The outpouring of love for Jason Molina and the recounting of personal experiences with him and his music on my tumblr feed (and elsewhere on the net) has been phenomenal. Molina's music hits me every time in a deeply personal way, a way that it's even hard to talk about, but events like this bring us to share that stuff anyway, however inarticulate we might feel otherwise. I love that these stories, which are mostly deeply personal stories of depression, survival, and renewal, are coming from not just some Songs: Ohia cabal, but people I know from so many different parts of my life, who came across Molina's work in so many different ways. This guy made music that was deeply and personally important to so. many. people.
I have too many stories to share. I'll just leave it at the night I first truly fell in love with Jason Molina:
The first time I saw Songs: Ohia play was in fall of 2002 at an all-ages club in Seattle. At the time, I'd dropped out of college, moved back to Seattle, and was attempting to make an entirely new set of friends (all of mine were away at college) and find a job. Everything was absolutely up in the air.
Molina, who was playing solo at the time, was opening for Low. I'd liked Songs: Ohia (Axxess & Ace and the Lioness both were in heavy rotation), but I'd really bought the ticket for Low.
I'd gone to the show by myself, which was a thing that was totally normal and comfortable for me to do in those days. Some local band (?) opened, and then Molina came on stage -- it was just him, a guitar, and, in my memory, a red and black plaid jacket. We watched as he just shredded his soul in front of us and served it to us. I'm not sure how to describe it, except that it really felt like an act of service. His rawness and intensity were like nothing I had ever seen before. If the albums were good musically, lyrically, and emotionally, the live show was all of these things at a supermagnified intensity level.
I stayed until the last vibration from the last note of his set had settled and got the hell out of there before Low came on. As much as I had wanted to see Low, I needed to leave the show at that, leave that rawness under my tongue, to savor it. It was the first and only time I've ever left a show early because the opener was too beautiful to be followed.
I wandered aimlessly through the neighborhood and somehow made my way to the house of one of my new Seattle friends. She took one look at me, gave me a hug and a glass of wine, and we sat together on her front porch. To this day, that is one of my favorite memories of her.
And I have still never seen Low.
Thank you, Jason Molina, for that night of intensity, and so many others.