Career
Mason's popularity rose after Sean Foley, associate of musician Conor Oberst, discovered his music on a local Martha's Vineyard Radio broadcast. Oberst would soon sign Mason to his new record label, Team Love and release his debut album. Since then, he has toured with the likes of Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Death Cab for Cutie, Ben Kweller, Unbusted, and Radiohead and played such venues as the Glastonbury Festival, South by Southwest and most recently Marlay Park as a support act for Damien Rice. On July 3, 2010 he played at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, opening for Norah Jones.
His first commercial release was a five-track EP, known as the G-Ma's Basement EP. This included solo acoustic recordings of "Live It Up", "Hard Hand to Hold", "Waiter at the Station", "Not Lie Down" and "Oxygen". The CD was sold during 2004 live appearances and on the internet.
In the summer months of 2004 Mason and his brother Sam traveled to Old Soul Studios in the Catskill Mountains, New York to record the debut album, Where the Humans Eat. Recording sessions were mostly live, in no more than three takes, featuring Willy Mason's guitar and vocals, and Sam Mason on the drums. Minimal overdubs of guitar, bass and other instruments were added later. The album was released on Conor Oberst's Team Love label in the U.S.A in October 2004, and by Virgin Records in the UK in February 2005. Where the Humans Eat and its singles ("Oxygen" and "So Long"), charted in the UK Singles Chart and Albums Chart in 2005.
In 2004, he toured the United States. After many live appearances throughout 2004 and 2005, culminating with a performance at the Glastonbury Festival, Mason took time off and returned to his family's home on Martha's Vineyard. He began writing new songs and put a band together, featuring Nina Violet on viola and backing vocals, and Zak Borden on mandolin. In early 2006, they began touring the US and Europe, along with other musicians. He supported Beth Orton, KT Tunstall, Radiohead, and Sondre Lerche.
Mason released his second album, If the Ocean Gets Rough, in March 2007. He provided vocals for the track "Battle Scars" on The Chemical Brothers' album We Are the Night. The song "Pickup Truck," recorded live at Aboveground Records in Edgartown, Massachusetts, is included on Radio Waves, Vol. 1, a compilation album of music from Martha's Vineyard, and released on June 29, 2007 to help purchase transmitting equipment for a new community radio station.
Mason toured small venues in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland in 2011, and during the tour he recorded a live session at 80 Hertz Studios in The Sharp Project, Manchester. Mason featured in "No Room For Doubt", from Lianne La Havas' EP Lost & Found (and subsequently her debut album Is Your Love Big Enough?) which was released on October 21, 2011 on the Labour of Love label. The single "We Can Be Strong" was featured in the series finale of the British sitcom Fresh Meat in late 2011.
On September 21, 2012, Mason announced the release of his third album Carry On. It will be released on December 3, and will be his first album released on Fiction Records. To accompany the album, Mason will be touring the UK at five venues in the first week of December.
Mason is currently on tour with Ben Howard as from 2nd November until 30th November as a supporting act.
Read more about this topic: Willy Mason
Famous quotes containing the word career:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
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—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)