The Wake

The story of Mason Jennings’ decade-long musical start is the picture of indie rock perfection. Through patience and restraint, he has nurtured a following all his own with no help from major labels. While many artists may stay as true to their artistic visions as Jennings, they’re usually too busy waiting tables to be heard of by the casual concert-goer.

Jennings grew up in Pittsburgh, but when he was 19, he came to Minneapolis as a high-school drop out to become part of its local music scene. Record companies offered him deals. Even a small label can make an offer that would tempt most young musicians to give up their artistic freedom. But they wanted to control him, make him sing with a band he didn’t know and market him as a young blues man. He passed up those deals; that just wasn’t for him. Even as a teenager, Jennings had the foresight to take it slow and stick to his own voice.

He strove to learn his craft of songwriting, and Jonny Lang became their blues man in his place.

“I played Jitters, that old place on Nicollet Mall every Thursday,” said Jennings. “And I had, like, a four-hour set, so I ended up doing, like, 60 songs. That really helped.”

After about three years of hard work and solitude, Jennings produced and released an eight-song, self-titled, self-pressed CD on which he sings original, often autobiographical songs and plays all the instruments.

Jennings’ initial fan base grew at the West Bank’s 400 Bar, where five years ago he played a winter’s worth of Thursday nights. More and more people filled the bar each week, and requests poured into Radio K. Along with Jennings’ popularity grew the reassurance that independent musicians can survive and Minneapolis is one place they can flourish. Local music pundits grappled with his draw, chalking it up to a certain indescribable something.

As an artist, Jennings told No Depression magazine that “the purpose of music, of art, is to try to make yourself the person you want to be in the world. I’m singing to try to heal, not to get a record deal.” As a fan, I learned from Mason Jennings when you witness a meaningful work of art, it describes something inside of you that you didn’t know was there. Once that happens to you, I don’t care if you’re a hardened critic or an innocent ear, you’re hooked for life.

Every artist must decide how much soul to bear. Doing easy work results in a lack of depth and meaning but drawing from highly personal joys and regrets might involve the risk of alienating the audience. Jennings has always taken the second option but, instead of obscure lyrics, his are illuminating and the themes nearly universal.

One example of the impact of Jennings’ intuitive lyrics was when, in early December 2002, a sold-out crowd at First Avenue experienced unexpected catharsis as he eulogized Senator Wellstone and his wife in “The Ballad of Paul and Sheila.” He started out, “October morning, little plane on the forest floor / Up on the TV between a rerun and another war.” Silence fell over the packed club. “Hey, Senator, I wanna say / all the things you fought for did not die here today.” A young audience stood in tears. As his fourth album is released, that humble, human connection is still the magic behind Jennings’ loyal following.

Jennings encourages that and a lot of downloading. “I think its cool, I mean, full out,” he said. “It’s amazing to me, because what’s happened with the radio and television and magazines right now is that it’s owned by so few people. And it’s so homogenized, like everywhere in the country it’s exactly the same. But the Internet allows you to hear new stuff. That’s the only way I’m able to do this for a living, is just if people hear my stuff and can share it with their friends. So I’m super thankful for it.”

He feels that, like eight-track tapes, CDs are on the way out, and major record labels with them. He has an almost Utopian prediction of a world without deified, “overblown” pop stars and a return of regional flavor to music. “It brings it back to the live shows being really important, and it brings it down to actually relating to artists as individuals,” he said. “In the next step it’ll be about people from different cities kind of rising up and just being like community figures.”

In the mean time, Jennings is expanding his reach nationally and globally. He’s toured in Europe and Australia, and several times in the United States. Attendance at his shows continues to increase, and although he’s playing bigger and bigger venues, he tries to maintain a simple, personal stage presence. “I try not to think of it as any different. Like at first, when I started doing that, I’m like, ‘God, I gotta do something different, like play electric guitar or get, like, shiny shirts or something,’” Jennings said. “And then I’m like, ‘That’s stupid. I should just be myself. So I got over that really fast. I just gotta do what I do and hope it works out.’”

His advice to young musicians in Minneapolis is just to get out there and do it. “Nothing can happen if you’re in your bedroom by yourself. Even though you’re not perfected yet, just get out there and practice and do it in front of people.”