Remembering Jason
A message from Static & Distance
Photograph by Thomas Heath
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"I will be gone, but not forever"
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Remembering Jason today, and cherishing all of the incredible music he gave us to listen to.
As we usually do on this day, we'd like to share details of two organisations who provided support to Jason in the US and UK respectively: Musicares and Samaritans. For support, donations or otherwise, the links for these vital organisations can be found here: musicares.org // samaritans.org
If there’s anything you’d like to share in memory of Jason, we encourage you to do so below this post - comments are open.
With love,
S&DÂ x
It seems like a good time to share this. We made this cover of two blue lights in support of Jason when he got sick. There was a benefit concert (we didn’t play) and an album out together.
https://thekillingwords.bandcamp.com/track/two-blue-lights
I remember bumping into him at the Neko Case concert in the Barbican. And he was in good cheer. Then a few weeks later….
“You almost made it “
I'm sure this has been shared elsewhere, but I was remembering the only time I saw Jason play live, with Magnolia Electric Company touring behind the WHAT COMES AFTER THE BLUES album. It was at the legendary/infamous First Unitarian Church basement in the summer - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were the opener and had just garnered huge reviews for their debut, so a massive hometown crowd was there to see them and about half of 'em left after the CYHSY set. Jason and the guys seemed unperturbed, and put on a great show for the folks who remained.
All but one of the ceiling fans in the venue had broken, and so the room was mind-alteringly hot and muggy. They were selling bottled waters at a buck apiece out of a kiddie pool full of ice. About a third of the way into the Magnolia set, Jason joked about the heat, and then proceeded to HAND AN AUDIENCE MEMBER HIS WALLET to go buy all of the waters. We grabbed the bottles, guzzled them, dumped them on our heads, rocked out to the rest of the show. It remains the single kindest act of care and trust in an audience I've ever seen from an artist in any genre.
Their final encore song, after a set full of fierce and painful truths set to music, was, incredibly, a cover of Van Halen's "Running With the Devil", with Eddie's solo approximated by the lap steel player. I can definitely picture Jason's huge shit-eating grin as they wrapped up. What a show. What a guy.