There must be something unbelievably bittersweet in releasing a piece of art into the world knowing that one of your greatest instructors in the form will not see it. Jason Wilber, guitarist for a quarter-century for the late John Prine, is releasing his latest record this Friday, and Time Traveler strikes a poignant tone that serves listeners in lock-down well, and especially so for those of us who were fans of John Prine. Wilber is his own man, of course, but the influence of the late singer is palpable here, you know?
The music here is uniformly introspective and in debt as much to John Prine as it is to Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, and, according to the song notes, Leonard Cohen and Steve Goodman. Wilber is a warm singer, and one who just might be more accessible as a vocalist than some of those names, while his musicianship is necessarily astute. "Poet's Life" and "The Old Ones are down-tempo gems, inward-looking and expansive all at once, while "The Disappearance of Bigfoot" marries a dash of humor to the folk-rock here. "Living in Space" is full of yearning, as is the superb "If We Were Free", a song that's about a love affair but could, heard now, just as easily be about being in quarantine.
While Jason Wilber plays nearly everything here, layering each track with simple-yet-effective guitar-lines, the violin of Susan Anderson and the cello of Shannon Hayden add some extra punctuation to the affecting tunes. And the production by Paul Mahern suits songs as dissimilar as the title track and the sparse "April and Autumn", a really lovely number. Time Traveler doesn't vary the mood too much throughout its running time, but Wilber does this sort of thing so very well that it would be petty to wish he'd change it up too much.
All that being said, the bonus Honey Bee EP does feature a clutch of tracks that are more jaunty, and those are excellent, but Jason Wilber really manages to do so much with such simple presentations all throughout Time Traveler that I'm sort of surprised how much I enjoyed this. Stylistically, this is a tiny bit outside my normal range of material, but I still found myself sinking into this album and losing myself in it. Jason Wilber has a natural grace to both his singing and playing that should earn this a lot of attention from attentive fans.
More details on Jason Wilber and the Time Traveler album and the Honey Bee EP via the official website, or the official Facebook page.
[Photo: WilberTone Records]