Jamie Olson is a Jersey-born Philadelphia resident, singer-songwriter, and guitarist of folk country-blues and rock’n’roll band Midnight Singers. Olson’s music has a loose yet focused delivery opting to leave the song for the performance rather than being overly studied and rehearsed. He finds transcendence in the approach when it is pulled off and hopes it carries over to the audience. His music is his holy place.
Jamie’s bands Cordalene and Midnight Singers have played shows with Weezer, My Morning Jacket, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Evan Dando, Ben Lee, Pernice Brothers, Marah, Dr. Dog, Bill Kruetzman of the Grateful Dead, Those Darlins, and Kenn Kweder. The War on Drugs and Kurt Vile opened for his band Cordalene in 2007.
Of his new working blues song fashioned after Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man,” Jamie tells ABS: “‘One Wicked Mother’ is the best example of what I’ve managed so far, and it’s coincided with a deep dive into the primitive yet inspired sounds of Junior Kimbrough’s early recordings and Blues heavyweight Pigpen from The Grateful Dead, as well as Alan Lomax’s biography and collection of field recordings.”
Continuing, “Cold Mean Father and Wicked Mother in this case aren’t your parents or mine, but a mean boss rather — the kind you may encounter in a lousy low paying labor job. I’m particularly proud of this one, ’cause I was looking to just capture a performance and think we definitely landed on something a little beyond us. All of the performers had a kind of perfect imperfection you can only get from making up contributions on the fly. On the track Micheal McShane played harmonica, Scott Colon played bass, John Bicer played percussion, Paul Fjeko played xylophone and engineered, and I played the guitar and sang.”
*Feature image credit:Lisa Shaffer Photography
