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The Masons
Let You Down Easy
July 24, 2007 – 75orless Records

On one very rare night out (he now had a family) at a bar in Providence, Kraig Jordan ran into an old friend who told him, “Hey, I’ve been looking for you. I want to put your next record out.” Flattered but slightly stunned, since Kraig had not released a record since The Masons’ Change Me Back in 1999, Kraig agreed, and the next few months of his life became a flurry of all-night mixing sessions, sorting through endless cassettes and close to fifty half-written songs, and spending days in his garage-turned-studio with friends/band mates until each song on Let You Down Easy was ready to go.

The friend was 75orless skipper Mark MacDougall, who never once faltered in his belief in Kraig Jordan’s music. Now that The Masons’ new album is finished, he is just as excited if not more than Kraig about getting it out for others to hear. With such a fantastic array of song styles, you might wonder how they all ended up on the same album, so here is the story of how Let You Down Easy came to be:

Kraig Jordan has been playing, writing, and recording music since he was ten years old. First he had a guitar and played clarinet, then he got a 4-track at fourteen and the addiction was born. He had hours of music on cassette at home, but instead of sharing them, he played minor parts in bands for many years. Finally, in the 1990’s, Kraig played some of his music for friends and they suggested he turn them into an album, so he quit the other bands and started getting songs together.

The next step was a name. As Kraig gracefully puts it, “There is nothing worse than a bad band name. The world is full of bad band names.” The year he was working on his album his grandfather passed, and Kraig realized, as a bunch of old men ceremoniously and bizarrely chanted over the dead body about how they were all going to die someday, that his grandfather had been a Mason. It was perfect – it was a name that didn’t give anything away. It stuck.

In 1999, The Masons first album Change Me Back was released. The album was well liked locally and sold a few, but overall The Masons stayed an East Coast one-album phenomenon. Kraig never stopped writing, though. In fact, over the next seven years, he amassed around fifty partial songs, none of which he actually intended to release. Writing is almost a reflex for him, a way of putting his ideas down; if something seems worthy of remembering, Kraig will write a song about it, whether its simply a melody, or an entire story set to music.

For this album, Kraig picked songs he could “finish” and chose his final fourteen tracks based on cohesiveness of themes versus sound. Thusly, the songs range from sounding like ELO to Leonard Cohen to Devo to Television to Camper van Beethoven and beyond. Comparisons have been made to Ween, although Kraig is slightly less silly and could never pull off a Ween-like set with a straight face like they do… Kraig chose the song order based on the concept behind the white album (not that he harbors any delusions of being like those mop heads): mixing slow and fast, ending the album on a high note, a note of satisfaction and happiness.

One particularly endearing song is “Theo,” which began as a reluctant dog-sitting gig; Kraig and his wife fell in love with his sister-in-law’s dog while he was staying over and filmed him. The film was edited together and through a strange sequence of events ended up in a film festival. “Theo” was the soundtrack.

Putting the album together was not simple – Kraig spent his savings, thankfully not too much to the chagrin of his lovely wife, turning their garage into a recording studio. Players on the album include Dave Narcizo (Throwing Muses) on drums, friend and collaborator Don Sanders (Medicine Ball) on guitar and vocals, Jeffrey Underhill (Velvet Crush) on guitar and keys, Kraig’s recording mentor and mixing master Scott Rancourt on bass, Dave Wall on guitar, and Sarah Lupo on vocals for the “dead boyfriend track,” “Gone Forever.”

Seven years in the making, about as many months in the finishing and perfecting, Let You Down Easy spans styles, phases, and stories; put it on and hopefully you can find a song on here to call your favorite.

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