Transmissions From The Molinaverse - June 2nd
A regular update on all things JM
Photograph from the Secretly Canadian archive
Hi everyone,
Hope all’s good!
Here we are back with another little round up of some fun Molina-related bits and pieces we thought might be good to share with you all.
This time around, we have some resurfaced tour posters and photos from the archives, some recommended reading and listening, and also a little reminder of the exciting Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co. news we shared last week….not forgetting some beautiful words on that written especially for Static & Distance from MECo’s Jason Evans Groth.
As always we hope you enjoy reading through this and going a bit deeper on some of these recommendations when you have the time. We would still love to receive more contributions to S&D via Molina@secretlycanadian.com, so if you’d like to be featured here or to share your thoughts, reflections, music or stories with thousands of like-minded Molina fans, then please do give us a shout.
Until next time,
S&D x
From the archives
Here’s an amazing recent find via Secretly’s Chris Swanson: “The flyer from the first Songs: Ohia show in Charlottesville, VA, with the first two bands signed by Jagjaguwar. The show was booked/promoted by Jagjaguwar’s Darius Van Arman.”
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While we’re here and recapping through the last couple of weeks of May, here’s a cool poster from some Magnolia Electric Co. Utah shows that happened 16 years ago in May 2009.
Poster by Furturtle Show Prints
Recommended Listening
Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co.
In case you missed it last week, Will Johnson and members of Magnolia Electric Co. have recently joined together to form a new project in the way of Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co., for which they’ve been in the studio recording and also have some first tour dates lined up this September in Texas.
Check out the video for their excellent version of ‘The Big Beast’ below:
While we’re here, we’d also like to highlight and remind everyone that MECo.’s Jason Groth kindly wrote some truly beautiful words on all of this news especially for Static & Distance, which you can read via the link below if you haven’t had the chance yet:
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Meanwhile, this podcast interview conversation between Marc Maron and the brilliant musician and songwriter Samantha Crain is an excellent listen which touches on a number of different subjects, including Jason and his work’s influence on Samantha’s own:
“He was a true poet, a true, honest, open raw nerve”
You can hear the whole conversation here:
Recommended Reading
Alongside the news detailed above about his new project with MECo. members, Will Johnson also has a new album out now which we’ve mentioned previously in one of these posts.
We enjoyed reading this recent interview Will did with Americana Highways, which included some talk of Jason and his unique approach to writing songs:
“Jason Molina would treat each day sort of like he’s going to work. He’s up at the crack of dawn out on the back porch of the studio with a cigarette in hand – “By God, this is my job now. I’m going to work over songs and melodies and narratives until lunch, and then we’ll record, and then I’m gonna do some more later” – he respected the fact that he got to make a living as a musician. He did not rest – he was restless. And I loved that about him, because I saw a lot of myself in that. So we did really well together. We kind of workshopped everything. I think we got 21 or 22 recordings in 10 days, and we left our pleasantries at the door. We weren’t afraid to tell each other when we thought a line wasn’t up to snuff. But I think that was all out of respect.”
You can read the whole thing here
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Finally, we also enjoyed this recent Substack piece which details the process of trying to actively discover new music as you get older. It includes a recommendation of Jason’s music from someone who has seemingly recently stumbled upon his catalog:
“I must confess I had never heard of Molina at the time. When I dug into his back catalogue, it blew me away: he was a writer of powerful and intimate songs.”
It features some interesting musical comparisons which we don’t often generally see when reading about Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co., but equally made sense to us - Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, and Talk Talk / Mark Hollis.
You can read it below:
Songs: Ohia
Photograph from the Secretly Canadian archives
Great photo! That’s from behind the counter at The CD Exchange in Bloomington.