Catching Up With... Son Volt's Jay Farrar

Son Volt’s new release, American Central Dust, its third in four years, finds alt-country purveyor Jay Farrar embracing the band’s new-found focus. Mixing its trademark raw and plaintive sound with bar stool prophesies, Son Volt once again tackles complex contemporary issues through the aural simplicity of the heartland. Taking a break from tour rehearsals, Farrar caught up with Paste to talk about kids, Keith Richards and the inspiration to return to his musical roots.

Paste: How are the kids?

Jay Farrar: The kids are good; they’re starting to get into music more each day.

Paste: Uh-oh. They writing songs and banging on drums?

Farrar: My daughter’s been doing that for years, but the other day my son called me up asking me to bring home a wah-wah pedal and an effects processor; I didn’t even know he knew what an effects processor was.

Paste: How old is he now?

Farrar: He’s 10.

Paste: He’s obviously much farther along than the basic chord structure, bar chords?

Farrar: No, he’s starting with the effects processor. He’s done with the fundamentals.

Paste: Straight to Sonic Youth/Thurston Moore territory?

Farrar: Pretty much.

Paste: What is the biggest difference between the batch of songs on American Central Dust and The Search?

Farrar: All the songs from American Central Dust are from after The Search period. They were probably written in the summer of '08 and recorded in October of '08. You know with the previous record, The Search, the idea was more about trying to stretch things out, and trying out different instrumentation and using more, etc. This time around, the approach was to try and make a more focused record, both in terms of instrumentation and song structure. The song structures and arrangements are a lot straighter this time around.

Paste: I remember visiting you in the studio during Okemah and the Melody of Riot and in between takes you played “She’s A Rainbow” on piano; do you still try to get inspired by people like Keith Richards and the Rolling Stones?

Farrar: Yeah, I do. I guess in a way the song “Cocaine and Ashes” is kind of a tribute to Keith. When I first heard the made up statement that he mixed cocaine with his father’s ashes, it struck me that he was idiosyncratic yet honest and real. I think I could relate as well just having gone through that experience of losing a father.

Paste: Where else do you find your inspiration these days? Do you ever go back and listen to old albums?

Farrar: Oh yeah, all the time. I’m continually going back and listening to probably the golden era of honky-tonk music, you know like, 1949, when Hank Williams was getting started up through the mid-1960s. It’s kind of like a sport for me, trying to find good old honky-tonk music because there’s a lot of questionable novelty type stuff that would come out of Nashville. But if you dig a little deeper you can find some really authentic, good music. I guess most recently I’ve been listening to guys like Charlie Walker, Wynn Stewart, Stonewall Jackson. Buck Owens is a good example of someone on first glance you can’t figure if this guy is a buffoon or not. But then you find out that he had this amazing catalogue of great music.

Paste: How do you go about unearthing these gems?

Farrar: I used to look in thrift stores and places like that. More recently I’ve been looking online for bigger compilations, where you get everything an artist has ever done all in one package. As far as who else I listen to regularly, I’d say Tom Waits, who has straightforward song structure, which is something to shoot for, which again was the approach on this record.

Paste: By experimenting so much on The Search it seems to have allowed you to come back full circle and refocus on American Central Dust. Was it a natural progression?

Farrar: Yeah, that’s the way it seems to work, it’s the pendulum swing. It’s kind of following wherever inspiration goes and sometimes you have to get away from traditional themes and instrumentations in order to be inspired by it again.

Paste: The album is coming out on Rounder, which seems like a pretty good fit. Have they been helpful?

Farrar: They have been. They’ve definitely shown a long time commitment to a music form that I feel is important and they’ve also shown an unwillingness to sell the store, so to speak.

Paste: Did you do all the demos and then have everyone else come in and lay their parts down?

Farrar: Yeah. In some ways the recording probably reflects the core essence and the chemistry of the latest lineup with Mark Spencer and Chris Masterson. The process pretty much worked the same way as Son Volt has been doing all along, in that I’ll send out song demos to all the guys and then we convene in the studio and with very little coaching try to capture as much live as possible. On this record, there’s a lot of that element of one person sort of feeding off another and that can only really be captured by doing things live. There’s a lot of interplay between Mark and Chris. You can hear that chemistry going on in “Down To the Wire.” Mark is actually playing keyboard through a guitar amp. Someone mentioned to me that they were surprised because the keyboard actually sounds like a guitar.

Paste: “Down to the Wire” seems like a standout track with its beautiful fuzz.

Farrar: Yeah, it goes back to trying to capture that live energy and that live spark. Because I think you can get a group of three years that have never played any instruments and make a pretty viable record with ProTools and pitch corrector and placing each beat where it’s supposed to be.

Paste: But that’s not what music is about.

Farrar: That’s not what music is about.

Paste: In doing it live, was there a limit to how many times you’d track the song? Did you feel like there were some songs that you labored over and over and over?

Farrar: For the most part, the songs would happen usually by about the fifth or sixth take, things start to gel. I think there were some examples, like “Pushed Too Far,” I think may have been one where we may have…You know, pushed too far. Very appropriately titled. Yeah, that one probably made it up to 15.

Paste: You felt that it was missing something?

Farrar: Yeah, it was just a sense that it was missing something. But perhaps it was something missing in my head as well.

Paste: Is there something particularly excited about playing live?

Farrar: “Cocaine and Ashes” is probably one, at least I will be switching instrumentation a bit for that one; the tempo may be transformed a bit.

Paste: You'll play piano?

Farrar: I won’t. There may not even be piano in it; there’s a double steel guitar on that song, so it’s usually good to hear Mark and Chris play that one.