Before setting to work on his 10th studio album, Minnesota-based musician Mason Jennings was looking for a new approach to writing. At the advice of a friend, the singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist holed up in the back room of his wood-nestled cabin studio with just a guitar, electric piano, bookshelf, notebook, tape recorder, and one 90-minute cassette and then wrote all winter long. Emerging with the notebook and tape full of about 30 new songs, Jennings decided to skip his standard approach of self-recording and called on producer Bo Ramsey (Greg Brown, The Pines, Iris DeMent), as well as a wish-list-plucked lineup of guest musicians that includes DeMent and Neil Young drummer Chad Cromwell. The result of those “dream collaborations” and his own hard-won inspiration is the latest album Always Been, Jennings’s most radiant and refined effort of his career. Recorded at Minneapolis studio The Terrarium, Always Been builds on the rugged, acoustic-guitar-driven indie-folk of Jennings’s earlier work (from his 1998 self-titled debut to 2011’s highly acclaimed Minnesota) with sunnier melodies and more hi-fi sonics.