Jason Wilber: Time Traveler
Some songwriters are great storytellers. They can spin a tale that carries you along through many verses and when you get to the end you have been taken to a new place. Some songwriters are clever wordsmiths making you laugh out loud with funny rhymes and keen observations. Some songwriters are painters who can create a picture in your mind with just a few lines or the perfect word. Jason Wilber is a songwriter who can do all of that and more. Jason Wilber is a poet. Any number of his lyrics can be read straight from the page with no musical accompaniment and they stand alone as works of art.
Jason says, “I like all kinds of songs but one of the kinds I like is a song not necessarily a narrative about something and there’s not necessarily a message in it. It’s just sort of some shapes or images or scenes that seem to relate to each other in some sort of a structure or equation.” Many of Wilber’s lyrics read like that. They are poems that allow you to form a complete image without giving you every detail. “The verses don’t necessarily tell a story” he adds. “Sometimes they’re telling you things that sound funny or random, but when you get the balance of everything right it creates a cool thing that works in its own way.”
The songs of Time Traveler do just that. They allow you to adapt the lyrics to your own reality. Is the man in “Living in Space” really on a distant planet or is he just isolated from his family in some other place here on Earth or is it all in his mind? Is the evil creature in “Spider” a symbol of Satan and his pursuit of mankind or is it a metaphor about the internet and how the “web” has wrapped up so many people in a false digital reality or is it the Coronavirus and how the world is caught up in fear over something they can’t see, or do you feel your own personal spider? Every song can mean something different to each listener.
The topics aren’t all heavy and hard-hitting, though. There are songs about beauty and love and nature and family and even some lighter moments; especially “All I’ve Got Left is Time,” the song that wraps up the album and recalls the sound of John Prine.
Jason spent nearly 25 years playing guitar alongside Prine. “His lyrics and his music aren’t like some sort of a put-on; they’re not like a character that he made up or a voice that he wrote in,” he says of the man who gave us so many of the greatest songs of a generation. “That’s just the way he wrote and the songs he performed were very much in keeping with his personality and how he thought about things. I just think it’s really cool when someone makes really great music that also comes from a really unique authentic place in their personality.”
As a production, Time Traveler is deceptively simple. Just Jason’s pure voice over an acoustic guitar with the occasional string accompaniment. But a closer listen uncovers Wilber’s incredible guitar work and the perfect touches of Susan Anderson’s violin and the cello of Shannon Hayden. It all accentuates the lyrics which are the heart of the album.
Time Traveler is Jason Wilber’s ninth solo record, but for the first time he won’t be devoting the majority of his efforts supporting another artist, but instead wholly focused on his own music. He has learned much from John Prine both as a musician and a person. We would all do well to listen to what Jason has to say.
