Writing Obsessions
Erin Osmon - Jason Molina: Riding with the Ghost. Just last night, after finishing this biography, I heard a podcaster, out of the blue, sum up Jason Molina’s life like this: He died too young, and many of his songs seem to prophesize his death. It’s kind of creepy, sure, but in truth Molina wrote the blues, and the blues is at its core the lament of death.
This book follows the life of one of my favorite artists with an intimate angle: A plethora of interviews, blog posts, and lyrics tell his story. But it's impossible to derive the “true” Jason Molina from any of these sources. He was known as a tall-tale teller and a weird pirate cosplayer, a ghost out of history and a globetrotter who was never satisfied with just one life, one truth. He was a lot.
Molina began playing music as a child, before graduating into the DIY Ohio music scene. He would come to be something of an indie rock and roll legend, and your favorite singer songwriter’s favorite singer songwriter. In the process he wrote thousands of songs, the majority never released.
I put together a Spotify playlist compiling all of the lyrics discussed in this book. It's an important companion piece to get a real sense of his chronology… And if you aren’t into reading, or lack 20 bucks, the playlist is a great way to get a sense of his musical evolution… From the embryonic folk singer, to the blues hall-of-famer, all the way to the final croons he released in the throes of his slow death.
James Baldwin- Sonny's Blues. Jazz is one of the dearest things to my heart which I don’t enounce enough. It's always disappearing and reappearing. My parents have played jazz for me since I was young, and somehow even earlier… (I heard lots of music in the womb!) but I rarely get to talk about it. It's a unique kind of art in its spontaneity. With such looseness and bending of traditional rules, you might compare it to free form poetry.
I’m not great with free form poetry. I strive to inhabit that level of loose, controlled chaos that masters like Coltrane and Monk embodied. Not just in music, or art en generale, but in the way I live!
The short story (26 pages) Sonny’s Blues is about the trials of a life lived so freely. Restraint is a virtue that many of the masters did not have. Why do you think they were so often killed by their vices?
But it’s also about much, much more. James Baldwin is, in my heart, the most important writer of the mid 20th century. He has much to say about the Black experience that you can’t glean from just history books. Baldwin lived it! And he writes with so much passion that you can easily imagine the characters of Sonny’s Blues being real people out of history. Their highs and lows are shockingly realistic.
Just like jazz, this story often returns to me when I’m in dark times. If you are into short stories, Black history, empathy, jazz, or even just music, you owe it to yourself to read Sonny’s Blues. I hope it touches your heart like it did mine.
Tucker Zimmerman - Biography I & II. You have never heard of Tucker Zimmerman, and this is a great shame… The ultimate sadness of this biography... I happened upon it by chance and devoured the whole thing in an evening (Roughly 80 pages of pure biographic action! Sheesh!). But, in short, he’s a musician who grew up in the 1950s near L.A. He’s one of those invisible masters close to popular music of the time who never quite reached stardom.
The entertainment system is such a terrifying circus of chance. Zimmerman gave it a go with a very strong array of songs in the ‘60s/'70s. Some were protest songs, others were ballads, but most were little whimsical musings about the world-- This is the stuff folk music is built on. However, Zimmerman was once called “too qualified for folk” by David Bowie, and he wasn’t incorrect. He never had even one hit song.
Ol’ TZ comes from a background worlds apart from folk musicians of the time. And his repertoire of sounds reflects that! From folk, to blues, jazz, and classical piano, to straight poetry, TZ has never stuck to one sound. He strikes me as something of a contrarian: While influenced by popular sounds, never submitting to them fully. A face that hasn’t sold out.
The biography is very tender, telling the story of one man’s long history with music and all the friends and mentors who have enabled it. Some of Zimmerman’s achievements are spectacular. I would like to be a bit like him when I grow up.
From here on I will be repping Zimmerman hard (At least ‘till he stops collabing with Big Thief). But seriously, please read this if you are into music history, song writing, your uncle, friendship, or bildungsroman.