Ten years ago today, singer-songwriter Jason Molina died at 39. Despite releasing 19 LPs in 15 years, he never achieved mainstream success. MaxBlau eulogized him in this 2014 profile. Look back at the Magnolia Electric Co. frontman's life and legacy.
In 2005, Secretly Canadian poured substantial resources into the release ofto help Magnolia Electric Co. reach that kind of acclaim. Groth felt like they were on the verge of making that leap. As critics, he found the new attention simultaneously exciting and frightening. Instead of capitalizing on the momentum, Molina backed out of the spotlight, blowing off music journalists and refusing to sign long-term record contracts.
At Pop Montreal in October 2004, Molina consumed the better part of a bottle of Crown Royal alone as his bandmates went off to eat dinner. During the set, Molina crawled on his knees, toyed around with his monitors, and played songs hunched over between his stage speakers. He complained about the crowd and his alleged depression.
Magnolia Electric Co. in 2006; from left: Jason Evans-Groth, Mark Rice, Pete Schreiner, Michael Kapinus, and Jason MolinaIn 2007, Darcie Molina was offered an opportunity to work in London. Molina, who had studied in London one semester during his Oberlin years, initially embraced the opportunity to live abroad.
Nevertheless, the Avett Brothers, who were regularly selling out theaters and playing to 1,000-plus crowds each night, asked Magnolia Electric Co. to open a string of west-coast dates two months before“It was a huge deal for me to be playing alongside those guys,” says Scott Avett, who credits Molina’s plainspoken lyrical approach as a major inspiration behind, his band’s 2007 breakout record. “I dreamt about what the handbills looked like with Magnolia Electric Co. and the Avett Brothers.
Molina’s nosedive continued on Magnolia Electric Co.’s summer 2009 European tour. He had booked a tour bus instead of the typical passenger van. Groth thinks Molina wanted to ride in a bus to demonstrate the band’s success and to devote more time to songwriting on the road. But tensions rose inside the bus’s close quarters.
After the two embraced, Molina walked to a corner store and purchased a bottle of whiskey. The next day, while his friends went sightseeing around Istanbul, he drank alone inside his hotel room. “He’d wake up, drink, pass out, wake up, drink, pass out—all day, every day,” Darcie Molina recalls. “He was not a functioning human. He’d drink, smoke a cigarette, scream about something, pass out. Rinse. Repeat.”
In January 2013, Molina and I exchanged a few brief e-mails. I wanted to write about his road to recovery and asked if he would discuss his three years away from his music career. In response, he shrugged aside notions of his songwriting influence . “He said he was drinking the whole time,” Aaron Molina says of his brother. “It was almost like he had a psychiatric episode in the hospital and he never really recovered.”
And with good reason: train-station authorities soon found Molina’s abandoned luggage and cell phone, and dialed Schreiner, his most recent call, to report his lost belongings. “Treatment is good, getting to deal with a lot of things that even the music didn’t want to. I have not given up because you, my friends have not given up on me. . . . I am taking this in much smaller steps than I’m used to. Keep the lamps trimmed and burning!”Early one morning, Cargill and Groth convinced an inebriated Molina to get in a car to pick up a prescription for his fake shellfish allergy—his latest excuse in a long line of fictitious ailments.
Molina’s family sent him back to Indianapolis in April 2012 for his sixth rehab attempt. He gave little notice to his Bloomington friends of his return. In early May he wrote a blog post—a mini LP he had recorded for friend and artist Will Schaff’s long-awaited book, which was published that September.
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