Jack Symes

When Mason Jennings started writing songs for his new record, Songs From When We Met, he was in a setting he had never written in before. I was living out at a farm for a month and walking through some old woods on the property every day. There was a river. And each day an owl would come find me, and then perch above me, day or night. I saw lots of snakes. Songs just came to me there. They were coming in so fast they just about took my head off. It was unlike anything Ive experienced before, recalls Jennings. In Native American animal medicine snakes symbolize rebirth, owls symbolize seeing what others cannot and turning darkness into light. Both are themes throughout the album and the music has a clear hopeful feeling.Songs From When We Met pulls you in from the start, with Jennings telling the listener, Get into my car now...lets leave the city. Cursive Prayers is the first song I wrote for the album. I hadnt written anything in a long time and any time I tried writing things I wrote were very dark. This song is so hopeful and full of love it surprised me. I think it was the beginning of things getting better in my life, like a message from another dimension.