Record of the Month Curator

I just finished driving from Florida to Ontario, so I got some quality highway time with Jason’s latest, Foxes in the Snow. It’s as fine and impressive a work as he’s produced. He and his co-pilot, Gena Johnson, are a special tandem. I’m fortunate to know this first hand. 

Nobody, least of all Jason, needs me to label him one of the great songwriters we’ve all been lucky enough to have as a contemporary. What’s most interesting to me, but maybe ineffable, is the how. He’s both a magician and a carpenter. He knows the saw-the-person-in-half trick, but he also built the box. He knows where the levers and wires are and how to draw your eyes away from them, while he cloaks them in the dimmer light and shadows. His turn-of-phrase is often sleight-of-hand. Lyrics hairpin from tender to razor-sharp and back.   

All songwriters tell their own stories, even when they’re making up a fiction out of whole cloth. The artifice is making the personal, universal. They say magicians never reveal their tricks. It was rewarding listening to Jason show us a few new ones he’s picked up along the way. I’ll keep trying to figure out how he finds so many rabbits in that hat. Congrats, Jason.