Mason Jennings
8-18-2022
"I love song craft," says longtime folksinger Mason Jennings, who's spent the bulk of the past 25 years onstage and in the writing room. "A song is like a boat on the water, and you're trying to make it float using as few pieces as you can. If you do it right, a song can be very healing. This album feels that way to me. It's a love letter to songwriting." He's talking about "Real Heart," his fourteenth solo album. Jennings calls it "the unabashed folk record that I have been wanting to make for years," pointing to the project's warm mix of acoustic guitar, unforced vocals, and autobiographical lyrics. At the same time, Real Heart also reaches beyond the genre's boundaries, making room for nuanced layers of horns, strings, and piano. The result is a record that both reclaims and redefines Mason Jennings' role as a leading light in the folk community, with production from Malfunkshun's Regan Hagar and Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard.
Jennings began recording the album at his lake house outside St. Paul, Minnesota, strumming each song while staring at the water outside. "I live in a house that's all glass windows, and I'd stare at the big lake while tracking these songs," he explains. "I used one microphone and kept everything very basic, and that's a big part of the record's vibe. It also has songs about dreams, demons, and me coming to terms with different things in my life," he adds, "like getting in touch with that wounded, childlike part of myself that needs to be heard and healed and reparented. To really listen to what my inner child has to say and to honor him and give him the unconditional love he never got. Because, as I have learned the hard way, if I can't love myself, I can't love others."
Real Heart broadens its reach with horns, strings, and other overdubs that were added at Stone Gossard's Studio Litho in Seattle. The song, Real Heart, transforms itself from a stark piano ballad into a warm piece of orchestral pop, while "On the Brink" mixes an anthemic folk melody with keyboards and light blasts of brass. Backed by lyrics that are as bold as the arrangements themselves, Real Heart is an album for the modern moment, charting one man's journey toward stability during uniquely rocky times. "We're only as strong as our weakest link when we're stranded here together on the brink," he sings during "On the Brink," either talking to a lover or to the world at large. Either way, it's good advice, and it's that rare balance — between the intimate and the universal, the traditional and the progressive, the stripped-back and the fully fleshed-out — that gives Real Heart its potent punch.
"I love song craft," says longtime folksinger Mason Jennings, who's spent the bulk of the past 25 years onstage and in the writing room. "A song is like a boat on the water, and you're trying to make it float using as few pieces as you can. If you do it right, a song can be very healing. This album feels that way to me. It's a love letter to songwriting." He's talking about "Real Heart," his fourteenth solo album. Jennings calls it "the unabashed folk record that I have been wanting to make for years," pointing to the project's warm mix of acoustic guitar, unforced vocals, and autobiographical lyrics. At the same time, Real Heart also reaches beyond the genre's boundaries, making room for nuanced layers of horns, strings, and piano. The result is a record that both reclaims and redefines Mason Jennings' role as a leading light in the folk community, with production from Malfunkshun's Regan Hagar and Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard.
Jennings began recording the album at his lake house outside St. Paul, Minnesota, strumming each song while staring at the water outside. "I live in a house that's all glass windows, and I'd stare at the big lake while tracking these songs," he explains. "I used one microphone and kept everything very basic, and that's a big part of the record's vibe. It also has songs about dreams, demons, and me coming to terms with different things in my life," he adds, "like getting in touch with that wounded, childlike part of myself that needs to be heard and healed and reparented. To really listen to what my inner child has to say and to honor him and give him the unconditional love he never got. Because, as I have learned the hard way, if I can't love myself, I can't love others."
Real Heart broadens its reach with horns, strings, and other overdubs that were added at Stone Gossard's Studio Litho in Seattle. The song, Real Heart, transforms itself from a stark piano ballad into a warm piece of orchestral pop, while "On the Brink" mixes an anthemic folk melody with keyboards and light blasts of brass. Backed by lyrics that are as bold as the arrangements themselves, Real Heart is an album for the modern moment, charting one man's journey toward stability during uniquely rocky times. "We're only as strong as our weakest link when we're stranded here together on the brink," he sings during "On the Brink," either talking to a lover or to the world at large. Either way, it's good advice, and it's that rare balance — between the intimate and the universal, the traditional and the progressive, the stripped-back and the fully fleshed-out — that gives Real Heart its potent punch.