Mason Jennings (photo: Blake Morneau)
Three. Three is the number of times I was brought to tears watching Mason Jennings play his guitar and sing his songs at his recent show in Victoria, BC. And this wasn’t a single tear in the eye kind of thing. This was some streaming, tears-in-the-beard shit.
Jennings writes such honest and direct songs that it’s hard to not be moved when he’s up there baring everything so nakedly. It was a small Sunday night crowd, but those that were there seemed to be as into it as I was; either singing along (mostly way out of tune) or listening intently, which is always an amazing feat for a single guy on a stage.
I remember reading an interview with Jennings some time ago in which he said that he puts together set lists trying to cover at least one song from each of his albums, so that even if you only own one of them, you’ll hear something you know, and, man, he ran through his stuff something fierce. His debut 1997 was repped with three choice cuts, including the timeless “Butterfly.” Everything between that and 2013’s Always Been got a bit of time, but the best cuts, or at least the ones that got the most response, came from the middle chunk of his career. “Crown,” with the refrain “I don’t wanna be together/I don’t wanna be apart/I don’t want none of this love for ya, honey, deep, deep down in my heart,” remains as poignant as ever, and “Jackson Square,” from Boneclouds, hit me harder than ever. That song in particular was responsible for the most powerful of the night’s aforementioned tear falls.
Jennings seemed a bit slowed by the less-than-capacity crowd, but wholly engaged by the time he offered a request slot for the encore. How he managed to pick song titles out of all the yelling is beyond me, though I know he wasn’t faking it, because he managed to hear the guy behind me request “Ballad for My One True Love,” one of the slowest songs in Mason’s catalogue. As he went to leave the stage after that track, he stopped and noted that he couldn’t end the show on such a down note, so we were treated to the more up-tempo “Fighter Girl,” a much better show closer for a show packed with choice cuts.
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