he was on SXSW's lineup in 2004 and since then has toured w/ Juliana Hatfield, Ben Kweller and Death cab for cutie, The Grateful dead, Court and Spark, My Morning Jacket, Guster, Roseanne Cash, Josh Ritter, Ray LaMongtagne etc

BIO:
A meat-eater on a vegan record label, Willy Mason devours books, gains sustenance from blues and country music, digests the world around him, and spits out inspired and original songs.

After high school (2003), the teenager packed his guitar, took the ferry off his hometown island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, and escaped a possible life sentence as a gardener. He wound up in New York City, sleeping on couches and performing at open-mics on various small stages, hawking a 5-song homemade solo acoustic CD. In Northampton, MA, backstage at a Bright Eyes concert, someone put a guitar in Willy's hands…

Where The Humans Eat, the first full-length Willy Mason CD was recorded in a house in Catskill, New York in early May. Songs were generally recorded live, in one take, Willy singing and playing guitar (and then over-dubbing cello, accordion, and vibraphone) while younger brother Sam Mason manned the drums.
“I made a rule that we couldn’t record any of the songs in more than three takes. It allows you to make mistakes and accept those mistakes. Listening back, sometimes the wrong notes are the best parts of the song, the imperfections are what keeps it spontaneous and live feeling.”

Sam Mason, a high school sophomore, is a sharpshooter in his own right, with incredible musical instincts and a rather obsessive knowledge of indie rock and hip hop. The Mason boys are talented, don't swear or smoke (very often) and don't show off with their musical skills.

Willy and Sam learned from a creative and idiosyncratic family. Mom (Jemima James) is a refugee of the New York '60s hippy folk scene, and now juggles a dual identity as North Carolina blues-singer and New England single working mom. Dad (Michael Mason) walked away from a major label recording deal as a teenager, and for the past twenty years has been writing a romantic musical about industrialization. “I played around the island with my mom and dad a lot, with my mom more than my dad. We’d play at this coffee shop called The Hot Tin Roof and she’d have me play lead guitar. This was way back when I was 10 or 11 years old.”

Along with his first love, Nirvana, and later discoveries Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and John Lee Hooker, Willy's biggest musical influences were his parents, and he's not embarrassed to say so. “I started playing guitar in 5th grade, when I saw my friend playing Purple Haze and he taught it to me, but there was always music going on. My parents would have big parties where everyone would play and sing. My uncle used to blow on an apple cider jug, my cousin taught me the mandolin in 3rd grade.”

Willy's saved up his gardening and gig money to buy a van and take the show on the road. When school's not in session, Sam will occasionally be sitting in on drums, and if you're lucky enough to catch them on "The Island" (Martha's Vineyard), look for pot-luck community dinners with entertainment supplied by the whole Mason family.

check him out on my site here:


or his official site here


you can d/l his entire album off of