“After meeting at a memorial for a mutual friend, Tony Molina and Sarah Rose Janko started spending nights into mornings playing guitar and singing their hearts out to an audience of empty wine bottles in the East Oakland warehouse where Sarah lived […] The days were marked in trips to Jackson’s Liquor store, the same spot Tony frequented while recording with his band Ovens a decade earlier.”
We’re a bit late to the party on this one, but Tony Molina records live forever. As the Lost Days, Tony Molina (Ovens) and Sarah Rose Janko (Dawn Riding, now based in New Orleans) form a silvery duet, strumming and singing together these jangly ditties born from heartbreak, depression, and the intricacies of loss and love. In the Store is a grey album but not a depressing one, rolling along with nourishing melodies and ardent rhythms inspired by the work of Cleveland musician Bill Fox and 1960s folk rock pioneers The Byrds. Released by Speakeasy Studios SF, they’re calling it a full-length album even though its 10 tracks end in 13 minutes, but it somehow feels more expansive than that. Kind of like those late nights and early mornings where the jam sessions started, it’s a deeply sad yet profoundly hopeful liminal space, where the rest of the universe disappears, and the present company is all that matters.
