magnolia electric co. and jason molina are part of two recent compilations benefiting college radio stations. in 2005, jason molina performed a solo version of ‘leave the city’ in wvfs’s studio that now appears on their ‘live at wvfs’ compilation. US residents can paypal $12 ($15 for the rest of the world) to klem(AT)threelobed.com for a copy. also available is a compilation released by wuag last year entitled ‘18 watts is better than none’ with a live version of ‘down the wrong road both ways’ from magnolia electric co.’s greensboro show in 2005. it’s only $8 from their store.

the next six months will see magnolia electric co. on the road more often than not. they head out tomorrow for a month of american shows with son volt. after that, it’s off to europe for a month or two of shows. late summer will bring the boys back to north america for a full tour - north, south, east, and west. with all that touring it sounds like they might be supporting some sort of amazing new fall release, eh? more news to come!

jason molina wrote two new songs (an instrumental and one with lyrics) for the short film wood diary, one of which will be used to score the five minute version of the film. director david edwin meyers is selling a dvd version that includes two versions of the short film (one with each music track) as well as the thirteen minute version of the film that utilizes previously released secretly canadian material. further down the pipeline is new music for a film titled dream boy, which should also feature music by richard buckner.

you can catch videos of an entire solo show from the columbia, south carolina show last december over at google video right now. thanks to the mysterious “2000 flushes” for taping and “madwurm” for posting.

there’s lots of love for european magnolia fans in the first half of the year. jason molina arrives in europe today for a month of solo shows. in late march, just two months after returning home, he’ll bring magnolia electric co. back to europe for another month of shows. there are even some additional european dates in the works for late june. ¿cómo se dice ‘freebird’?

secretly canadian celebrates it’s 100th release (100th scheduled, they’re actually up in the 150s already) by having pre-SC100 bands cover other pre-SC100 bands. magnolia electric co. (oops, i mean songs: ohia) cover two nikki sudden songs - ‘the last bandit’ and ‘when the rain comes down’. the first will be available april 10th, 2007 on cd and the second will be part of a bonus mp3-only album through emusic/itunes/etc. both tracks were recorded in april 2004 at echo park with the touring magnolias. it was decided to use the songs: ohia name on the release for historical reasons, since the magnolia/ohia transition was right around SC100. scratching songs: ohia’s back on the compilation is suzanne langille, who takes her turn at ’structure- necessity’ (cd) and ‘ours the armada’ (mp3), both from impala.