Musicians - Jon Brion

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	Musicians - Jon Brion

Jon Brion is an American rock and pop multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, composer and record producer.

Biography

Jon Brion was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. He came from a musical family: his mother was a jazz singer, his father a band director at Yale, and his brother and sister became a composer/arranger and violinist, respectively. Brion had difficulties in high school and at the age of 17 left education for good, opting instead to play music professionally.

Brion was a member of the band The Bats (an entirely different entity than the more well-known New Zealand band of the same name) in the early 1980s, and in 1987 he moved to Boston, where he played solo gigs, formed the short-lived band World's Fair and became a member of the last touring version of Aimee Mann's new wave band 'Til Tuesday. In 1994, joined Dan McCarroll, Buddy Judge and Jellyfish guitarist Jason Falkner in the short-lived pop supergroup The Grays.

Brion was signed to the Lava/Atlantic label in 1997, but was released from his contract after turning in his solo debut album Meaningless; the album was released independently in 2001.

He has played various instruments on numerous albums, and branched out into production on then-girlfriend Mann's 1993 solo debut, Whatever; he has also produced albums by Fiona Apple, Rufus Wainwright, Eleni Mandell, Rhett Miller and Evan Dando. He is a film composer, garnering Best Score Soundtrack Album Grammy nominations for his work on 1999's Magnolia and 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Brion is renowned for his regular Friday-night gigs at the Los Angeles club Largo, which feature covers and original songs, a variety of instruments and the occasional guest. He dated comedic actress Mary Lynn Rajskub for five years until they broke up in the fall of 2002.

Soon after, he began producing the album Extraordinary Machine with Fiona Apple, but she later brought in producers Mike Elizondo and Brian Kehew (a friend of Brion's) to complete the album. Brion's versions leaked onto the Internet, though heavily tweaked, where the album gained a cult following long before its official release .

Brion also co-produced Kanye West's 2005 album, Late Registration.

Brion is said to set out on a "tour" of sorts though in a mid-2005 show he said "don't call it a tour. I'm just going to be moving myself around and playing different cities for weeks at a time". He is also working on his second solo full-length album at Abbey Road Studios.

Discography

With The Bats

How Pop Can You Get? (1982)

With The Grays

Ro Sham Bo (1994)

Solo

Meaningless (2001)

Film scores

Hard Eight (with Michael Penn
) (1996)
Magnolia (1999)
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2003)
I ♥ Huckabees (2004)

As producer

Aimee Mann
, Whatever, (1993)
Aimee Mann
, I'm with Stupid, (1995)
Rufus Wainwright
, Rufus Wainwright, (1998)
Eleni Mandell, Wishbone, (1998)
Fiona Apple, When the Pawn, (1999)
Brad Mehldau, Largo, (2002)
Rhett Miller, The Instigator, (2002)
Evan Dando, Baby I'm Bored, (2003)
Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine, (unreleased version, recorded 2002-2003)
Kanye West, Late Registration (as co-executive producer), (2005)

Also See

Killer Queen: A Tribute to Queen

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