music
BY RICK LEVIN
A Certain Sense of Weightlessness
A talk with The Jayhawks’ Mark Olson
L
ike that one ramshackle, half-collapsed barn you
pass on the highway year after year, the music
created by veteran Minneapolis band The Jayhawks
is timeless — in a fragile, verdigised, sepia-toned,
windblown, authentically American melancholia sort of
way. Their sweetly bittersweet sound, all honeyed
harmonies and landlocked blues and melodic rustic
reverie, is like a soundtrack caught gorgeously between a
hymn to our better selves and an elegy to how we’ve
fallen short.
The Jayhawks’ new album, Mockingbird Time, is the
band’s first studio effort since 2003’s Rainy Day Music,
and also the first with singer/songwriter Mark Olson since
he left the band in 1995. Guitarist/vocalist Gary Louris
took over principal songwriting duties during Olson’s
absence, and a damn fine job of it he did, especially on
The Jayhawks’ 1997 tour-de-force, The Sound of Lies.
With both Louris and Olson separately honing their
skills — they did continue to collaborate
occasionally over the years — this
much-anticipated
recombination of
their talents is
not so much a reunion as a further evolution of The
Jayhawks’ vintage sound. Mockingbird Time’s opening
track, “Hide Your Colors,” bursts forth with the
unmistakable locomotive power chords that are Louris’
trademark, but it’s not until you hear Olson’s harmonies
swirl into the chorus that you understand just how
sophisticated this band has become.
For Olson, the passage of time has granted a roadbitten
form of wisdom. In a sense, he said over the phone last week,
it’s almost as if the band is only now coming into its own, and
at just the right moment, when trends in music have grown
more amenable to what The Jayhawks are all about.
“I remember when one of the main things that was
confusing to me, at least in the early days, is that some stuff
in our music was more harmony driven,” Olson said. “We had
an acoustic guitar, but we were playing in these incredibly
cranked-out rock venues. I think there was a bit of confusion
with those kinds of venues and this kind of music.”
The reigning aesthetic during much
of the late-‘80s/early ‘90s
was loud and then
2 0 1 1 - 2 0 1 2
louder, from the loud/quiet/loud of the Pixies and then
Nirvana, to the ear-piercing sonic squelch of fellow
Minneapolis bands like Husker Du and Soul Asylum.
“There’s a lot more to music than that,” Olson said.
“There’s all sorts of sense and feeling and things that go
along with playing music.”
The recent push by many musicians toward smaller,
more intimate shows suits The Jayhawks, who’d be more
at home on stage with Bob Dylan than Bob Mould, just
dandy. “We have more fans now than we ever did back
then,” Olson said, adding that the band was “in the wrong
place at the wrong time, but at the end of the day it
turned out to be a-okay.”
Olson said he feels blessed, having traveled all over
the world playing music. “I’ve always had fun,” he said.
“That’s the goal. You have to go out there and feel a
certain sense of weightlessness to playing music.”
The Jayhawks and Abigail Washburn with Kai Welch play
8 pm Wednesday, Feb. 8, at McDonald Theatre;
$20/$25.
S E A S O N
PRESENTS A LIVE RADIO CLASSIC
The
Philadelphia
Story
A magazine reporter gets more than just a
story while covering a Philadelphia socialite’s
wedding in one of the greatest screwball
comedies of all time.
Friday-Saturday, Feb. 10-11, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, Feb. 12, 2 p.m.
Wildish Community Theater
630 Main St., Springfield
willamalane.org
Tickets: $13 for adults
$10 for seniors (62+)/students
541-736-4544 or at the door
SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY
20 FEBRUARY 2, 2012
EUGENE WEEKLY
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