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| SON VOLT DELIVERS HONKY TONK | |
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CD | VINYL | DIGITAL VISIT SPINNER.COM TO HEAR "BAKERSFIELD" FROM 'HONKY TONK' Honky Tonk is out now on Rounder Records! The album features eleven new Son Volt songs that are inspired by the classic honky tonk sound of Bakersfield. Bandleader Jay Farrar observes, “Honky tonk music is about heartache, heartbreak, the road.” Honky Tonk stays true to what’s so appealing about honky tonk music, while stretching out its familiar contours into new shapes and spaces. Farrar sees Honky Tonk as a record moving forward on the path toward a more acoustic-based music that Son Volt took on its last record, 2009’s American Central Dust (also on Rounder). “The record is a continuation of what was happening with American Central Dust,” observes Farrar. “Once again, I didn’t play much if any electric guitar.” Like American Central Dust, Son Volt recorded Honky Tonk in Farrar’s studio in St. Louis, with Mark Spencer (who also plays bass guitar, pedal steel and keyboards) at the recording helm. Dave Bryson provided drums and other percussion. Most of the songs on Honky Tonk were written in a two-week burst, and many of its compositions mine a more thematic lyrical vein inspired by a traditional country music aesthetic, which Farrar first explored on the band’s previous record. “I was always averse to using certain words in songs,” recalls Farrar, “including ‘love’ and ‘heart.’ But I started using them on [American Central Dust] and now I guess the floodgates have opened.”
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SON VOLT ON TOUR New tour dates have been announced. Please visit the tour
page to see the latest information. |
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JAY FARRAR'S, FALLING CARS AND JUNKYARD DOGS, OUT IN MARCH
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GUTHRIE PROJECT, NEW MULTITUDES
Like
a cadre of musical brothers finally coalescing after years on the road
apart, Jay Farrar (Son Volt, Gob Iron, Uncle Tupelo), Will Johnson
(Centro-matic, South San Gabriel), Anders Parker (Varnaline, Gob Iron)
and Yim Yames (My Morning Jacket, Monsters of Folk) gratefully deliver New
Multitudes, an intimate interpretation of American icon
and musical legend Woody Guthrie’s previously unrecorded lyrics. Under
the invitation of Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, to tour the
Guthrie archives, each of the four songwriters were offered the chance
to plumb and mine the plethora of notebooks, scratch pads, napkins,
etc. for anything that might inspire them to lend their voices and
give the words new life. "These guys worked on an amazing group
of lyrics”, says Nora. “Much of it culled from Woody’s
times in LA. Lyric wise, it’s a part of the story that is still
mostly unknown. From Woody’s experiences on LA’s skid row
to his later years in Topanga Canyon, they are uniquely intimate, and
relate two distinctly emotional periods in his life.” |
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MULTITUDES AUDIO CLIPS Check out these audio clips of the guys speaking about the project on the New Multitudes Facebook page.
Jay
Farrar: What was the process behind matching each artist to
the lyrics? |
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JIM
JAMES PERFORMS "TALKING EMPTY BED BLUES" |
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On Tuesday, March 13 from 2-3 pm, Jay, Will, Anders and Jim will perform a taped set before a live audience at WXPN’s World Café. This performance will air at a later date on over 230 NPR stations. If you are a WXPN member, try and get tickets to the performance! |
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TERROIR BLUES: THE DOGTOWN SESSIONS
The latest digital release Terroir Blues: The Dogtown Sessions is now available through Jay’s web store as well as iTunes and all other digital outlets.
This latest release features an 11-track sequence, including 5 alternate mixes from the Terroir Blues session (“Cahokian”, “Fool King's Crown”, “Dent County”, “Out on the Road” and “Walk You Down”) as well as 6 re-mastered tracks from the original 2003 Terroir Blues release. Jay’s web store exclusively features the album art for this release. |
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NEW MERCHANDISE ADDED TO JAY FARRAR STORE
Kerouac tour t-shirts and posters in Jay's Store are now available! These shirts feature the dates of the shows on the back. The posters are a beautiful woodcut and feature the dates as well. |
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| SON
VOLT - 'AMERICAN CENTRAL DUST'
Son
Volt returns with ‘American Central Dust,’ on
Rounder Records, a plaintive 12-song collection that recalls
the melodic succinctness of the band’s debut
album ‘Trace.’ After
the musical experimentation of 2007’s ‘The Search, ’ ‘American
Central Dust,’ the band’s first album
on Rounder, refines the band’s robust sound. Fiddle,
pedal steel, lap steel and sparkling piano add an atmospheric
nuance to Son Volt’s Americana inspired rock, surrounding
band leader Jay Farrar’s stream of consciousness lyrical
imagery. ‘AMERICAN
CENTRAL DUST’ tracklist: |
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LIST! CLICK HERE |
ON THE ROAD
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SON VOLT
Left to right: Gary Hunt, Jay Farrar, Dave Bryson, Mark Spencer, Andrew Duplantis
Photo: Emily Nathan.
HONKY TONK
“Break up the silence
Make it clear
Make it last…” – “Down the Highway”
From his earliest recordings in the 1990s as a founding member of Uncle Tupelo,
Jay Farrar has been a keen observer of the American landscape: its beauties
and its tragedies, salvations and poisons.
It’s a perspective that’s been hard-won by steady touring and travel
through this nation, and Farrar’s almost two-decades as the leader of
Son Volt (as well as impressive turns as an acclaimed solo artist and collaborator)
have only deepened and sharpened his gift for capturing the sights and sounds
of his American journey – a gift which is in evidence once again on Son
Volt’s sixth studio album: Honky Tonk.
After all, few places are as quintessentially American as the honky tonks where
neon beckons to lonely and discontented souls with the promise that sorrows
can be drowned in whiskey, cigarettes and a timeless music in which the clear
hard truths of its lyrics mine the emotional complexities of life and love
as fiddle and pedal steel sweetly commiserate.
“Honky tonk music is about heartache, heartbreak, the road,” Farrar
observes.
That music provides a touchstone for eleven new Son Volt songs that excavate
the classic honky tonk sound of Bakersfield (and Texas and Tennessee too) yet
distill and reimagine it. Honky Tonk stays true to what’s so
appealing about honky tonk music, while stretching out its familiar contours
into new shapes and spaces.
Farrar reflects that as he wrote and recorded the music so deeply steeped in
tradition for Honky Tonk, “I realized I also wanted these songs
to sound more contemporary and modern. There was no strict adherence to methodology
of the past. You never want to be a nostalgia act.”
“Always a common thread between us…” – “Heart
and Minds”
Farrar sees Honky Tonk as a record moving forward on the path toward
a more acoustic-based music that Son Volt took on its last record, 2009’s American
Central Dust (also on Rounder).
“The record is a continuation of what was happening with American
Central Dust,” observes Farrar. “Once again, I didn’t
play much if any electric guitar.”
Like American Central Dust, Son Volt recorded Honky Tonk in
Farrar’s studio in St. Louis, with Mark Spencer (who also plays bass
guitar, pedal steel and keyboards) at the recording helm. Dave Bryson provided
drums and other percussion. Most of the songs on Honky Tonk were written
in a two-week burst, and many of its compositions mine a more thematic lyrical
vein inspired by a traditional country music aesthetic, which Farrar first
explored on the band’s previous record.
“I was always averse to using certain words in songs,” recalls
Farrar, “including ‘love’ and ‘heart.’ But I
started using them on [American Central Dust] and now I guess the
floodgates have opened.”
Indeed, many of Honky Tonk’s songsdwell on affairs of the heart,
including the album’s opening tracks, “Hearts and Minds,” a
speedy Cajun waltz which assays the delicate balance between love’s steadfastness
and its caprice, and “Brick Walls,” a lover’s plaint steeped
in pedal steel that embraces the notion that “love’s a Spanish
word to be sung.”
It’s also there in a song like “Barricades,” which affirms
the necessity of pushing forward in the face of overwhelming despair and defeat
in a way that makes it seem that playwright Samuel Beckett might have had a
backing band called the Buckaroos. “No wage can buy what the world
never wanted,” Farrar sings. “Hearts press on anyway, undaunted.”
This continuing lyrical turn toward the heart is woven into an even more countrified
sound on Honky Tonk. Much of the immediate inspiration for the intense
exploration of honky tonk music came directly from Farrar’s recent decision
to learn to play a new instrument.
“In the time in between Son Volt records, I started learning pedal steel
guitar,” Farrar says. “I play with a local band in St. Louis now
and then called Colonel Ford. So I was immersed in honky tonk music, the Bakersfield
sound, in particular. And it was almost second nature when I started writing
the songs for this record.”
Indeed, a song titled “Bakersfield” serves as a swaggering Baedeker
to the enduring musical and lyrical charms of the genre, from its evocation
of Merle Haggard in the “sound of heartbreak from a jail cell” to
the bars where “hell breaks loose on Saturday night” and its nod
to the agriculture heartland in which many of these classic songs are rooted,
a place where workers “sweat and toil one with the land.”
“No cup of gold, no Candy Mountain,” sings Farrar. “No better
place to make a stand.”
That pedal steel sound that Farrar has grown so fond of playing winds through
most of the songs on Honky Tonk, with much of the playing provided
by St. Louis musician Brad Sarno. But Son Volt’s leader also found places
on the record to work in another signature of that classic music: a jolt of
twin fiddle provided by 2010 Grand Master fiddle champion Justin Branum and
Gary Hunt (who also plays mandolin and electric guitar on Honky Tonk).
“Twin fiddles were such a feature of the 1950’s Grand Old Opry,” says
Farrar. “I was watching some old episodes where there were two
and sometimes three fiddle players in the house band. It’s an interesting
sound, a natural chorus effect”.
Album opener “Hearts and Minds” is one song where that trademark
twin fiddle dominates, and Farrar recalls with pleasure the interplay between
Branum and Hunt in the recording of that tune.
“When we were listening to the playback of the song,” Farrar says, “I
heard Justin make the comment, ‘Here's where I add the third fiddle.’ Justin
is one fiddle player approximating the sound of two while he plays side by
side with Gary, which at certain points in the song actually sounds like three
fiddles playing.”
Farrar also points to the enigmatic “Seawall” as another place
on the record where twin fiddle provides key element of the sound. “There’s
a lot of power when the whole band drops out, and you get a burst of twin fiddle,” he
observes.
Yet for all its hearkening back to a classic sound, Honky Tonk possesses
a restless urge to make its source music new. On the somber “Livin’ On,” St.
Louis roots music stalwart Thayne Bradford’s accordion is stretched out
into a cold, haunted and disorienting sound that matches perfectly with Farrar’s
meditation on a defiant stubbornness – the “reckless side of tradition” – in
which “not even happiness falling down/ can ever change your mind.”
For a music that seeks to evoke the dark and smoky corners of the soul, classic
honky tonk music (especially the Bakersfield variety) boasts an enviable clarity
and crispness in its production. So in the moments when Son Volt washes the
genre’s trademark instruments in echo, or distorts them to a shimmer
or shards, it’s hard not to hear Farrar’s acknowledgment of what
time’s passage has wrought on the music – and of the powerful
ghosts tend to appear when old songs are summoned up. Or, as Farrar himself
asks on “Seawall,” a song on which the inevitable decay of what
we do and build is evoked so powerfully: “Do honky tonk angels still
walk this ground?”
“Always a wild wind blowin’/ Just want a guitar and a radio” – “Bakersfield”
With almost 20 years on the road, listeners will likely wonder where Honky
Tonk fits into the trajectory of the Son Volt’s storied career.
There are obvious points of connection between Honky Tonk and some
of the most notable moments in the band’s history. The ebullience of “Hearts
and Minds” and the buoyant optimism of “Barricades” bring
to mind “Windfall,” the classic opener to the band’s first
record, Trace. And it’s hard not to recall some of the more
countrified moments of the band’s second record, Straightaways,
(songs like “Creosote,” “Left a Slide,” “Last
Minute Shakedown”) in a number of songs on Honky Tonk.
“I see Son Volt as a continuum from the first record,” Farrar says,
adding that the band has consistently tried, on all of its records, to explore
a continuing dialectic between the sheen and shimmer of the studio and the
immediacy and urgency of live recording.
“There’s really a combination of raw and polished sounds on this
Son Volt record,” he says. “That approach has been there since
the first song [“Windfall”] on the first Son Volt record.”
Yet there are even deeper thematic continuities between this new music from
Son Volt and its past endeavors. Honky Tonk – as well as Farrar’s
forthcoming book, Falling Cars and Junkyard Dogs (Counterpoint) – both
continue his ongoing exploration of America’s landscape through the redemptive
power of its music.
In that regard, a song like “Down the Highway” is a key addition
to the band’s legacy. Mandolin and fiddle partner here to push forward
a steady shuffle that sums up a number of Son Volt’s journeys thus far. “Throw
this love down the highway, and see where it takes you,” sings Farrar.
“The song’s about the need to take music on the road,” he
explains.
Farrar’s commitment to that quest, and his desire to find (as he puts
it elsewhere on “Down the Highway”) “a world of wisdom inside
a fiddle tune” is the thread that connects Son Volt’s work – and
makes Honky Tonk a landmark on that continuing journey.
MUSIC
 Honky Tonk Release Date: March 05, 2013 Buy CD | Buy Vinyl |
 Artifacts Release Date: March 05, 2013 Digital Download |
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 American Central Dust Release Date: July 07, 2009 Buy CD |
 The Search Release Date: March 06, 2007 Buy CD |
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 Okemah And The Melody Of Riot Release Date: October 04, 2005 Buy CD |
 A Retrospective 1995 - 2000 Release Date: May 24, 2005 |
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 Wide Swing Tremolo Release Date: October 06, 1998 |
 Straightaways Release Date: April 22, 1997 |
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 Trace Release Date: September 19, 1995 |
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|  Buy DVD 6 String Belief DVD Recorded September 23, 2005 |
 Buy DVD Live From Austin, Texas DVD Recorded November 11, 1996 |
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PHOTOS
Press Photos:
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LINKS
Official Jay Farrar Site
Jay Farrar Forum
Jay Farrar/Son Volt Store
Son Volt @ MySpace
Transmit Sound
Rounder
Legacy Recordings
Rhino
Andrew Duplantis
Chris Masterson
Mark Spencer
Brad Rice
EXTRAS
...coming soon...
CONTACT
Band - grainelevator@sonvolt.net – PO Box 3141, Jersey City, NJ 07303
Management - Sharon Agnello for Steel Toe – sharon@steeltoemgmt.com
North American, Australian & Japanese booking – Frank Riley & Brian
Jonas for High Road Touring brian@highroadtouring.com
UK & European Booking: Bas Flesseman for Belmont Booking – Bas Flesseman bas@belmontbookings.nl
Publicity: Regina Joskow for Rounder Records – Regina Joskow rjoskow@rounder.com