The Nerve Magazine - August 2007
1500 Words (1450 too many) on Magnolia Electric Co.
"I think music writing is a pile of shit,” says Jason Molina. “It’s like writing about a painting. The value in it is that there maybe someone in the world that can’t see it. So describe it and get the hell out. Sure, music writing’s important because you’re putting the name of the band out, and an individual stamp on it saying, ‘I really like this.’ But you can do that in 50 words or less. You really can.”
34 words: Jason Molina and Magnolia Electric Co. are for real. You really should hear this stuff. They’ve got a new box set coming out, and they will be in Vancouver on Aug 31st. Go listen.
If you still need some more evidence, to Molina’s chagrin, I’ll reluctantly continue.
I don’t usually write about music. It’s hard to write something for your eyes that belongs in your ears - and musicians can be assholes. But I dig this dude and his music, and this magazine, so I took the gig.
The day before my arranged phone interview with the Magnolia front man from London, I get some guidelines from his PR guy. “Molina has no interest fielding questions about books, TV, movies, favourite bands, or personal life.” My first question is about the restrictions. “Yeah, I employ that list to screen out idiots.”
101 words of personal testimony on Magnolia Electric Co.: Last year I worked as a journalist in Accra, Ghana - a hot, sweaty and dirty West African city. The nights were so loud. Boom-boxes full of Ghanaian hip-hop, Christian marching bands, gun shots. It was at night that I really missed home. I missed my girlfriend. I missed my regular life. My iPod saved me. On a playlist called sleep to be sane there was a track that cut through all the shit especially well. Each night a devastated voice made an aching plea to be understood. “31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues” from Magnolia Electric Co. It always worked.
When writing about music you should also reference other bands, to not only help people better understand the subject, but to also show how hip and knowledgeable you are.
22 names I have seen in relation to Jason Molina: Black Sabbath. Ryan Adams. Jeff Tweedy. Hall and Oates. Will Oldham. Neil Young. Uncle Tupelo. My Morning Jacket. Lucinda Williams. Johnny Cash. Ladyhawk. CCR. Bob Seger. Built to Spill. Camper Van Beethoven. Scout Niblett. Iron Maiden. Lou Reed. Metallica. Steve Albini. Cat Power. Bruce Springsteen.
It's a list that looks more like a summer music festival in Norway and I’m not sure it’s gonna help you much. Molina is also weary and wary of the comparisons.
"So I have a new record come out, and they use all these contemporary bands as a reference point. All these stylistic references. And the first thing I’m gonna say is no, I have my own experience with all of their reference points. This doesn’t match up to what I thought. What’s interesting is when they use literary references or artistic movements, not just five bands that fell out of hat."
43 literary, artistic words about Magnolia Electric Co.: Their last record, Fading Trails, might sound best on a transistor radio while riding in the back of Georgia O’Keefe’s ‘46 Ford pickup. It’s the kind of music John Steinbeck would listen to on a hot California night, sitting on his front porch nursing a bottle of Jim Beam.
Even Molina’s own references derail an attempt to get a handle on his music without listening to it. Consider this excerpt from our conversation regarding Magnolia’s appearance at the recent Quart festival in Norway. A shindig whose diverse line-up also included The Roots, The Beastie Boys, 50 Cent, Chris Cornell - and The Who...
"I'm really a big fan. I walked away so excited - there was a halo over my head. They’re still great. The songs are great. And there's no show, really. It's the guy who does the windmill trick with the guitar, and that guy who flips the microphone around, but those songs are beautiful - if you just sat down with an acoustic guitar and did those songs, not trying to scream like Roger Daltry, you would end up with a body of work that would probably stomp on Dylan’s whole catalogue. That stuff from The Who really seems like true folk music to me."
Huh? Rewind. Did the oft labelled ‘lost son of Neil Young’ just suggest The Who is more folkier and stomps on Dylan? Tricky isn’t it? But that’s the point.
"I think that you have to be willing to listen to stuff on your own and not be sold on the writing. For anything. A movie. Art. A book. Anything. You have to do it on your own, because you’re not going to have someone there to tutor you as you go through it.”
You’ve got to listen to Molina’s songs for yourself. And he’s sure got a lot of them - seven albums in the last two years alone, including a new box set called Sojourner. Not a greatest hits package(“What hits?” he says) or even a retrospective of 10 years of work under a variety of names, the impressive Sojourner set is three whole new albums and an EP. He definitely doesn’t see it as a business move.
"I've always stood up and said I’m not trying to do this to be popular. I just write songs and I hope that someone wants to hear them. That’s it. And maybe this box set is my last gasp at putting together what I think a band can really do when you don’t have the pressure of marketability, or a single, or of what’s coming next. This was something I really thought the fans deserved at this point. I exhausted myself doing this, and so did the musicians who helped me out on it."
54 words on Molina’s lyrics. There seem to be a lot of wolves. (Beautiful and dangerous.) The moon is prominent. (Lonely light in the darkness.) There are miles of long roads of regret and sweeping landscapes of beautiful pain. And it’s nice to find a troubled troubadour who doesn’t seem to have a political statement carved into his guitar.
"I’m not a topical song writer; I don’t open up the newspaper and see what’s happening in Darfur and decide I have to write a song about it. Because however tight I might be with it as far as emotional and human connection, it may be something I really have no experience with, other than academic, and that is not something that I want to put into a song. My life is writing songs and trying to be a decent member of my community, as upstanding as a human as I can be. And that’s pretty much it. It’s not just a story. It’s emotional ground."
By this point, I’m way over Molina’s 50 word cap. I should just get the hell out. But I’m gonna spill just a few more to further demonstrate the depth of Molina’s commitment to producing good music. On the road 200 days a year, the guy hears a lot of sound.
"One of the great things about doing this and traveling around the world is that I get handed all these demos. Only a handful of them end up being something that I put my 100% backing on. But there are people that hand you three songs that are as good as anything I’ve ever heard. Jesus Christ! What is this person doing living in the middle of nowhere making no records?!
So he takes it on himself to help get cosmically good stuff out there. He recently convinced his label, Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar, to sign Kelowna rockers Ladyhawk (“They just blew us away... they’re something from another planet”) and to ink a deal with freaky Portland songstress Scout Niblett:
"I was absolutely blown away. I said you have to tell me how I can put the record out - tell me where I can go to a record pressing plant. It’s like a fucking comet falling out of the sky. You watch it, and then it’s over, and you're like, “Shit, I wish I could see that again.”" (59 words)
So if you’re looking for a comfy slot to slip Magnolia Electric Co. into, you ain’t gonna find it. And Molina doesn’t give a shit. He’s miserably happy just to play with his weepy guitar and ride out his lonely trainwrecks for your listening pleasure. Live or on record – it works either way.
"When it gets right down to it, the delivery on the recordings is the best I could do. I’m not going to force myself to have the onion under the eye and make it all weepy. But I really gave you the most raw version of the songs that possibly could do. Can I do that night after night? I don’t know. I try, but I’m not an actor.”
17 final words from Molina: “Good is good. Shit is just shit. Everything in the middle happens on a daily basis."