Tag: reviews

Rising Son

Jay Farrar has always been known as a songwriter’s songwriter. Even during his salad days with the seminal alt-country group Uncle Tupelo , the Belleville, Ill. native was writing world-weary, poetic songs that belied his young age.
Farrar formed Son Volt shortly after Uncle Tupelo called it quits in 1994 (with Tupelo band mate Jeff Tweedy starting Wilco). The group’s first album, Trace , was a mostly acoustic affair that now ranks as one of the musical high-water marks of the ’90s. The band released two more albums before going on hiatus in ’99.

After two experimental solo projects, Farrar resurrected Son Volt in 2005. But this time around, the band had a new lineup. Their first comeback album, Okemah and the Melody of Riot , found the group moving away from its signature traditional sound into more rock-oriented territory.

With their latest effort, The Search , Son Volt continues to plow new ground musically. With frequent looping, horns and the occasional sitar, it sounds far more like The Beatles circa 1968 than any neo-traditional band you’ve ever heard.

But despite the new sound, Farrar’s lyricism remains the band’s hallmark. His surrealistic evocations of the American road on The Search affirm that he is, first and foremost, a songwriter. Richmond.com recently spoke with the Son Volt frontman, who comes to Richmond this Thursday with his band “Groovin’ in the Garden.”

Since your first solo album Sebastopol , you’ve been a lot more experimental with the instrumentation and the arrangements. Was that a natural evolution for you, or more of a conscious decision to break free from the alt-country pigeonhole?

It felt natural. So I guess it was evolution. Coming off a period where the instrumentation was fairly static but it remained the same, I think the solo records just sort of represented a challenge to see where things could go.

Are you listening to completely different stuff than you were listening to, say, 10 years ago?

Probably. You change over the time. I think there was maybe a song on the first solo recordat that period, I was even listening to jazz. That was something that I definitely wasn’t listening to [in the past], and trying out some jazz time signatures and things like that. I try to keep an open mind and learn from whatever I’m listening to.

Other than yourself, the current Son Volt lineup features none of the members that were on the first three albums. Why did you keep the name?

I felt like there was unfinished business. I felt like Son Volt had more to offer, so I stuck with it.

Your lyrics have always been more impressionistic than narrative-driven. I’ve always heard a strong Townes Van Zandt influence. Who are some of your guiding lights, in terms of songwriting?

Townes Van Zandt would be one of them. I didn’t actually hear Townes Van Zandt until ’94 or something like that. I’d been doing a fair amount of writing before I came across him. He definitely left an impression. Maybe even certain writers have even as much of an influence, whether it was Jack Kerouac, who had more of a stream-of-consciousness style that I could really relate to and learn from, I think, as far as the idea of just getting your thoughts down on paper and not editing them along the way. I could relate to that and I’ve done a lot of that. I feel like that’s a good way to create.

A lot of the songs on the last two albums decry conservative, Middle America politics. Yet you still live in the Midwest. Can you explain that?

In the Midwest, I guess you can keep your finger on the pulse really. I prefer to live in a place where, in like St. Louis especially, it’s primarily a more working-class city. There’s more realism there than there is, sometimes, on the coasts. Anyway, that’s my take. I never really considered living anywhere else, except maybe during the period of making the Okemah and the Melody of Riot record, and that only lasted a couple of days.

In the press release you say the Beatles were the first band you were really into, though you suppressed the influence for a while. Any other influences you’ve consciously suppressed, like ABBA?

Reggae was probably one that I consciously suppressed for a long time. In our live shows we sort of adapted an Uncle Tupelo song, “Life Worth Living,” that has some reggae overtones now. I think it just took me a long time to be able to actually appreciate reggae in a certain way. I think a lot of it is as a result of finding out more of the history of it.

Many of the songs on The Search draw inspiration from the road. Is the American road still romantic, in the sense that it was for artists like Kerouac and Woody Guthrie?

I think there’s still a lot of Jack Kerouac and Edward Hopper out there. Especially in the west, in the middle and the south. I shouldn’t leave out the north. It’s out there, especially late night. You find it in the truck stops, the diners. They’re still there.

You’re often labeled as the godfather of alt-country. Is that a title you’re comfortable with, or do you find it ridiculous?

I see it as more of a continuum where you’re inspired by people that came before you. You give some, you take some, and that seems to be the way that it all works. I don’t see that anything’s starting at any one discernible point. I guess that’s looking at it from more of a historical perspective. It’s hard to really say that anybody really started anything.

What can we expect next from Jay Farrar more Son Volt albums?

I guess we’ll see. That’s the focus for now. We’ll be touring through the fall anyway. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’ve been in contact with Anders Parker some, and we’ve done some demo work towards another Gob Iron record. It could be Gob Iron. I’ll just have to wait and see.

(Richmond.com, June 2007)

A Blessing after the Curse

Before the Drive-By Truckers took the stage Thursday night at Plan 9’s Carytown location, Jay Leavitt , who manages the store, told the crowd of 200 or so that he had checked the concert listings for all of the great rock ‘n’ roll cities in the world that night. And he said, in all earnestness, that there was no better place for any music fan to be than at 3012 W. Cary St.

“This is the center of the music universe tonight,” said an emotional Leavitt, who has known DBT’s Patterson Hood since their boyhood days in Florence, Ala. “Blender [magazine] called them America’s greatest rock band. I call them the world’s greatest rock band.”

Judging by the intensity of Thursday night’s crowd — Mike Cooley also called them the best in the world towards the end of the show — it’s safe to assume that most of the fans in the store that night would agree with Leavitt’s remarks.

And the show was special for other reasons. For one, it marked the 25th anniversary of Plan 9, the independent music retailer that started in Carytown and has expanded throughout the state. But most importantly, it was a benefit for the Bryan and Kathryn Harvey Memorial Endowment Fund.

During the middle of the show, Leavitt, also a close friend of the Harveys, said that every cent of the proceeds would go towards the fund. He then thanked the Truckers, whose compensation included a case of beer and a fifth of Jack Daniels, for playing the show. Leavitt spoke touchingly about the Harveys, and told DBT how much their song “World of Hurt” had meant to him this past year. “That song is a song of hope for me,” said Leavitt, who concluded his remarks by saying, “It’s great to be alive.”

And it wasn’t just another show for the band, which has a long, loving history with the River City, dating back to the days of the Capital City Barn Dance. After taking the stage for the encore, Hood said, “From the bottom of my heart, this is the most important show, for me, our band will play this year.”

It was also one of the more impassioned shows they’ve played. Recently, DBT has been opening for The Black Crowes, which means they have to play 40-minute sets. As an opening act, Hood said their audience usually entails a sober crowd that is just walking through the door. So, for this show, they were like a beast that had just been let out of its cage. “We’ve been looking forward to Richmond where we can turn it up and play what we want,” Hood said.

And turn it up they did. Some of the highpoints of the night included “My Sweet Annette,” a countrified sh–about cheating on your old lady with her best friend. “This song’s about our first tour,” Hood said in his raspy north Alabama drawl. “Some of the names have changed, but the facts are the same.”

Another highlight was Jason Isbell’s rendition of “Moonlight Mile,” the closing track on the The Rolling Stones’s “Sticky Fingers” album, which, to these ears, strongly influenced DBT’s latest, “A Blessing and A Curse.”

To close out their first set, the band played “Let There Be Rock,” from their album, “Southern Rock Opera.” “This song’s about how rock ‘n’ roll saved my life as a teenager,” Hood proclaimed over that crunchy opening guitar riff and solitary drum-kick. And then the beautiful scene of the whole crowd pumping their fists in unison, singing along to these words:

Dropped acid at a Blue Oyster Cult concert, 14 years old

And I thought them lasers were a spider chasing me


On my way home got pulled over, in Rogersville, Alabama


With a half-ounce of weed, and a case of Sterling BigMouth


My buddy Jim was driving, he’d just barely turned 16.

All in all, a magical night.