The Jayhawks

by Rob van Alstyne

Over the course of seventeen years and through a rotating cast of many musicians (including the departure of founding member and co-frontman Marc Olson back in 1995), the Jayhawks, arguably Minneapolis’ most consistent purveyors of classic roots-pop melodies, have always stayed relevant. That’s more than can be said for most bands that make it past the decade mark, the majority of groups ‘maturing’ into bland copies of their former selves and inevitably starting to rewrite past glories. Rather than wasting time trying to recreate “Blue” (the band’s sole radio hit back in 1995), lead singer/guitarist Gary Louris, buoyed by other long term core members Marc Perlman (bass) and Tim O’Reagan (drums) have continued to push the boundaries of the Jayhawks sound, while never allowing changes in style to come at the expense of quality songwriting.

After the departure of Olson, Louris led the band in a classic pop direction on the dark and moody Sound of Lies released in 1997 (heavily lyrically influenced by a painful divorce he was going through at the time). The band returned to a brighter sound once again with 2000’s Smile, an album that received slick production courtesy of Bob Ezrin and a substantial commercial push from Columbia Records, but still failed to breakthrough to the commercial mainstream. The album was still well received by many critics leading to an article in the New York Times entitled, “What if You Recorded a Masterpiece and No One Cared?”

Smile’s blend of shiny keyboards, looped drumbeats and full-on embrace of big pop sounds from a band still unfairly pegged as alt-country caught many longtime fans off guard. “I think quotes and misperceptions about our goals just kind of snowballed. We never really thought of Smile as something that would have huge radio potential,” explains Louris, 47, via telephone from his Minneapolis home. “It’s just a little bit of a bigger pop production—maybe it could have been big back in 1972 or something. We weren’t kidding ourselves about having a huge hit record, we just wanted to try a big fancy pop production and it was a blast, I would do it again.”

The latest chapter in the bands evolution, Rainy Day Music, won’t be unveiled to the public for recorded consumption until April, but the album looks to mark another series of wide-sweeping changes for a band that has always been defined by its tendency to avoid standing still. Guitarist Kraig Johnson and keyboardist Jen Gunderman have amicably parted ways with the band, and the Jayhawks have been reborn as a four-piece once again with the addition of Stephen McCarthy on guitar and pedal steel.

Although advances of the record are not yet available, word from the band and inside sources point towards a return to the rootsier countrified sound of Olson-period Jayhawks gems such as 1992’s Hollywood Town Hall. Recorded and mixed in six weeks during this past summer in Los Angeles with the aid of producer Ethan Johns (best known for working behind the board on Ryan Adams’ solo albums), much of Rainy Day was cut live in the studio. “I think there’s many ways to skin a cat and none of them is particularly wrong or right,” explains Louris when discussing the record-making process. “We’ve done a lot of different kinds of records. It felt right to make a stripped down and straightforward album this time out.”

Undeterred by commercial indifference or the occasionally restrictive expectations of a cult critical audience, Louris is pleased with Rainy Day because it meets his own creative standards. “With this record I think all of us really went into it as a group thinking we could walk away from the music business after making it and if ten people liked the album or ten million it wouldn’t make a difference. We wanted to make a great record that wasn’t trying to impress anyone or get on the cover of Spin magazine, to just make a record that sounds great to us. In the past it always used to bother me that we were kind of perceived as being square or whatever, but in the last couple of years I’ve really let go of worrying about proving ourselves based on some arbitrary hipness quotient. We are who we are as a band, and we’re comfortable with it.”