the fabulous sojourner box set is out today and available from your finer local record stores as well as secretly canadian. if you’re still not convinced, you’ll find streams of eighteen tracks (this week only!) from the set over on the mec myspace page. there’s also a little preview of the dvd available here.

magnolia electric co. will release their most ambitious work to date later this summer. on august 7th, secretly canadian will issue a 4xcd, 1xdvd deluxe box set entitled ’sojourner’. it includes all of the projects discussed over the past year and then some. ‘nashville moon’, recorded with steve albini in 2005. ‘the black ram’, recorded by david lowery with all sorts of guest musicians including andrew bird. the ’sun session’ ep, recorded at the legendary memphis studio in one day. and of course, the mysterious ’shohola’, recorded at home by jason molina. but that’s just the stuff you might have heard about. there’s also a dvd including the film ‘the road becomes what you leave’ by todd chandler and tim sutton that follows the band as they trek across the prairie provinces of canada. the amazing set is rounded out by deluxe packaging including a medallion and postcards, all housed in a wooden box.

in support of the upcoming ’sojourner’ release, magnolia electric co. will hit the road in late august for a nearly two month north american tour. almost all of the dates are now up, check the tour dates for more details!

we recently added songs: ohia to the live music archive and have been busy adding shows between 1998 and 2002. so if you’re one of those people that keep screaming for ‘lioness’ at the shows only to find yourself disappointed, you should find a salve (and quite possibly salvation) in the live archive.

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.