hypersongs

Jason Molina

An Ohio songwriter who made records as Songs: Ohia and then Magnolia Electric Co. for Secretly Canadian, among them The Magnolia Electric Co. (2003), cut in three days with Steve Albini and opening with "Farewell Transmission".

Lorain and Songs: Ohia

Jason Andrew Molina was born in Oberlin, Ohio on December 30, 1973 and raised in Lorain on Lake Erie, where his father was a middle-school teacher and his paternal grandfather an Asturian miner from Spain. He began guitar at ten, graduated from Admiral King High School in 1992, where he played bass in the metal band Spineriders, and took a BA in art history at Oberlin College in 1996. A July 1996 Songs: Ohia show at Adult Crash in Manhattan led to his signing to Secretly Canadian, according to Static and Distance. Early home recordings were issued as Songs: Albian, Songs: Radix and Songs: Unitas.

Songs: Ohia began with the single "Nor Cease Thou Never Now" (1995, Palace Records), then Songs: Ohia (The Black Album) in 1997, Impala (1998), Axxess and Ace (1999), The Lioness (2000, recorded near Glasgow by Andy Miller with Alasdair Roberts and members of Arab Strap), Ghost Tropic (2000, Mike Mogis), Protection Spells (2000) and Didn't It Rain (2002, made in Philadelphia), with a split EP with My Morning Jacket and an EP with Will Oldham and Alasdair Roberts. Steven Hyden counts well over two dozen works in roughly fifteen years and about 200,000 copies sold.

Magnolia Electric Co.

In March 2003 Molina announced the band would be renamed Magnolia Electric Co., though the exact transition is unclear. The Magnolia Electric Co. (Secretly Canadian, March 3, 2003) was recorded with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago on July 1 to 3, 2002, by players working through the songs for the first time; Secretly Canadian received the tapes labelled Not Songs: Ohia. Pyramid Electric Co. (2004, solo), What Comes After the Blues (2005), Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go (2006), Fading Trails (2006), the Sojourner box set (2007), Josephine (2009), Molina and Johnson (2009, with Will Johnson) and Autumn Bird Songs (2012, Graveface), his last in his lifetime, followed. Trials and Errors was recorded live in Brussels on April 16, 2003 and issued in 2005.

Molina died on March 16, 2013 in Indianapolis, aged 39. Tributes include Weary Engine Blues (2013), Farewell Transmission: The Music of Jason Molina (2014, with My Morning Jacket), Glen Hansard's EP It Was Triumph We Once Proposed (2015) and I Will Swim to You (2025). Erin Osmon wrote Jason Molina: Riding with the Ghost (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017 or 2018), and Secretly Canadian holds more than 300 tapes he left, which Static and Distance releases as The Archive Tapes. Kevin Morby, MJ Lenderman, Waxahatchee and Hiss Golden Messenger cite him, and the New York Times's William Yardley called him a balladeer of heartbreak.

Albums

  • The Magnolia Electric Co. 2003 · Secretly Canadian

    The 2003 Songs: Ohia album: eight songs recorded in three days with Steve Albini, ending Songs: Ohia and starting the Magnolia Electric Co.

Songs

  • Farewell Transmission The Magnolia Electric Co. · 2003

    The 7:22 opener of The Magnolia Electric Co., the last track recorded, in one take after a quick chord run-through.

Sources

  1. Jason Molina, Wikipedia
  2. Jason Molina: a beginner's guide, Uproxx (2025-01-09)
  3. Static and Distance, Secretly Canadian
  4. Jason Molina statistics, setlist.fm