Mason Jennings recently signed over to Jack Johnson's homespun label, Brushfire Records, and is releasing his new album with them later this year. He's just one of a few recent artists to jump on the Brushfire bus, including Ray Barbee, Neil Halstead (of Mojave 3), and Rogue Wave (previously on Sub Pop). Mason's also on the bill for the Kokua Festival this summer, along with Jack, Dave Matthews, and some other familiar faces.
The shift makes a lot of sense for Mason, who released his last album, Boneclouds, on the Epic imprint, Glacial Pace Records - which met with mixed feelings from many fans. I for one, love that album - but it was a definite departure from his earlier work, and sounded much more produced than what we'd come to expect from the largely do-it-yourself musician (who wrote, produced, performed and recorded his first album all by himself in '98). Now his move to Brushfire may put him back in the driver seat when it comes to control during recording - as he jumps in line with such grassroots artists like Matt Costa, G. Love and Mr. Johnson himself.
So we'll just have to wait and see what happens - until then, here's a song from Mason's eponymous first record. In it he muses about making the move to the Golden State, but asserts that he's 'gonna stay away from LA / I'm staying far away from there / I'm going north of San Francisco / into the cleaner air'. Ironically, it happens that Brushfire's new studio is located in Los Angeles - but never fear Mason, the new studio is completely solar powered, doing its part to keep that air clean (in fact, here's a pretty cool article about it).
1 comment:
such a tender little song
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