Jason Molina, a Balladeer of Heartbreak, Dies at 39

[Matthew Kruk]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/arts/music/jason-molina-leader-of-magnolia-electric-band-dies-at-39.html?ref=obituaries

The New York Times
March 26, 2013
Jason Molina, a Balladeer of Heartbreak, Dies at 39
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

Jason Molina, an influential singer-songwriter whose relentlessly sad lyrics and
clear and urgent tenor defined the two alternative bands he led, the lo-fi
Songs: Ohia and the only slightly more energetic Magnolia Electric Co., died on
March 16 at his home in Indianapolis. He was 39.

His death was announced by his record label, Secretly Canadian. No cause was
given, but his brother, Aaron, said he had had health problems related to
alcoholism.

Before bearded banjo bands like Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers rode a
folk-rock revival to mainstream success, Mr. Molina was constructing spare songs
about 19th-century heartbreak and the despair of blue-collar workers, about
loneliness and bad weather and scarred landscapes in a fading Midwest.

"I don't really have any, you know, far-reaching vision, and never have outside
of just the songs themselves," he said in "Recording Josephine," a 2009
documentary about the making of a Magnolia Electric Co. album.

Mr. Molina made his first widely released recordings after he was signed by
Secretly Canadian, based in Bloomington, Ind., in 1996. He was the first artist
the label signed, and he went on to tour, write and record almost constantly
until 2009. Songs: Ohia, which consisted of Mr. Molina and a changing array of
other musicians, evolved into the more stable Magnolia Electric Co. in 2003. In
total, Mr. Molina released more than a dozen albums and several EP's, nearly all
on Secretly Canadian.

In 2011, his band's Web site announced that he had not been touring because he
had been undergoing rehabilitation treatment. Noting that he had no health
insurance, the site asked supporters to help pay his medical expenses.

Mr. Molina's songs, however bleak, were meticulously executed. Even critics who
needled him for wallowing in gloom - four of the seven songs on his 2002 album
"Didn't It Rain" had the word "blue" in the title - might go on to declare a
song spellbinding or magical.

In "Almost Was Good Enough," from 2003, Mr. Molina sang: "Did you really believe
that everyone makes it out?/Almost no one makes it out."

Chris Swanson, a founder of Secretly Canadian, said that although Mr. Molina did
not reach a mainstream audience, he toured extensively enough and sold enough
records - perhaps 20,000 to 25,000 a year - to make a living. And his followers
included better-known performers like the Avett Brothers, who shortly after his
death posted a tribute video in which they performed his 2005 song "Hammer
Down."

"He never needed to make a breakthrough record," Mr. Swanson said. "He could
indulge his muse without having to think about commercial reality."

Jason Andrew Molina was born on Dec. 30, 1973, in Oberlin, Ohio. He grew up in
nearby Lorain, in a single-wide mobile home on Lake Erie that had no reliable
television but offered excellent fishing. He learned to play guitar before he
was 10. He studied art at Oberlin College.

In addition to his brother, Mr. Molina's survivors include his wife, Darcie; a
sister, Ashley Lawson; and his father, William, a retired middle-school teacher.