Jason Reeves

A chance discovery of Bob Dylan and James Taylor recordings during Jason Reeves’s teenage years in Iowa sparked his first serious attempts at songwriting. Blending time-honored singer/songwriter traditions with contemporary touches drawn from Radiohead and Sufjan Stevens, he soon abandoned college and relocated to California. The second individual he met after arriving was the then-unknown Colbie Caillat. An instant rapport between them evolved into a songwriting collaboration that supplied the core material for Caillat’s breakthrough album Coco. Tracks left over from those sessions were gathered on Reeves’s own EP Hearts Are Magnets, issued in 2006 by the Dancing Squirrel label. The 2007 release Magnificent Adventures of Heartache, widely praised by critics, led to a Warner Bros. recording contract the next year.