Premiere: Jason Sinkhorn | "My Last Folk Song"
Like so many other artists, Jason Sinkhorn thought 2020 was going to be a big year for his career. He says, “I thought it was going to be my year in the sense that I’d be playing live more, being more social with my music, revamping old songs and introducing new songs live. I was just gonna go for it.” The songs for the next project that he was considering had already been written by January or February. Those were songs he was taking to multi-instrumentalist and producer Severn Edmondson and everything was all done for the new project except to actually do it. Then March happened.
Jason says, “You’ve got all this time, it would be a shame not to come out with something, not to write something, not to have some sort of a project that you were able to do and capture this time. I wrote a song and put it out in May (“A Vision in 2020”) about the pandemic, social distancing and isolation. That stuff was so thick in the air that you couldn’t help but grab it and write a song about it.” But he wanted to write something new. “I was getting what I call ‘starter song lines’ but wasn’t able to expand on them much and getting very frustrated,” he says. “I had all these songs started, enough for two albums if the songs would grow. Eventually I said I’ve got all these lines and nothing’s happening. I’m just going to lump all these together and make these lines a song.” That song became “My Last Folk Song.”
“If there’s a heart and soul for the song at all it's gotta start and end with Harry Dean Stanton,” Jason explains. “A guy who I really just started to admire more about the time he passed away. I was just starting to binge any media with him and realizing he was not only one of the best character actors of our time or of all time, but an excellent musician, an intelligent individual, his philosophy on life and death. There’s a guy I wish I’d been able to meet.” Sinkhorn’s girlfriend made the comment about the “geometric train smoke” and Mr. Stanton and Jason had the platform on which to build his song.
“The meat of the song has to do with this period where I was not impressed with myself,” says Sinkhorn. “I had put out the Junction City and Demonstrations albums, some singles and other projects, but they were mostly older materials so when it came to new stuff I knew the sound had to be sonically different. I think I found it with this song in particular and going forward this cinematic sort of sound-scapey kind of thing is what complements the words for a lot of songs I’ll be putting out.”
“My Last Folk Song” marks Jason Sinkhorn’s change as an artist and musician. He says it will be his last recording for a while and his final mostly acoustic home production. When Jason thought 2020 was going to be a big year for his career, I don’t think a major change in sound was what he had in mind, but major changes for everyone has been the real story of 2020.
Watch the video for Jason’s new single, “My Last Folk Song” below:
