Running on moon power (by Bryan Saunders)
Jason Molina, front man for Magnolia Electric Co, confesses that he is, indeed, a superstitious fellow. Even without the admission, one can make certain inferences based on his haunting song lyrics that tend to be filled with wolves, owls, ghosts, the moon, water, stars and the dark.
“That’s just a language that I feel comfortable with,” Molina says. “Some people have gifts with writing a narrative song that’s full of people, and my songs tend to filled with … the physically important parts of my world. So if I’m being an honest writer, I just write a lot about the things that I know about.
“I don’t have any superstition about playing music when it’s a full moon on Friday the 13th,” Molina continues. “In a way those are actually positive things in my mind.”
It almost seems like an anomaly, but then again, everything about this man and his band seems to be an anomaly. You really can’t say much more about a band that critics have compared to Leonard Cohen and Lynyrd Skynyrd in the same breath.
Even more baffling, though, Molina has just finished recording five separate records earlier this year, and he’s in the process of wrapping up a never-ending, 50-city tour that’s been going on for years now. You’d expect the man to finally want some rest, but according to Molina, that’s not going to happen.
“Once the tour is over, [I hope to] be able to get into a studio and start working on what will hopefully materialize into the next record,” Molina says.
In spite of this industrious attitude, though, Molina sees himself existing on the fringes of the music industry.
“No, I mean, I don’t count myself as a member of the music industry,” he stammers. “In the ways that I have to work within what is generically called that industry, I begrudgingly do it.”
However, what exactly Magnolia Electric is working towards still remains an open question. Surely, for a band that’s been around for over a decade, there must be some dreams in their minds that they hope to accomplish.
“Writing new songs, getting a new record recorded and getting another tour, that’s the way I look at it,” states Molina matter-of-factly. “Basically, I don’t have a concrete vision for how anything here should work out. I think the goal is just to write good music and try to play good shows. But I don’t have a greater vision for this band having a terminal end, you know, an ending point.
“It’s not run in the traditional way where we sit down and have a decided upon plan on how to get more popular and how to sell more records,” Molina continues. “It’s a free standing invitation; people can come and go as they please, as long as they still feel like they want to be playing music with me, that’s how it works. It’s not a traditional band, but it’s a functioning band, and I think we’re able to come up with what I think is important music—or else, I wouldn’t want to put out the record, and I wouldn’t want people to follow us all over the country and come to the shows and spend all their hard-earned money on music that we don’t feel is important.”
Which brings us back to the unresolved issue of how to describe the music of Magnolia Electric Co. Something between Wilco and Neil Young, perhaps?
“We never made a decision to sound a certain way,” Molina says. “We just plug the guitars in, sit there and put together music; it’s all about the natural feeling and presentation of the songs. And we go for it, and we try to put as much as we can into it. I just know that when somebody asks what music we play, I just say rock and roll.”