Son Volt

If my personal growth was charted by albums and not the dated pencil marks on the back of a kitchen door, Son Volt’s Trace would’ve easily represented my biggest growth spurt after Marlo Thomas and Friends’ Free to Be You and Me and Journey’s Escape. Therefore, spending my thirty-something birthday in Brooklyn’s Headgear Studio with Jay Farrar and co-producer/engineer John Agnello (Drive-By Truckers, Steve Wynn, The Kills) as they finalize mixes on the first Son Volt record in seven years is emotionally conflicting. It’s akin to having a lauded author read you each draft of his new mystery novel as soon as he puts down the pen; instantly gratifying yet somewhat demystifying. The simile is apt, for it captures the very essence of the album itself.

Titled after the birthplace of Woody Guthrie and a lyric from one of its more telling songs, Okemah and the Melody of Riot reunites Jay Farrar with, well … a band, for starters. Although the original Son Volt rejoined in April of last year to record Alejandro Escovedo’s “Sometimes” for an Escovedo tribute album, the old lineup couldn’t come to terms contractually before officially reforming. With a characteristic shrug of the shoulders, Farrar simply assembled a new cast for the album including Dave Bryson (Canyon) on drums, Andrew Duplantis (The Meat Puppets, Bob Mould) on bass and Brad Rice (Tift Merritt, Ryan Adams) on guitar. The quick, two-week October recording session was webcast live and from the look and sound of it, Farrar made some good choices. Over some take-out Thai food Farrar characterizes the feel of the new band.

“It’s been very organic and spontaneous and that’s what’s been cool about it. It’s really been done without all the prerequisite hassles that usually come along with the process, or at least with all the bands that I’ve been involved in.” He laughs and continues, “I mean we’ve all seen the reality TV shows regarding bands. I’m surprised I haven’t been on one. ”

He’s of course referring mostly to his time in Uncle Tupelo, the infamous band-cum-musical movement he forged with Jeff Tweedy and Mike Heidorn. While the well-documented split in 1994 over “creative differences” may have been somewhat acrimonious, Farrar and Tweedy are more than civil to each other now. Both have seen each other play in their various incarnations and Farrar has listened to and enjoys Wilco’s material. When asked if he missed anything about the band, he offers, “It obviously represents a period of my life, being in a band and sort of getting to live the life at least you thought you wanted to lead and getting to play music full-time. Of course that was something I always wanted to see happen, so I have good memories of it, yet it’s not something I want to relive. In fact, the best part about stopping Son Volt after Wide Swing Tremolo was [that], slowly, the question of ‘Hey, is Uncle Tupelo ever going to get back together?’ was replaced with, ‘Hey is Son Volt ever going to get back together?’ And I finally got to answer it.”

The answer arrived after Farrar spent the elongated break raising a family, building a studio near his home in St. Louis and producing two solo albums — Sebastapol and Terroir Blues, the latter a lonely discourse shrouded in poignancy and hypnotic dissonance that in many places mirrors the loss of his father.

“I was doing a lot of writing during the time he was dying of cancer, just before he passed away, so I didn’t really feel like playing the up-tempo melodic stuff. So I just set that aside and picked the more acoustic stuff to record for awhile.”

The album was a needed catharsis both personally and musically. In addition to having four of the songs repeated with different renditions wedged throughout, it’s also infused with several mini-instrumental passages steeped in sampled experimentation labeled “Space Junk.” Farrar smiles at the mention of the tracks, “It was quite liberating coming from having done the Son Volt thing for five years straight. It was something I felt I needed and wanted to do, just to step out of the box. I was always a fan of the backwards effects on Revolver, so I was just trying out different sounds in the same spirit. It helped me learn a lot about process.”