Always more than Americana: The Jayhawks, coming to Lexington, plan new album

Gary Louris could practically hear the word knocking at the door — the one that seems unavoidable in unraveling the sometimes complicated, regularly adventurous and always engaging history of The Jayhawks.

Categorization. It has distinguished the band for much of its near 40-year history while making any quick summation of its music — specifically, songs with folk and alt-country roots that have bloomed with myriad shades of pop majesty — a modest challenge.

Coming to grips with the term is nothing new for The Jayhawks. As far back as its 1995 “Tomorrow the Green Grass” album, which deepened a commercial breakthrough that began earlier in the decade, the band went from the Americana harmonizing within the hit “Blue” to the pop-savvy melancholy adorning a radio-friendly cover of Grand Funk Railroad’s “Bad Time.”

Since then, Louris and his mates have broadened their pop preferences into the near psychedelic pageantry of 1997’s “Sound of Lies” album, the leaner and looser pop framework of 2003’s “Rainy Day Music” and the broad rock/pop palette within one of its finest works, 2016’s “Paging Mr. Proust.” The Americana/pop dichotomy still tugs at The Jayhawks, even though Louris long ago accepted it as part of the band’s very make-up.

“We’ve never fit in any particular genre or category, which is part of our strength and part of what has made it difficult for us because we’re not banded together with a movement,” Louris said. “It’s also made us less attached to a time and a style. We are who we are, but we’re somewhere in between. We’re basically a pop band with traditional or more Americana roots and accoutrements. The songs are pop songs, but with the soulfulness of roots music and traditional music.”

Decade of wildly different albums

To understand better the involved inner workings of the band’s sound, style and artistic symmetry, let’s rewind through what has been a prolific decade of activity and a series of recordings that, especially in hindsight, sound remarkably dissimilar.

Most recently was the 2020 album “XOXO,” released at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though Louris has served as the primary vocalist and songwriter for The Jayhawks since the 1995 departure of co-founder Mark Olson, “XOXO” allowed all of the band’s principal members — bass guitarist Marc Perlman, keyboardist Karen Grotberg and drummer Tom O’Reagan to write and sing lead on their own songs.

“I thought it was a good opportunity to make a unique Jayhawks record and open the door a bit,” Louris said. “That’s not necessarily what’s going to happen from here on out. I’m still a control junkie at heart. I still have too much material to allow the band just to be an even-steven situation. ‘XOXO’ was kind of a one-off. It’s not like everybody gets equal space because I am still the leader of the band and I still need to control the helm a bit. But if a song is great, no matter who wrote it, it will rise to the top.”

Back up to 2018 and you had “Back Roads and Abandoned Motels,” a record comprised mostly of newly recorded Jayhawks versions of songs Louris co-wrote with and for other artists. Among them: The Chicks (then The Dixie Chicks), Jakob Dylan, Carrie Rodriguez and Emerson Hart.

“I love that record,” Louris said. “The way I judge albums sometimes is how much I want to perform the songs from that album live, and we do a fair amount of songs from that record live. ‘XOXO,’ it’s a little harder to do some of those songs. I wouldn’t say they were a lot of toe-tappers on that one. It’s just more of an album album. On ‘Back Roads,’ there’s stuff that I feel is more immediate. And, yeah, it was fun to sift through these songs and put our own stamp on them. Sometimes people you write songs for do cool versions, but maybe you want to do them differently, which is what we did.”

Working with Ray Davies of The Kinks

Over the two preceding years, Louris and The Jayhawks found themselves enviably recruited to support Ray Davies, mastermind behind The Kinks, on his two most recent solo albums, “Americana” (2017) and “Our Country: Americana Act II” (2018.)”

“You don’t get the chance to work with your idol very often, if ever. I mean Ray was, growing up, my musical hero. As a songwriter, he was at the top. And Ray wanted to work with a band on those records. He is still, at heart, a band guy. So he liked the camaraderie and the feel of working with an intact band instead of just bringing in session players.

“Ray was a joy to work with. He was super attentive to details. He produced those great Kinks records, so he really is an interesting guy to work with, to see how he hears things. It was just an honor and a thrill.”

Before that was the aforementioned “Paging Mr. Proust,” a record that followed a hiatus arriving in the wake of a reunion with Olson that did not last past touring duties in support of 2011’s “Mockingbird Time” album.

“I’m proud of that record (“Paging Mr. Proust”) because it did stretch us. It was a little more ‘experimental’ within a pretty traditional framework. I was coming out of a difficult period, so it was freeing in many ways. I wanted to make a record that erased some of the negativity I had from the previous record, which was ‘Mockingbird Time.’ That was not a pleasant experience ... just a bad time for the band in general. ‘Proust’ was us coming out of a fog.”

Kicking off what would turn out to be a fruitful musical decade for The Jayhawks was the 2014 reissues of “Sound of Lies” (1997), “Smile” (2000) and “Rainy Day Music” (2003) — the first albums made after Olson’s initial exit, records offering a pronounced broadening of the band’s pop profile.

“I think ‘Sound of Lies’ is still the benchmark for us as far as what I think is our most perfect record from start to finish,” Louris said. “Every record has high points and low points. With that record, I wouldn’t change a thing. But ‘Rainy Day Music’ is the fan favorite. It was our best-selling record. That really got us going again after somewhat retiring the band in the early-2000s. That got us jump started after a break and reassessing what we do and how lucky we were to have the legacy and longevity that we do.”

New albums coming

That outlines the decade that was. But what of the one to come? Louris is only looking ahead to the next year at this point. Now a Canadian resident living north of Montreal, he is finishing work on a solo album planned for a February release. He hopes to have a new Jayhawks record ready for later in 2025.

“There’s a lot going on — so much, in fact, that I want to slow down a little bit so my wife and I can be home and just enjoy where we live. But right now, you’ve got to work when you can, right?”

The Jayhawks with Josh Rouse

When: Aug. 15, 8 p.m.

Where: The Burl, 375 Thompson Road

Tickets: $25

Online: theburlky.com

This story was originally published August 13, 2024 at 4:59 AM.