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Evolution rock
Jay Farrar returns to a new Son Volt
BY DAVID WEININGER
Related Links

Sun Volt's official Web site

Jay Farrar's official Web site

David Weininger reviews Jay Farrar’s first solo album, Sebastopol.

What’s in a name? What makes a band’s identity? If a band form around one performer, does it matter who else is on stage with him? These are some of the questions raised by the release of Son Volt’s new Okemah and the Melody of Riot (Transmit Sound/Legacy).

So, yes, Son Volt, the band Jay Farrar created in the wake of Uncle Tupelo’s demise, are back. If you’re not a diehard alt-country fan, you may not be aware that they ever went away. But they did. They haven’t released a new album in seven years. In the interim, Farrar, who along with Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy helped create the alt-country genre as Uncle Tupelo, released three solo albums largely overshadowed by the growing popularity of Wilco.

It’s a peculiar fate for Farrar: in the Uncle Tupelo days he was generally acknowledged as the band’s songwriting talent. He was the guy with the gift: a penetrating voice, literate yet soulful lyrics, hooks that hit dead on. But in the post-Tupelo years, it was Tweedy who grabbed the headlines with an outfit whose turn toward sonic experimentation and penchant for music-industry drama simply made for a better story.

It didn’t hurt that Wilco were quick to lose the trappings of "alt-country," a mongrel term that came to stand for anything that blended rock with various forms of Americana — "country blues wailings," to cop a phrase from Son Volt’s "Medicine Hat." It wasn’t a precise designation, and by now it seems passé, but Son Volt represented it in a pure form. At the band’s center were Farrar’s two voices: his gravelly, immediately recognizable baritone and the metaphorical voice of his lyrics, which evoked raw emotion with impressionistic phrasing and storytelling. The sound was spare and guitar-driven, punctuated by Dave Boquist’s banjo, fiddle, and lap steel guitar and the vocal harmonies of bassist (and brother) Jim Boquist. The whole thing was propelled by the gentle swing of Mike Heidorn, Uncle Tupelo’s original drummer.

Because Son Volt came to embody alt-country, it was easy to make an artificial division between Farrar (old/traditional) and Tweedy (new/inventive). And since innovation is so often prized over constancy, Son Volt toiled away in small clubs while Wilco moved on to larger and larger stages. It seemed that all but the most devoted fans stopped paying Son Volt much heed after their well-received 1995 debut, Trace (Reprise), even though ’97’s Straightaways and ’98’s Wide Swing Tremolo (both Reprise) didn’t deviate from the Trace blueprint. These albums offered authenticity, and excellent road music, too, in their ability to capture passing scenes and passing time.

Much of the best material from Son Volt’s first run is collected on A Retrospective, 1995–2000, which Rhino released this past May, along with the obligatory outtakes and a bit of flotsam and jetsam. It’s a primer that appeared just in time to capitalize on Farrar’s decision to revive the Son Volt name. There’s also a DVD, Live from Austin, TX (New West), that captures the band at their peak on the PBS show Austin City Limits in late ’96. Both are reminders that Son Volt has aged well.

After shelving the band for reasons personal and musical, Farrar appeared to relish working with a variety of musicians and textures on his solo albums. It appeared that Son Volt would stand for the first phase of his post-Tupelo career, that he was moving on to new terrain. So why bring the band back at all?

"The period where I was doing the solo records represented a different challenge for me, something I’m glad that I did," he says over the phone from his studio near St. Louis, "And over the course of four or five years I just started to miss the whole band context."

That’s it, delivered with typical Farrar minimalism. He just wanted to play in a band again. Simple.

Or not. The plan was to reunite the original Son Volt, and that seemed within reach after they recorded a song for an Alejandro Escovedo tribute album last year. But on the way to recording Okemah, things fell apart. Farrar says, "I think over that hiatus everyone changed and developed different priorities and commitments. It was kind of devastating for me at the time."

With studio time already booked, he assembled a new line-up: guitarist Brad Rice (who’s worked with Ryan Adams), bassist Andrew Duplantis, and Dave Bryson (who was the drummer for Canyon, with whom Farrar toured in 2003). Recording Okemah took two weeks, with the band on a schedule of learning and recording a song a day.

It’s tantalizing to wonder what the result might have been if Farrar had worked things out with the Boquist brothers and Heidorn, because Okemah doesn’t sound much like a classic Son Volt recording. There are no fiddles or banjos; there’s just a hint of pedal steel guitar. Mostly it’s straight-ahead two-guitars/bass/drums rock and roll. Duplantis and Bryson form a solid foundation, Farrar lays down chunky rhythm guitar chords, and Rice turns out some burning solos. Its punch is leavened by a couple of quiet, acoustic numbers, "Ipecac" and the Indian-flavored "Medication."

Farrar’s songwriting has changed as well. The new Son Volt numbers are less impressionistic, more topical and politicized. The album’s first track, "Bandages and Scars," begins: "Thinking about the ozone/Thinking about lead/Thinking about the future/And what to do then." "Jet Pilot" is his sarcastic take on George W. Bush’s "service" in the Air National Guard: "Jet pilot for the day washed his sins away/Loves to see the Rangers play/His daddy has a job in Washington/Wants to raise a Harvard son." The chorus is an angry shout: "The revolution will be televised/Across living rooms of the great divide."

You can’t blame Farrar for wanting to write to his times, especially given the current political climate. What’s odd, given the tenor of those lyrics, is that most of the album lacks the evocative power of earlier Son Volt material, and very little of it matches up to the brash tales of hard times he wrote for Uncle Tupelo.

His voice mirrors that change. He sings more from the top of his range, and the bottom has lost a little of its distinctive edge. "It is kind of an evolution," he replies, joking that, "for me it’s kind of like Star Trek: to go where I haven’t gone before."

Okemah, Oklahoma, is the birthplace of Woody Guthrie, perhaps the most rooted (and politicized) musician in American history. Yet Okemah and the Melody of Riot feels unrooted — a good, forceful rock album that’s also a bit generic. Perhaps that’s to be expected from a band who came together so chaotically. (Already the guitar slot has shifted; it’s now occupied by Chris Frame.) But it just brings us back to asking who Son Volt are.

Still, Okemah is not easily dismissed, especially if you were ever a Farrar fan. A few live-performance video clips on the DualDisc portion of the CD suggest a band who already sound looser and more confident on stage than they were in the studio. (A tour is planned for the fall, which should reach Boston in October.) And though listening to A Retrospective and watching the Austin video might make you nostalgic for the original Son Volt, nostalgia isn’t part of Farrar’s vocabulary. "When in doubt, move on," he sang on Trace’s "Route." He has, and the smart money is on Farrar’s rediscovering his roots as the new Son Volt evolve.


Issue Date: August 5 - 12, 2005
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