Review: Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co. at The Grey Eagle

I’ve enjoyed seeing a good run of great alt-country in recent weeks at various Asheville venues. First there was Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band on Dec. 1 at the AyurPrana Listening Room with my Asheville Stages cohort Jonny Leather. Then came a superb solo performance from Drive-By Trucker Mike Cooley on Dec. 9 at The Grey Eagle. And back at The Grey Eagle on Dec. 12, the eve of Warren Haynes’ Christmas Jam, I got to join a sold-out standing room only crowd in greeting the re-formed, rebuilt Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co., at The Grey Eagle, where the band more than lived up to its legacy of haunting, high-vaulted, high-tilt, gothic alt-country. The whole thing was a wild and twisting fusion of tribute and reawakening. As special guest MJ Lenderman would put it: “This is fucking crazy.”

But more on that later.

Twelve years after the passing of bandleader and songwriter Jason Molina, Magnolia Electric Co. (and before that, Songs: Ohia), remains a bedrock presence in the alt-country cannon. Molina was a beast of a songwriter, famously leaning into isolation and darkness that, when wrapped in the winding, towering strength of the six-piece band that would become Magnolia Electric Co., carved out a near-mythical presence that continues to endure (and possibly grow stronger) with age. This band’s lore is long, and interpretations run deep — people take this band personally.

But it did seem, for some time, that we would never hear them live again. Then, earlier this year, the band announced it was bringing on Will Johnson to cover lead vocals in the newly christened Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co. 

Johnson, with his own storied resume — including vocals for Centro-matic, solo projects, and a current place in Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit — has built a seat among the world of top-tier moody, introspective songwriters and musicians. The tap on Johnson’s shoulder wasn’t a random chance either: he and Molina were friends and collaborators, having released the album Molina and Johnson in 2009. Two of that project’s songs would be re-recorded by Johnson and the band and released alongside a reworking of 2005’s “The Big Beast” on an EP earlier this year, right as Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co. announced its pending tour.

The truly good news is that Johnson’s voice — raw, weighty, and rasping — slides right into the kind of pining melancholy that Molina wrote and the swirling cloudscape that Magnolia Electric Co. plays. Johnson can do forlorn just fine, and the resulting reaction between this singer and this band is one that generates heat: at once fire and smolder — broad, wide, and atmospheric.

There is no way to know how many of those at The Grey Eagle on Dec. 12 listened to that EP, but the pre-show buzz was full of reminisces and speculation about both what had been and what was to come.

Right from the opening tendrils of Mike Brenner’s lap steel and Jason Groth’s lead guitar on “I’ve Been Riding with the Ghost,” the second track off the 2003 eponymous Magnolia Electric Co., there was no mistaking who this band is.

“I ain't getting better/I am only getting behind/I am standing on a crossroad trying to make up my mind,” Johnson sang, wrapping up the verse by barking out the refrain “Now something’s got to change,” and plenty in the crowd barked right along with him.

Without aping Molina’s warbling croon, Johnson still preserved the late singer’s inflections and emphases, spitting the flaming lyrics, “Swing the heaviest hammer you got/Hit this one out of the park/John Henry split my heart,” on 2003’s “John Henry Split My Heart,” and embracing the somber sigh of 2005’s “Hard to Love a Man,” singing: “In a life built out of only goodbye/Is there even room for you to try?”

Both “Twenty Cycles to the Ground” and “Wooden Heart,” from the bands’ recent EP release, showed up early on, and the two songs fit seamlessly into the older catalog, hinting that there is more material for this band to mine.

Johnson wasn’t the only one to take a turn at the mic. Bassist (and Asheville’s own) Pete Schreiner sang 2005’s “North Star,” dubbed by Groth the band’s “pop song.” Drummer Mark Rice took the lead on 1999’s “Hot Black Silk,” and Groth himself would sing on 2009’s “O! Grace,” which features perhaps one of the most Magnolia Electric Company sounding lines ever written: “I’ve been as lonesome as the world’s first ghost.”

But a true Asheville tribute show always calls for that extra something. And this night, that extra something was a second set appearance from Jake “MJ” Lenderman, who joined in as the third guitar on 2002’s “Blue Factory Flame,” then took on lead vocals for the essential “The Dark Don’t Hide It,” (2005) and “Just Be Simple,” (2003), of which he recorded a version of for this year’s I Will Swim to You: A Tribute to Jason Molina. He would follow that with “Blue Chicago Moon,” from 2002, about which Groth would say, “When I want people to know Jason, that is the song I play them, so I appreciate Jake requesting it.”

In all, the night felt like a long overdue release for fans of a band that, even though it sings plenty about the dark, the moon, and the night, will not go gently there. They prefer to tear a hole through it.

And though the encores (including a band-tradition dip into “Silent Night” leading into “Whip-Poor-Will”) capped a truly great show, for my money the true pinnacle was its second set wrap up: a top notch rendition of “Farewell Transmission,” with another one of the most Magnolia Electric Company sounding lines ever written: “Mama here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws.” It’s a song I never expected to hear live, and one that both is gospel among fans and a gateway to newcomers that ended with the slow beat of Rice’s drums and the audience whispering along with Johnson as he repeated the last word over and over again:

“Listen.”

Will there be more coming from Magnolia and Johnson Electric Co.? Who knows? But for now, for a fanbase that has been without a live show for more than a decade and a band currently reclaiming its ground, this is perhaps the only instruction we need. 

(Photos by Micah Rogers)