods, or at various targets we'd set up.
Jason was usually the last to bed every night, and the first one up. I'd wake up on the lounge futon and often the first thing I would see through the window was his silhouette or shadow on the porch, pacing, with cigarette in hand. Sometimes with a beer. Loyal and ready. He worked on his songwriting with the care and attention of a gifted and obsessed technician. It was an incredible dedication to look upon, this relationship that pulsated between Jason and the song. I learned a lot from him in those days. I watched the way he worked lines and verses over and over, sitting at that little desk, and on occasion found myself in awe of his tirelessness. Our surroundings were littered with paper. Drafts, chord sheets, fragments on pages, notebooks, and final lyric sheets. My longtime friend and bandmate Matt Pence was engineering the project, and was a source of great direction and guidance for us. Mikey Kapinus, Howard Draper, Sarah Jaffe, Bryan Vandivier, and Scott Danbom all dropped by or stayed with us at various points to help see it through. They were all integral to the session's morale and spirit. They each performed beautifully and we were lucky to have them involved. We recorded and mixed twenty-two songs in nine days.
That last night Jason and I sat down outside and worked out the sequence of the record. In my experience this has often been a lengthy headache of a puzzle, but we agreed on the order in about thirty minutes. We then took various notes, lyric scraps, and artifacts from the session, put them all in a Ball jar, and buried it out back. Our own time capsule. We stacked all of our notes and lyric sheets up on the table and looked through them. We'd written a lot for just a short time together. He requested that I keep them all together and safe, and we immediately jumped to the idea of making another record together. We stayed up late and said our goodbyes the next morning. I didn't know I'd only get to see him one more time after that.
Secretly Canadian kindly released our record in November of 2009.
I won't write much about our cancelled tours. I can only say that I don't think Jason was in any condition to tour then. It wasn't an easy time for a lot of us simply given the fact that we loved him and cared for him. We didn't want to see him struggle.
For the next couple of years we relied on phone calls and emails. My guess is that that's the way it went with him and most of his friends during that time. We didn't talk often, but when we did it was usually at great length and not without difficult moments. We still discussed the idea of re-circling the wagons and recording again. In 2011, because of his living quarters' regulations, his communication was reduced to letter-writing. We exchanged a few, and it was a practice I liked. His last letter made me grateful for our friendship, the time we had together, his generosity, and the faith he had in his friends and strangers alike. There was a noticeable tone of of peace in his last letter, and I hung hope on that for most of the past year. That's what made getting the phone call on Sunday even tougher. So many of us were hopeful he would outrun the badness. So many of us will miss him terribly.
I will always love his voice, and I will always love his writing. I feel confident that I'll listen to his songs for all my life. We have undoubtedly lost one of the great writers of our time.
In that last letter he suggested that I make a Homerun Baker baseball painting. He explained to me that his father used to deliver newspapers to the Hall of Famer, and it was said that later in his life Baker paid for everything with Indian Head pennies. I made that painting last month with Jason in mind, but never told him I'd made it. I meant to. Every time I looked at it over in the corner I thought of him, reminded that I needed to write soon. I don't think reaching out would have changed history. I don't think the story would have changed. It's a matter of being left with the feeling of wishing I'd done something I just didn't do.
Connect when the feeling strikes. Work on loving. Work to avoid regret. Because a lot of the time it's hard to tell what the last time looks like.
-Will Johnson/Austin, TX March 21, 2013
TW_2.0 wrote:
TruckerClown wrote:Regular lurker, coming out of the shadows for this. Man did this hit me hard today. What a supreme fucking talent.
This wasn't an official release, but for my money, this is one of the greatest marriages of song and video. Ever. A tough listen tonight.
Smitty wrote:Fuck.
I hope anyone who doubts alcoholism is (can be) a legitimate disease takes a lesson from this.
StormandStatic wrote:Smitty wrote:Fuck.
I hope anyone who doubts alcoholism is (can be) a legitimate disease takes a lesson from this.
I remember right when it came out he was sick, I heard people doubting just that. I'm always baffled people can think this way.
cortez the killer wrote:I mean, when you look at pictures of him, he didn't "look" like a heavy drinker - no bloating, no "rummy" nose/cheeks. He looked more like he could work in an IT department than be an indie rock icon.
This one is going to sting for some time.