i may be a bird in a cage but at least it's your cage

TRIANGLEITES: this is your one month warning, mason jennings @ the cradle, june 16, 9:30. buy your tickets now!

mason jennings. default singer songwriter of my soul. new album boneclouds in stores today. and in honor: a history and a spam.

mason jennings is no relation to either waylon or shooter. he's from pittsburgh originally, and moved to minneapolis in 1994. he got his start playing a standard thursday gig at a small bar in minneapolis, and by 1996 was playing to nearly full crowds at the pub on the campus of carleton college in northfield, mn, which is where i went to college and where i first heard mason. (by the time i got to carleton, 1000 people were packing into a pub firecoded for 450 to see him play. we adored him.)

he's been compared to a lot of people, because it's hard to describe mason's style. he's a little young dylan, a little young springsteen, a lot of tim (not jeff) buckley. mostly he plays the guitar, but he does a little on the piano and serialkarma compared his piano-based sound to rufus wainwright. (she also said, "he plays the piano like a guitar player", which is totally true.) he gets compared to jack johnson an awful lot, which pisses me off, because mason's sound is far more layered and deep than johnson's is.

if you like any of those guys - even johnson, i suppose, though i'm not wild about him myself - you might like mason.


ALL FILES ARE HOSTED ON MY WEBSPACE. RIGHT-CLICK-SAVE, and comment if you download anything. thanks. these files will be up for a week.

mason jennings (1997)

the first album, it has a full band sound but it's actually mason playing all the instruments. it was recorded in the basement of a house on lake street in minneapolis, and to this day contains some of my favorite songs, notably california (part two) and darkness between the fireflies. (i just realized today, marveling at how amateur this album sounds, in a lot of ways, that mason was only 21 or 22 when he recorded it; he was barely 23 when i started going to see him play.)

birds flying away (2000)

last album recorded with both long-time drummer chris stock and long-time bassist rob skoro, this is a much, much darker, more political album than the first album. i don't dislike any of mason's albums, but this is probably my least favorite studio album - and my favorite to hear live. there's something about the studio recordings that doesn't necessarily capture the energy underneath the darkness. still, birds flying away is the sexiest song in the history of ever, and train leaving gray will never fail to break my heart.

century spring (2002)

this album has come the closest to mason having commercial success; "living in the moment" got a reasonable amount of radio airplay, but the rest of the album doesn't sound much like that track, and so. *hands* this is the most mainstream of mason's albums, and also the biggest crowd killer live, because a lot of it is quiet and downtempo. i really like it, though, particularly sorry signs on cash machines.

simple life (2002)

the same spring as century spring, mason recorded an album solo, full of old tunes that he'd never recorded. it's a gold-mine of things that only existed in bootlegs from shows at the cave at carleton. it's all fantastic - it's hard to pick two. but, okay, let's say 12/8 time and summer dress.

use your voice (2004)

my favorite of all mason's albums. it's a fair mix of older stuff ("crown" is one of his oldest tunes, and he's been playing "drinking as religion" since at least 2000) and newer stuff. it's the album that sounds closest to the first album, sonically, and there's not a single track on it that i don't adore irrationally. but my favorites are southern cross and empire builder - at least today.

boneclouds (2006)

the new album, i want you guys to all go out and buy this one, so you only get one track (plus, i haven't hardly listened to it - i don't know what i think about it yet, much less what you should think about it *grin*), the first single: be here now. h and i heard this at the show in philly in february and thought it sounded thin with mason by himself, but add chris (on bass) and dave (on drums) and it's a totally different, awesome story.

live, off-the-cuff, and unrecorded

for me, mason is best live - he's funny and frequently chatty, and the music comes alive out of a studio. "you can't beat cupcakes" is the ultimate mason told-on-stage story, bits from a '99 cave show, and there's nothing to top better than that or joy, two tracks he's never recorded, played live.

there are a lot of mason boots up on the live music archive, if you're interested - there's a show from, um, the parrish in austin, 2004 or 2005, that's a pretty great show, though the sound quality leaves something to be desired. and mason's a big music trading supporter, if you hit the boards at his website you can find plenty of people willing to trade. and, ooooh, someone has been uploading old, old, old mason shows to the lma - the spring '98 cave show! the fall '99 gustavas show! maybe the 12/2001 olaf show will show up soon, i'd sacrifice babies for a copy of that show.


i am wretchedly, retardedly poor right now, and i haven't actually bought the new album yet; i went and fondled it at schoolkids records on my way home from work (and sweet-talked the manager out of one of the gorgeous black and white lithographs they're giving away with the album, because i am just that cute), and now we wait for payday. the boy got me an itunes gift certificate. the boy is the best EVER, and i love him to distraction.

and that, my kittens, is mason jennings. if you like him and want to see him on this tour, dates are here. mason's playing red rocks. i might have fallen over when i saw that. oh, my boy is going to get famous. \o/