J ason Molina grew up in a trailer in the working-class city of Lorain, Ohio. The city’s skyline once flickered with blue flames and a warm orange glow emanated from clattering steel mills, but by Molina’s teenage years, Lorain was in a tailspin. “Things were really on the economic decline,” says Tommy Nickoloff, Molina’s childhood friend and director of a new documentary: You Fuckers Figure It Out: A Jason Molina Story. “Nobody had any money and we were encouraged to get out. It’s a place where the American dream was born and died. And we watched it die.”

Molina did indeed get out: the singer-songwriter released almost 20 studio albums and numerous EPs, primarily under the monikers Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co, spanning lo-fi to slowcore via polished Americana and alt-country. By 2009, he estimated he had written thousands of songs. But he died in 2013, aged 39, after years of alcoholism.

‘It still shocks me how few people are aware of Jason and his legacy’ … Tommy Nickoloff.…