sarah tillman

Jason Molina’s Magnolia Electric Company just released the Sojourner box set on Secretly Canadian. It comes in a wooden box. He speaks now from London. This interview by Nikki Darling.

During every interview, I usually have one question that is the same—something silly and light that I think will bring out some personality of the band or get a good story. Lately I’ve been asking bands a variation of ‘If you could have written any other song, what song would you have written?’ Or ‘if you could be in any band what band would that be?’ And this question has seemed to irritate almost everyone. So rather than ask you the same question, I’d like to know why you think people are responding so strongly.
Well, it’s a stupid question. It’s impossible to be in the head of someone else who makes art—you’re only left with the relic of their art, so it’s like looking at a painting and going. ‘I wish I had done it,’ but you didn’t do the work. If you have the ability to write a song or paint a painting or write a book, then do it. It’s your responsibility as an artist to create it. It’s your job to write good songs or write a good book or make good art—there are thousand of songs that I wish I had written, but I didn’t, so I can’t even put myself in that place. It’s ridiculous to think that way. If I could have, than why didn’t I? I don’t think I have made a great song yet myself, so I cant imagine what it’s like to be in Led Zeppelin or to have written “Kashmir.”
I actually got the question from an interview with Paul McCartney in Time and not only did he answer the question happily, but he had a quite a long list of songs.
Two things—he also wrote some of the shittiest music ever recorded. I mean—some great songs, too, but a lot of really bad stuff. And I bet if you went back and looked at the interview before it was edited, it didn’t read the way it was printed. I almost guarantee you that it was edited in a way that doesn’t represent what he was trying to say. [L.A. RECORD stands proudly by this guarantee – ed.] And if he seemed to not really care while doing the interview, he may or may not have felt like a fraud saying those things. But I sure would.
I read that metal is what got you into music—do you still listen to it now?
I wouldn’t really call it that. I was really into AC/DC and some heavier seventies jam bands and glam—David Bowie, T. Rex, stuff like that. And Patti Smith. Metal is a generic label for music that is heavy. Bands like Roxy Music have very sophisticated sounds and sophisticated music and so I wouldn’t say that specifically. I’ve focused on one particular kind of music for a long amount of time in the past, though. Sometimes I’ll go a year without listening to anything except pre-war blues from like the 1930s and try to see what they were trying to achieve.
Are people still constantly comparing you to Will Oldham?
Will was instrumental in putting out my first record. I’d say in the last six years I’ve heard it a bit, but I think people who listen to my music don’t think that. Journalists who get their information from reading other interviews online, I’d say yeah. It’s annoying but people who actually do their research and do it well know that I don’t think that’s really an issue. And I don’t think Will would have worked with me and made a record with me if he thought that.
What’s something you’re surprised nobody has ever asked you in an interview?
Interviews are just a part of the routine when you do a tour and make a new record and it’s often really depressing to have a conversation with a person for an hour who hasn’t even listened to the album that we’re supposed to be talking about. And since no one has sat down and tried to do a biography on me and asked the harder questions, it’s difficult to sit and try and talk about the music.
So you think music journalists should only discuss music? I always ask personal questions.
It would depend on what the context of the interview was about and if I had an infinite amount of time—I might be interested in talking about more abstract stuff. For my money, it’s all in the music anyway. When I get to this point, I feel like I’ve done my job already. Unless I don’t have to run off and do a sound check or something.
Do you think a journalist has the right to ask you personal questions? I think musicians come to interviews expecting to be screwed over and so they have an automatic antagonism toward the writer. But just how you’ve done hundreds of interviews and have a list of grievances about the process, I’ve done many interviews myself and also have my own list.
I don’t think it’s something as simple as a right. I feel like if I’m going to set myself up in a position as fielding questions—if you’re a good writer, you’re a good journalist, and I think if you do your job well, then there wont be any antagonism. But I don’t think it comes down to rights. And I don’t put that kind of effort in it. I’m a scholar of a lot different kinds of journalism, and I read long-form music essays and that kind of thing is great. And I know what history has put up for journalists in terms of difficulty and misunderstanding. The truly beautiful music writing is just unedited interviews with musicians, and I don’t even know how many times I’ve seen what I’ve said edited so badly that it just makes me seem like an idiot. [“The Byrds” by Bud Scoppa in Twenty-Minute Fandangos And Forever Changes, ed. Jonathan Eisen, Vintage, 1971] It’s so frustrating and it’s not even that the interviewer did it on purpose—it’s that they had to get a formulaic answer to a badly constructed question. It’s much easier to paraphrase—to fit in the answer you need.
How do you separate Jason Molina and the Magnolia Electric Company?
There’s no difference except that at times I have this wonderful pool of musicians who want to come in and help me on the road and help me in the studio and put in hundreds and hundreds of hours. And I don’t have to have an agenda when I work with these guys. With Magnolia, if you want to stay, you can stay. And with me, I’m able to just put the guitar in the back of the car and go on tour—self reliance. And with bands, when you go on tour, you just sort of disintegrate. So it’s important to me to be able to be able to just go. There are strict jobs that are delegated in a band, and I think that it puts too much pressure on the creative way I work. I write the songs and just do them on my own—there doesn’t have to be drums on a record. It can just be piano and voice sometimes. I’m not working with a band that has an exact kind of vital line-up—it should be something that stands on its own.
What is one skill you wish you had and why?
The ‘why’ is because I’ve been a professional musician for so long, and I’ve been out of the day-to-day life—I’d be out of my home 200 days at a time, maybe—so I’d be so content if I could just do a decent barbecue.

MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC COMPANY PERFORMS THURS., SEPT. 6, WITH GOLDEN BOOTS AND SECRETARY BIRD AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 9 PM / $12 / 18+. WWW.ATTHEECHO.COM.