After touring in support of their 1993 masterpiece, Anodyne, the seminal alternative country band Uncle Tupelo split up over long-simmering creative differences between co-leaders Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy. Tweedy recruited much of the band to form Wilco, while Farrar teamed up with original Tupelo drummer Mike Heidorn to form Son Volt, the more tradition-minded of the two Tupelo offshoots.
Joined by brothers Jim (bass) and Dave Boquist (guitar, fiddle, banjo, fiddle, steel guitar), the band signed to Warner Bros. and released its debut album, Trace, in 1995. It was greeted with excellent reviews from most critics, offering a set of stark, subtle, mostly downbeat songs that drew from traditional country, folk, and roots rock. The single “Drown” was successful on both college and rock radio, and the band subsequently added unofficial fifth member Eric Heywood on mandolin and pedal steel for its second album, 1997’s Straightaways.
While Straightaways mined territory similar to Trace and again received positive reviews, some found Farrar’s lack of creative progression troubling, and although 1998’s Wide Swing Tremolo was a somewhat harder-rocking affair, the erosion of critical support for the group continued. They ended up on an unofficial hiatus (rumors of their breakup were denied), and Farrar debuted as a solo artist with 2001’s Sebastopol, putting the future of Son Volt in further doubt. He continued with his solo career throughout 2002 and 2003, and in 2005, Rhino issued Retrospective: 1995-2000. But Son Volt weren’t over. Farrar revived the nameplate in July 2005 with the issue of Okemah and the Melody of Riot (Legacy). For the album, recorded in St. Louis, Farrar was joined by drummer Dave Bryson, bassist Andrew DuPlantis, and ex-Backsliders guitarist Brad Rice.
Search arrived in early 2007, followed by American Central Dust in 2009. Honky Tonk, full of pedal steel guitars and twin fiddles and a sort of homage to the Bakersfield country sound, arrived early in 2013. In 2015, Rhino Records marked the 20th Anniversary of the release of Trace with an expanded and remastered edition of the album, including Farrar’s original songwriting demos for the album and tracks from a Son Volt concert recorded in New York City in February 1996. Farrar supported the re-release with a solo tour in which he performed the album’s songs in full.
Notes of Blue was released on Feb. 17, 2017. Here’s the rap on the album straight from Jay Farrar:
“There are only two kinds of songs,” Townes Van Zandt said, well before he died. “There’s the blues, and there’s ‘zip-a-dee-doo-dah.’ This Son Volt album is titled Notes of Blue. Simple as that, maybe.”
Just now pushing fifty, Jay Farrar, the creative force behind Son Volt, is still not as old as his voice. Not nearly. His singing voice, an ageless gift which sounds something like old timber looks, like the unpainted walls framing Walker Evans’ best portraits from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: simple, durable, weathered and grooved and unplanned.
Unplanned. Notes of Blue will be the twentieth album–including a couple live releases and two movie soundtracks–to which Farrar has lent his voice and songwriting.
He is not quite a famous man, which is probably a comfort except when bills need paying. Plenty praised, though, from the moment his first band, the influential Uncle Tupelo, recorded a punked-up version of the topical Carter Family song “No Depression,” and named their debut album after it. Photographed for magazine covers, including the inaugural edition of No Depression magazine, which argued for the arrival of something called alt-country back in 1995, when Son Volt’s first album, Trace, came out.
To be clear, Notes of Blue is not the blues of appropriation, nor of beer commercials, nor especially of the W.C. Handy awards. It is the broader blues of the folk process, where they have always lived, irrespective of culture and caste. The blues as one of many languages available to shape and recast as the song needs. The blues as a jumping off point.
Or, as Jay says, “For years I’ve been drawn to the passion, common struggle and possibility for redemption that’s always been a part of the blues. Everyone has to pay the rent and get along with their significant others, so many of the themes are universal. For me, the blues fills that void that’s there for religion, really. That’s the place I turn to be lifted up.” The possibility of redemption. “There will be damage, and there will be hell to pay,” he sings on the opening track “Promise the World.” “Light after darkness, that is the way.”
The bleak prospect of redemption, he sings on the first single, “Back Against the Wall”: “What survives the long cold winter/Will be stronger and can’t be undone.” Quintessential Son Volt. Tough, solitary, unflinching. “There’s always a threat of darkness on the horizon,” he says. “There’s also a path to a better way inherent in the blues.” And if that echoes the plaintive words of a long-gone hillbilly singer, there’s no accident in that. “Hank Williams is really the key,” Farrar says. “He showed us that the blues as a music form was an integral part of country music early on.”
For Notes of Blue, Farrar’s notion of the blues focuses on specific guitar tunings, courtesy Skip James, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Nick Drake. And on the structure of the songs themselves–repeated lines, a few phrases borrowed from older blues. Both provided entry points to his new songs.
“To me there’s always been a mystique attached to those three tunings and those three performers,” Farrar says. “So I was compelled to get inside those tunings and see what was there. Skip James’ tuning in particular, supposedly has its origins in the Bahamas, it’s a D-Minor tuning, so it has built into it kind of an intangible haunting effect. Something you can’t quite put your finger on but it’s there.”
Those entry points mean that Notes of Blue features far more finger picking than previous Son Volt albums, and even (a nod to Fred McDowell), the bellowing, rambunctious slide of “Static.”
“All of that was the target,” Farrar says with his wry, concise clarity, “but the arrow landed somewhere between Tom Petty and ZZ Top.” Add one more piece, the almost feral blues of the George Mitchell field recordings. “All the performers are unheralded,” Farrar says, “and yet compelling.”
“Belleville (where Uncle Tupelo grew up) is not St. Louis is not Ferguson, but we in flyover country are by now accustomed to our role in the greater society. We provide wheat and corn and fuel, a migratory labor force. The occasional spectacle.” And yet Jay Farrar seems nearly at peace with all of it. “Yeah, there’s a glimmer of hope,” he says. “What I get from the blues is that there’s a chance for redemption. Whether this record achieves that is anyone’s guess.”
K-ZAP 93.3 FM is playing the track from this album, “Back Against The Wall;” we are also airing “No Expectations” their cover of the Rolling Stones song, which is a featured track on the Amazon Original album, “Open Road.” Be sure to listen to our station’s stream at K-ZAP.ORG/LISTEN/
Discography:
Trace (1995)
Straightaways (1997)
Wide Swing Tremolo (1998)
A Retrospective: 1995-2000 (2005)
Okemah and the Melody of Riot (2005)
The Search (2007)
American Central Dust (2009)
Honky Tonk (2013)
Notes of Blue (2017)
Electro Melodier (2021)