Sojourner - Vinyl Boxset

Returning from a long time out-of-print and for the first time on vinyl, Secretly Canadian today announce Sojourner Box Set by Magnolia Electric Co., re-presented via a 4LP collection out April 7.

The Box Set is the accumulated work of thirteen musicians, five locations, four recording engineers and one songwriter, with the four LPs that comprise the set taken from four distinct recording sessions that Magnolia Electric Co. undertook following the release of their debut studio album, What Comes After the Blues.

From those recording sessions, the band’s second album Fading Trails was born. But the four sessions, in full, chart the celestial map of Magnolia Electric Co.: its constellations and shooting stars, its Americana stompers and lean folk dirges. And, of course the center of gravity that is Jason Molina’s mournful, incomparable voice. 

The session known as “Nashville Moon” was recorded by Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio studios in Chicago, Illinois. The session known as “Sun Session” was recorded at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The session known as “Black Ram” was recorded by David Lowery at his Sound Of Music studios in Richmond, Virginia and features an entirely different cast of characters including Lowery, Rick Alverson, Andrew Bird, Molly Blackbird, Miguel Urbiztondo and Alan Weatherhead. The session known as “Shohola” was recorded by Jason Molina alone, with a guitar and microphone.

With LP covers drawn from original box illustrations and with the original box’s poster included, this LP edition of The Sojourner Box Set delivers for the most ambitious and robust Magnolia Electric Co. release to date.

Track listing:

Nashville Moor

Side A

1. Lonesome Valley

2. Montgomery

3. Don’t Fade on Me

4. Hammer Down

5. No Moon on the Water

6. Nashville Moon

Side B

7. What Comes After the Blues

8. Don’t This Look Like the Dark

9. North Star

10. Bowery

11. Texas 71

12. Down The Wrong Road Both Ways

Black Ram

Side A

1. In The Human World

2. The Black Ram

3. What’s Broken Becomes Better

4. Will-o-the-Wisp

5. Kanawha 

Side B

6. A Little at a Time

7. Blackbird

8. And the Moon Hits the Water

9. The Old Horizon

Sun Session

Side A 

1. Talk to Me Devil, Again

2. Memphis Moon 

Side B

3. Hold on Magnolia

4. Trouble in Mind 

Shohola

Side A

1. Steady Now

2. Spanish Moon Fall and Rise

3. Night Country

4. Shiloh Temple Bell

Side B

5. The Spell

6. Take One Thing Along

7. The Lamb’s Song

8. Roll the Wheel

Order now - https://magnoliaelectricco.ffm.to/sojourner-box-set

'Eight Gates' - A new album by Jason Molina

Secretly Canadian have announced ‘Eight Gates’ - a new album by Jason Molina set for release on the 7th August 2020.

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Sometime in 2006 or 2007, Jason Molina moved from the midwest to London. Separated from his bandmates and friends and never one for idleness, Molina explored his new home with fervor. Sometimes he’d head out on foot, often with no destination in mind. Other times, he’d pick a random tube stop and find his way back home. He’d pick up on arcane trivia about London’s rich history, and if the historical factoids weren’t available — or weren’t quite to his liking — Molina was quite comfortable conjuring his own history. His adoration of The Great American Tall Tales like John Henry and Paul Bunyan’s blue ox Babe stretched across the Atlantic, where he created his own personal Tall Tales. And when he learned of the London Wall’s seven gates (itself a misconception), Molina went ahead and called it eight, carving out a gate just for himself. The eighth gate was Molina’s way into London, a gate only passable in the mind.

Fast forward to 2008, Molina set off on an experimental solo tour through Europe. While in Northern Italy, Molina claimed to have been bitten by a rare, poisonous spider. A debilitating bout of illness ensued. “I was in the hospital here in London,” Molina wrote in a letter. “Saw six doctors and a Dr. House-type guy. They are all mystified by it, but I am allowed to be at home, where I am taking a dozen scary Hantavirus type pills a day that are all to supposedly help — but they make me feel like shit.” There is no record of a single doctor visit, not any prescription record for these medications. It is entirely plausible there was no spider and that whatever was keeping him indoors during this time was entirely self-induced. While at home, he of course wrote songs.

Molina also claimed that during this time, he fed several bright green parrots that would gather in his yard. While often associated with a greyscale sensibility, Molina was oft-clad in a Hawaiian shirt and had, at least in part, selected the name Songs: Ohia for his first project as a nod to Hawaii’s ‘Ohi’a lehua flower. Which is all to say, the tropical element the parakeets brought to those sick days delighted Molina. He made short, crude field recordings of them with his trusty four-track. Only once Molina was officially on the mend and re-exploring the streets of London would he learn that those parrots had their own fabled tale. Back in the 60s, Jimi Hendrix — in a moment of psychedelic clarity — released his pair of lime green ring-necked parakeets from their cage, setting them free into the London sky. Now, their decendents are spotted regularly around certain parts of the city. Or so we’re told.

Eight Gates is the last collection of solo studio recordings Molina made before he passed from complications related to alcoholism in 2013. Recorded in London around the time of the supposed spider bite and Jimi’s supposed parakeets, some of the songs (“Whispered Away,” “Thistle Blue”) are fully-realized — dark, moody textures that call to mind his earlier work on The Lioness. Knowing what we know about those parakeets and their peppered presence on the recordings, one can’t help but think of that colorful tree of birds on Talk Talk’s classic Laughing Stock, certainly a spiritual guide for much of the set. Other songs (“She Says,” “The Crossroads and The Emptiness”) lay in a more unfinished states, acoustic takes that call to mind Molina’s Let Me Go Let Me Go Let Me Go, and still tethered to Molina’s humorous studio banter. You remember how young Molina was, and how weighty this art was for such a young man. On the closer, “The Crossroads and The Emptiness,” Molina snaps at the engineer before tearing into a song in which he sings of his birthday (December 30), a palm reading and the great emptiness with which he always wrestled. It is a perfect closer and, in many ways, the eighth gate incarnate: mythical, passable only in the mind, built for himself and partway imaginary but shared, thankfully, with us.

Hear new song ‘Shadow Answers The Wall’ now: https://jasonmolina.ffm.to/eight-gates

Hard To Find JM Releases Auctioned For London Food Banks

A message from Darcie Schoenman Molina:

"I hope you're all coping with the current insanity and are staying safe and healthy. Just like I'm sure all of you have, I've been looking for ways to help others, so I'm raising funds to benefit food banks in London. *To that end I've put some HARD-TO-GET JASON-RELATED ITEMS FROM MY/HIS PERSONAL COLLECTION up for auction.* Some non-Jason items up there too (heads up IDLES and shame fans)!

All proceeds go to City Harvest London - They pick up nutritious surplus food from restaurants, hotels, events, etc, and deliver it to food banks serving those who need it most. Especially in this unprecedented time, their mission is critical. They have enough food and volunteers. Now they need cash to pay drivers and keep the vans going. Can you help and score some sweet records in the process?

I didn’t put any test pressings into the auction but let me know if these are of interest to anyone

AUCTION: https://www.32auctions.com/organizati…/62421/auctions/78647…

If you can't or don't want to buy any of the auction items, consider a direct donation, even the cost of a day's travel if you're now working from home.

DONATE: https://bit.ly/FeedLDN

Please share the links across your networks! Thank you!!"

Jason Molina: Live at La Chapelle - Available Now

Jason Molina: Live at La Chapelle is now available to order on black vinyl from Secretly Canadian.

“A note about La Chapelle: One day a couple of fans sent an email into the void to ask if Jason would be interested in playing a show in an old church in an out of the way city on an off day from tour. How could he resist? He loved these scenarios. He was always searching for the humanity of The Moment. He cultivated and crafted unpredictable situations in the hope of finding some sort of truth and grace and connection. Granted it didn’t always work, but it was always done with the best intent. And when it did work…no one ever forgets those moments.

Anyway. 

This is a beautiful snapshot of a Jason Molina live performance: the kind of intimate and personal setting where he thrived (He decided to play this show with no PA). So many people are discovering Jason’s music everyday and for us to be able to give them a glimpse at what is was like to see him live is so important to us. If you’d prefer a pristine board mix this may not be for you but there’s plenty in the archive that we hope to get to some day that might be more up your alley.

I always loved this show in particular as it reminded me of what I remember most fondly of Jason; it was one of those Moments. Its not perfect, but it wasn’t supposed to be.”

Ben Swanson, Secretly Canadian

Available now.

The Black Sabbath Covers - Jason Molina

This month marks two years since the release of Jason Molina’s ‘The Black Sabbath Covers’, a limited run of 7” vinyl released in 2017 and featuring previously unheard recordings that had been newly discovered. When Jason Molina took on another artist’s song, he willed his own universe into it, his own personal and artistic mythology. Be it Conway Twitty or Townes Van Zandt, their blues were infused with Molina's own entrancing blues. This pair of home-recorded Black Sabbath covers is no different.

Jason’s longtime collaborator and friend William Schaff kindly got in touch to talk about the inspiration behind his amazing artwork for the release.

The following is William’s personal account of that period:

So there I was, sitting in a camper on a mountain in Northern California. A friend of mine who was running a weed farm in the Emerald Triangle had contacted me and asked if I could come up and help with the Harvest. Having never done something like that before, I figured I would give it a try. It was a remote location, and after the days work I would retire to a little camper I was staying in. I would usually get under the covers in the bed (as it was cold on the mountain top) and put my iPod on, listening to music as I smoked some of the weed that was readily available.

There I was that night, listening to the sojourner box set. I had never really given much thought to the track, “The Black Ram”, but on that night, with the effects of the crop floating around my head, I heard things I had not heard before in the song. It lead to me sketching out the line that would become the stencil for the ram that later show up on the Sabbath Covers 7”.

When I came down from the mountain after a month, the good people over at Secretly contacted me about the Sabbath covers release, and asked if I had any artwork that would be appropriate for it. I thought of the ram stencil sketch I had just done. While I was not planning to use it for this, I thought….”ram’s head…sabbath…perfect!”. So I took some masking tape, making the cross like you would see on so many of Jason’s guitars, and sprayed this ram stencil over it. Red paint on a black background. For me, nothing says Black Sabbath like a red goat head, and nothing says Jason like a masking tape cross. I submitted the image, and the label accepted it.

I have read some of the other entries on this website, and have enjoyed learning the backstory to these great releases. I can only apologize that my story is basically me getting high in a camper on a mountain, but there you have it. What lead to the artwork on the now released Sabbath cover’s seven inch came from that. I love that Secretly Canadian also went on to etch the backside of the 7” with the ram’s head. It makes the whole release feel that much more…”Sabbath-y”. As though these songs have signed a deal with the vinyl!

Secretly Society to release 'Jason Molina, Live at La Chapelle' - January 2020

The Secretly Society record club have announced their January record of the month will be ‘Jason Molina, Live at La Chapelle’ an unearthed live recording, released on blue dream splash vinyl.

On a rare day off during Magnolia Electric Co.’s 2005 European tour, a pair of fans in the south of France convinced Jason Molina to abandon the promise of leisure to play a show in an old church in Toulouse. Now, fifteen years later, the result is making its way into the world for the first time via Live at La Chapelle, an 11-track album of Molina’s performance at the former church squatted and converted into a hub for the arts.

Recorded with just a static microphone and a minidisc on June 7th, 2005, in front of a reverent crowd of 200, Live at La Chapelle is aglow with the hushed murmurs and whispers of an engrossed audience, of Molina’s stripped-back performance reverberating to the rafters. The neighbors’ penchant for calling the police with noise complaints meant acoustic shows only, so Molina split the difference and came with his electric guitar, choirboy voice, and Magnolia Electric Co. member Michael Kapinus’ occasionally guesting on trumpet.

The sparse record finally made its way Secretly Canadian in 2014, and six years later, as part of the process of unearthing work from the extensive Molina archive, Live at La Chapelle will finally be widely heard.

Here, Molina remarks some of his canonical work as well as the more obscure, deeper cuts in the special environment of La Chapelle. Nowhere better to hear a solo performance of Jason Molina’s catalog than in a house of worship, a cavernous structure with ceilings nearly high enough to contain the impossible reach a holy, lonesome voice.

More information can be found here.

Fading Trails - Pete Schreiner

Fading Trails - Magnolia Electric Co.

Released 13 years ago today, ‘Fading Trails’ is a collection of recordings from a number of sessions from Molina & company - Originating from sessions with Steve Albini at his Electric Audio Studio, David Lowery at his Sound of Music Studio, and at the famous Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee and the home recordings of the Shohola sessions, ‘Fading Trails’ perfectly captured the vast, varied and prolific world of Jason Molina.

To mark the 13th anniversary of it’s release, Magnolia Electric Co’s Pete Schreiner has shared his memories of the sessions at Memphis’ Sun Studio, as well as some personal pictures of that time.

Sun Session - Pete Schreiner

“The knife is on the floor,” Molina said, cryptically signalling it was time to do a take. Soon there were two open knives on the floor. We never had hard rules about recording but there was a certain way that Molina liked to work. While blades weren’t always involved, it was normal for him to run roughshod over completely established recording “rules” in an effort to do a song justice and at this session we even broke some of our own.

Jason Molina, Jason Evans Groth, Mikey Kapinus, Mark Rice and I, walked humbly into Sun Studio on March 12, 2006, and we could tell right away that what you played is what you got. The spartan room is hallowed for the musical magic that happened inside it, and not its purposeful acoustic design elements.

We had played the Hi-Tone, a favorite Midtown Memphis club the previous day, so adding on a Sun Studio session made sense geographically. What broke the first soft-rule of recording was doing so on the second day of a tour. The standard plan would be to bring Molina’s new songs on the road, work the arrangements into tightness on stage for a month, then record at the end of the trip. We would, however, occasionally book recording time on the road to get something done quickly or if an interesting opportunity came along. Our 2005 album Trials and Errors had come out of a serendipitously-recorded live set so we were basically ready for any scenario.

The band had been in Memphis just six months before and would return six months later. Today it was the first stop on the first tour of the year, following Jason’s February residency at Schuba’s in Chicago. How the Sun session was arranged is still sort of a black box to me. Memphis friends helped get it going although anyone could book time at Sun Studio. Recording at Sun starts at 5pm daily, after the tours are done. I presume we spent the day visiting guitar and record shops and eating barbecue, which would only be possible on a tour day with no driving.

As mentioned above, the studio is a simple room. It has square walls, ie. no visible wall geometry designed for audio clarity, and no real acoustic wall treatments. The 1950s era ceiling tile would add some absorption although it was probably just the standard material at the time.

Though the room is mundane its magic lives on. There were some old amps for us to use and Mark drummed on a house set of Ludwig’s. It felt right to play my 1968 Telecaster bass that I’d purchased in Memphis on a previous tour. There wasn’t much separation of amps or drums in the room so each player’s sound would bleed into the others’ microphones. That’s not a problem so long as you play correctly and don’t need to fix mistakes by punching-in. It also works best if everyone keeps their volume down, which was difficult for our rock-deafened group. We eventually dialled in a nice balance and rolled through the songs, picking notes gingerly and taking cues from one another.

There’s really no wrong way to record, as long as the artist is achieving the sound they desire. For us that meant doing live takes, and keeping the ones which overall, despite minor sonic imperfections, captured a song’s essence to Molina’s enigmatic standards. That’s how we approached it at this session too while breaking three of our normal practices. First, Jason usually strove to record on analog tape but we were recording digitally. I don’t think there was an in-house tape machine so it was an easy decision. Second, there are headphones in the session photos, whereas typically Jason didn’t like singing with cans on and when possible we would opt to simply hear him live in the room. Third and most surprising is that Jason allowed slap-back reverb on his vocals, which I can only credit to the studio’s charm and history because that sort of thing was usually censured.

We tracked four songs at Sun. The two that appear on Fading Trails, “Memphis Moon” and “Talk to Me Devil, Again” were new tunes from what I remember - we would have learned them at soundcheck the day before. When I listen to the tracks I hear them as new or seeming new. Jason would often switch up his guitar tuning or the key a song was in, sometimes to accommodate a vocal range. That made songs feel new even if they were previously-played. One way or another the songs feel fresh and Molina’s voice sounds woody, clear, and confident; refreshed from a few months off the road and whetted by the acoustic shows over the winter.

The additional two songs were definitely not new but got a fresh spin. Our group of players had performed “Hold On Magnolia” countless times on stage but had not recorded the version released on the Magnolia Electric Co. album. Here we had a chance at it and got a nice sweet take. “Trouble in Mind” was one of the occasional cover songs that would come out on tour. Covers were ephemeral and wouldn’t necessarily ever get a studio treatment, so this arrangement of one of Jason’s favorite tunes is a gift.

The Sun Session is by far the shortest disc of the Sojourner set. Still in many ways it captures the spirit of the Magnolia band the best—flipping the switch from club mode to studio mode and making music that was unique to the time and place the band was at. Molina’s timeless songs were a perfect match for the classic Sun Studio and it was a really special session for Jason and the band. Afterward we folded the knives, packed the van, and proceeded on down the road. Mixing would be done later in Chicago and I may not have heard the final songs until they came out in the Sojourner box, which was itself a surprise, and a story for another day.

Sojourner - Ben Swanson, Secretly Canadian

Magnolia Electric Co’s 'Sojourner' boxset was released 12 years ago this month. The expansive and ambitious release was the accumulated work of thirteen musicians, five locations, four recording engineers, three filmmakers, two designers and one songwriter.

To mark the release of this incredible collection, Secretly Canadian co-founder Ben Swanson has shared his memories of putting the boxset together

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Ben Swanson, Secretly Canadian:

Sojourner was born out of one of the most prolific periods of Jason’s career. He’d constantly be setting up new sessions, or sending us new records - not recordings, but fully conceived records - out of the blue. He even sent one cryptically as a demo and then got upset when we didn’t find it amongst the pile of other demos (that record eventually became the Molina & Johnson record). It was extremely exciting but admittedly a bit stressful from the label perspective. We were sensitive to the Prince dynamic with Warner; of not being able to keep up and do justice to the work. Jason was also - actually not unlike Prince now that I think about it - in the midst of this transformative period away from the old Songs: Ohia moniker and material into a new, more expansive name, Magnolia Electric Co (at the time, he had the idea of a multi-headed beast. Several different “Electric Co.”s coexisting). We desperately wanted to keep pace with Jason but could never catch up. Eventually we landed on the idea of leaning in to the situation and suggested we put all this material together in a box. At first it was purely a practical innovation to reset the clock, but eventually came to find the opportunity to showcase Jason’s range. My memory is he loved the concept out of the gate and immediately began dreaming of a box stuffed with music, a Ouija board, a constellation map and a chicken bone. Tokens from his universe. In hindsight, Sojourner ended up as the most complete representation of Jason’s expansive world that rewards repeat listens. At some point we’ll have to put it out on vinyl. Maybe there will be room for the chicken bone.

Love & Work: The Lioness Sessions Available on CD

Songs: Ohia's 'Love & Work: The Lioness Sessions’ will be available on CD on May 10th. The CD includes a second album’s worth of songs, an insert with liner notes, & photographs of Jason Molina from the era.

Pre-order ⤳ (link: http://songsohia.ffm.to/lioness) songsohia.ffm.to/lioness

Secretly Canadian announce 'Love & Work: The Lioness Sessions' release

The Lioness is the first Jason Molina project to fully turn away from the battlefield folk and deconstructed Americana of earlier Songs: Ohia recordings. At the dawn of the 21st century, the album felt modern. It aligned Molina with a new set of peers — Low, Gastr del Sol, Red House Painters and, most importantly, the influential Scottish band Arab Strap, whose producer and members were crucial in the creation of The Lioness. The avant-garde tones and arrangements of Arab Strap are absorbed here into Molina’s songwriting to create what would become, for many acolytes, the archetypal Songs: Ohia sound. Love & Work: The Lioness Sessions, the box set reissue, will serve as the seminal log of the era, complete with lost songs, photos, drawings, and essays from those who knew Molina best.

Off the bat, The Lioness can be tricky listen. Doom-y elements abound — the chord choices, the guitar tones and the molasses movement of it all. But rather than an album about wrestling some inner darkness, this is a man finding new love. Newly fallen for the woman who would ultimately become his wife, here Molina crafted songs about submission and the rapture of submission. By the time we get to “Being In Love,” the ice has fully melted off a once frozen heart: “Being in love/Means you are completely broken/Then put back together/The one piece that was yours/Is beating in your lover’s breast/She says the same thing about hers.” It is the first — and likely best — love song of the new millennium. It remains stunning that this song, poetically on the level of William Carlos Williams and sonically both industrial and hymn-like, was penned by a 26 year old. It is a crucial piece of the modern lover’s musical lexicon.

Sigmund Freud once said, “Love and work are the cornerstones of humanness.” Say what you may about the psychoanalytical theories of Freud, but this one sticks. Love and work give our lives purpose. And satisfaction from one feeds into the other. We know Molina was diligent in both love and work. He treated songcraft like a job at the mill — an ethos directly tied to his low-income upbringing in Lorraine, Ohio. Up at the crack of dawn (perhaps to capture the lingering fumes of dream logic), Molina would aggravate numerous roommates with these 5 AM writing sessions in the living room or on the porch. His approach to romance was not so different. We know that when he fell in love with his wife, he was dutiful in his adoration. There were strings of love letters and poetic gesture. Included in this edition are replicated examples of this relentless love — an envelope with a letter from Molina, a photograph of Molina and his to-be wife, a postcard, a Two of Hearts playing card, and a personal check for one million kisses. Some of these items were gifts he would send to his new love from the road; others, like the 2 of Hearts, were totems he’d carry with him around this time as a symbol for his burgeoning love. He was a workhorse for art and love.

And so, the head-over-heels, make-out album that is The Lioness has its workman counterpart. Nearly another album’s worth of material was recorded in Scotland during the album sessions. While similar in tone and structure, the songs seem to deal in the grit and dirt of being. Songs like “On My Way Home,” “Never Fake It,” “It Gets Harder Over Time,” and “I Promise Not to Quit” are working man’s blues. These are songs for aching muscles getting soothed in the third-shift pub. But they’re also examples of Molina’s diligence as he constructs what would be the essential elements of The Lioness. In addition to these outtakes, we also have a 4-track session made weeks earlier in London with friend James Tugwell. Comprised of primarily guitar, hand drums and voice, these songs are raw experiments that mostly serve to illustrate Molina’s well of words and ideas. But then, there is the devastating Sacred Harp hymn “Wondrous Love” from the London session. Over the 4-track hiss, a barely audible ghost track and a delicately plucked guitar, Molina gives himself wholly to the performance. While he may have had his new love in mind, one can’t help but think of Molina’s legacy as he softly warbles “Into eternity I will sing/Into eternity I will sing.” You don’t have to try too hard to mythologize Molina. He did all the work for you.

You can order ‘Love & Work: The Lioness Sessions’ here - https://secretlycanadian.com/record/love-work-the-lioness-sessions/

Songs Molina: A Memorial Electric Co announce tour

Songs: Molina is a group of musicians who were brought together by the late Jason Molina, who was their band leader, singer, collaborator and dear friend and brother. Comprised of original members of Molina’s bands Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co., Songs: Molina reunites Mike Brenner (lap steel), Jason Evans Groth (guitar), Michael Kapinus (keys), Mark Rice (drums), and Pete Schreiner (bass) under the spirit of live performance, carrying the torch for Molina’s beloved catalog of songs. For fans who knew and loved Molina during his too-short life, and for those who discovered Molina after it was too late, it’s a rare chance to experience Molina’s songs in his preferred setting, live and onstage, with the people and players who knew him best. 

The group is honored to be joined by guest vocalist Timothy Showalter of Strand of Oaks. Showalter’s tribute to Molina, “JM,” inspired fans new and old after Molina’s untimely death in 2013. To-be-announced special guests will join the group as well, many unique to each stop on the tour.

The European tour is inspired by a reunion that took place in the U.S. during the summer of 2017, in conjunction with the release of the authorized biography Jason Molina: Riding with the Ghost by author Erin Osmon. Songs: Molina, Osmon, and a host of special guests who knew Molina formed for a short run of live tributes where songs were played, short passages from the biography were read, and stories were told. Fans also had the opportunity to share their memories and ask questions about Molina, his life and work. Fans overseas now have the opportunity to experience that same magic, that same celebratory spirit.