Son Volt - Biography
For many, the break-up of Uncle Tupelo -- coming on the heels of their critically acclaimed first major label release, 1994’s Anodyne -- came as a surprise, if not an outright shock. But when drummer/intermediary/fulcrum Mike Heidorn left after the recording of March 16-20 in 1992, so did the delicate balance between songwriters Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy, and the rift between them eventually grew to McCartney and Lennon proportions. Uncle Tupelo fans mourned the band’s break-up, but took solace with the idea of two twang-rock entities — Tweedy’s Wilco and Farrar’s Son Volt.
While Wilco would eventually generate nearly all of the critical kudos, it certainly didn’t start out that way. Shortly after Tweedy’s A.M. appeared to lukewarm reviews in early 1995, Farrar and his new band delivered Trace (Warner), a hard-hitting chronicle of life on the road that seemed to crystallize all of the themes Farrar had begun exploring in Uncle Tupelo. Buoyed by the modest success of the single “Drown,” whose chorus — “When in doubt, move on/No need to sort it out” — was taken as Farrar’s final word on Uncle Tupelo, Trace garnered critical praise from most quarters for its timeless sound. It finished the year near the top of many Best Of lists for 1995, including the Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop critics’ poll.
After the final Uncle Tupelo show, Farrar had re-connected with Heidorn, and recruited the Boquist brothers — multi-instrumentalist Dave and bassist Jim, who’d both been playing with Joe Henry — to fill out the new band’s lineup. With vital contributions from arguably the best modern-day pedal steel player, Eric Heywood, Trace’s songs alternated between propulsive, hard-charging twang-rock and classic country that sounded like it’d been around for decades. Narrative-wise, Farrar traced his journeys up and down the Mississippi, from New Orleans — where he’d relocated briefly after Uncle Tupelo’s demise -- to his hometown St. Louis and up to the Twin Cities area, where Trace was demoed and recorded in as live a fashion as possible.
The record read as both a celebration and elegy for the American heartland that Farrar traversed. Filled with images of billboard signs, highway markers, flooded river towns, toxic beaches, and miles and miles of interstate, the music was a journey between two countervailing ideals; a paean to the freedom found on the open road, and a cautionary tale about its limitations and siren-like qualities. Opening with the song that would become a live staple for Son Volt and Farrar’s solo career, the loping twang and world-wizened aphorisms of “Windfall” made it a certifiable country classic in every sense but the modern Nashville one. With pedal steel and fiddle supplying the high end, and Farrar’s time-worn voice the low, the song captured the musical ethos of its final stanza -- “Catching an all-night station somewhere in Louisiana/Sounds like 1963, but for now it sounds like heaven” — and celebrated the open road in its sing-along chorus, “Both feet on the floor/Two hands on the wheel/May the wind take your troubles away.” But as he did throughout Trace, Farrar leavened the carefree ride with an injection of realism that grounded the song, warning that you could “never seem to get far enough/Staying in between the lines.”
Farrar used much the same musical formula, only replacing fiddle with banjo, on the equally plangent “Tear-Stained Eye,” which chronicles the 1993 flooding of the town Saint Genevieve, about 70 miles south of St Louis on the Mississippi. But, befitting the writing prowess that set him apart from most authenticity-hungry alt-country songwriters, Farrar made the road and river fecund metaphors for the passage of time, our own inexorable transience, and the questionable existence of God: “Can you deny, there's nothing greater, nothing more than the traveling hands of time?/Saint Genevieve can hold back the water, but saints don't bother with a tear stained eye.”
Two more acoustic numbers -- “Ten Second News” and “Out of the Picture” — are interspersed among the rockers, the former notable for Dave Boquist’s thick lap-steel lines, and the latter for the photograph-as-momento mori metaphor at the center of its narrative: “You may be lost, you’ll find/Just another paradigm/Just a stop-frame in time/Then you’re out of the picture/And somewhere along the way the clock runs out/somewhere along the way it all stands still.”
As good as the twangy numbers are, it was their contrast with the driving, punk-tinged rock that made both stand out. “Live Free” and “Drown” used the stop-start and tempo-shift blueprint Farrar used so effectively on Uncle Tupelo’s first two records, while “Loose String” and “Catching On” buzz with raw, Crazy Horse guitar energy. On the former, Farrar renounces the wilder ways of his younger self -- “Too much living is no way to die,” he sings — while conceding that living in the moment remains tempting because “half the trouble’s in the asking” of these questions in the first place. Consciousness is indeed a bitch.
But it’s the incandescent “Route” that stands as the record’s final statement, from a musical, narrative and philosophical standpoint. Over blasts of brash guitar and note-bending leads, and a driving rhythmic thrum like a barreling 18-wheeler, Farrar laments that “we’re all living proof that nothing lasts,” while contrasting the “rural route” that “sleeps while the city bleeds all over itself.” The road, of course, runs through this song — and the nation’s psyche — providing temporary but ultimately futile solace in the illusion of escape: “The mother road remains, but it provides no more/It can only take us away.” After such weighty fare, closing Trace with a change-of-pace like Ron Wood’s love song, “Mystifies Me,” went down like a welcome after-dinner mint.
The extensive tours that followed Trace were met enthusiastically, helping many overcome any residual grief over Uncle Tupelo’s demise. The tours also helped build up expectations to nearly impossible levels for Son Volt’s follow-up, and when Straightaways (1997 Warner) finally emerged two years later it almost seemed destined not to live up to the pressure. There were reasons why the record didn’t resound as Trace had, but the primary one may have been that Straightaways was simply the product of a songwriter undergoing fundamental changes.
Where Trace had hit hard with its desperation and immediacy, the new record’s charms tended to reveal themselves over time. For one, Farrar had married and was soon to become a father, and though the road and its romantic lure were still his primary narrative engine, the pull of setting down roots seeped into the new record. The notably taciturn and phlegmatic Farrar eventually revealed that “Back Into Your World,” a gentle country shuffle fleshed out with Son Volt’s first use of organ, was a love song for his wife, Monica, recounting how life on the road exasperated being without her but also offered temporary reprieve. Or, as he put it, “can’t slow down, burning at four-barrel speed/A battle cry to treat this absence.”
The gorgeous country weeper “Creosote” -- with Heywood again supplying trellis-like pedal steel — also seemed to celebrate a greater sense of acceptance borne out of his relationship; “Barrel through thick and thin/Side by side like creosote,” he sang. If the emphasis here seemed to be, on the whole, more positive, Farrar hadn’t gone all Pollyanna, either, as the chorus’ finale reminded listeners that, even by “learning the ropes okay,” fate still intervened to “run you around.”
The faster-paced rockers “Picking Up the Signal,” “Cemetery Savior,” and “Caryatid Easy” may have echoed those sentiments, but they also traded the punk-fueled desperation of Trace’s rockers for a more even-keeled, and traditional, country rock flavor. After three years of playing together, the band had also become a well-oiled machine, and some of the raw edges of Trace had been replaced by a tighter-knit feel, one whose nuances required closer listening to truly appreciate.
If some of the songs seemed less visceral and urgent, Farrar’s lyrics were also shifting away from sing-along aphorisms and easy-to-parse metaphors to more esoteric word-play. Rather than just chronicling the dichotomies he encountered, Farrar seemed to dig deeper into their origins, perhaps best illustrated in “Last Minute Shakedown,” a forlorn, loping weeper where he examines the duality of happiness and sadness:
“A weight lifted, a wait on the next/Some days you don’t know why/From high above it’s all clear/It’s a long way down.../Pieces break apart, rearrange/To make the focus clear/Out of chaos comes order then back again/The truth is plain but not seen/Broken out by weathered thoughts/Lifted up, leveled off, then carried down.”
The more nuanced sound didn’t earn Straightaways anywhere near the same critical support Trace enjoyed; the majority of the reviews were lukewarm. The band’s profile remained strong enough that they were invited to play Austin City Limits (later released on DVD in 2005) and National Public Radio, and Son Volt was a strong-enough concert draw and record-seller to survive the late-‘90s major label purges for a little while longer. But there were vocal elements in the fan-base displeased with Son Volt’s new direction, and 1998’s Wide Swing Tremolo (Warner) wouldn’t do much to alter that.
Recorded this time in Farrar’s own Jajouka studio in St. Louis, some complained that the record sounded too much like a reprise of Straightaways: the hard-charging “Driving the View” and “Question” were, respectively, this record’s “Picking Up the Signal” and “Cemetery Savior,” while the downcast laments “Strands” and “Left A Slide” seemed cut from the same mold, and the Heywood-powered “Hanging Blue Side” was this record’s “Creosote,” and so on. But such facile comparisons tended to obscure the increasingly dense word-play the straight-forward country rock encased.
Life on the road and the American landscape—both the concrete and metaphoric scenery— was still Farrar’s narrative grist, but lyrics from a song like the relatively up-tempo “Medicine Hat” practically required footnotes to discern their meaning: “There will be watchers that ply for new confines/And those committed to society’s circles/Unwary cogs with no cadence of virtue.” While such knotty fare was appealing to some, others lamented that Wide Swing Tremolo seemed to venture even further from the user-friendly aphorisms of Trace or Uncle Tupelo.
The suggestion that Wide Swing Tremolo merely aped the Straightaways blueprint also ignored Farrar’s growing instrumental palette. Farrar played organ, piano and chamberlain here, and there were background strings on “Streets That Time Walks.” Hard-rocking disc-opener “Straightface” featured the first treated vocals of Farrar’s career, and the brief instrumental interludes “Jodel” and “Chanty” anticipated the “space junk” he would later feature on his solo record, Terroir Blues (2003 Artemis Records).
But the record did feel in part like a holding pattern, and after a solid year of touring behind it Warner Brothers dropped the band. Farrar quietly put Son Volt on hold to concentrate on his solo career, which, in addition Terroir Blues in 2003, also resulted in his earlier release Sebastapol (2001 Artemis), the EP Thirdshiftgrottoslack, and three live records. The solo work was both more experimental and sparse than Son Volt’s guitar-centric attack, and Farrar often toured accompanied only by former Blood Oranges’ guitarist Mark Spencer. (There was also one full-band tour with the band Canyon, some of whom would soon figure in Son Volt’s second incarnation.)
But eventually the itch to play full-band rock music returned, and an opportunity arose to de-mothball Son Volt for the Alejandro Escovedo tribute disc, Por Vida (2004 Or. Music). The band was in fine form on Escovedo’s “Sometimes,” and the rapport was good enough that soon plans were made to record Son Volt’s fourth full length. But on the eve of rehearsals, negotiations between Farrar’s legal team and lawyers for Heidorn and the Boquists broke down. Farrar later told Harp magazine that “last-minute demands” had been made that were unsustainable, and the reunion fell apart.
With studio time booked at Jajouka, Farrar quickly put together a band from his extensive contacts, including guitarist Brad Rice (Ryan Adams, Tift Merritt), Andrew Duplantis on bass (Jon Dee Graham, Meat Puppets, Bob Mould), and Canyon’s Dave Bryson on drums (Canyon's Derry De Borja would soon be added full-time on keys).
Okemah and the Melody of Riot (Transmit Sound/Sony) was released in 2005, and seemed to gather bits and pieces from all of Farrar’s post-Uncle Tupelo career; dark road meditations a la Trace, pulsing rockers that would have fit on Straightaways, and the more gentle accents of his solo work. But Farrar’s narratives on Okemah — Woody Guthrie’s hometown -- had a distinctly angry political edge that seemed to fire the music’s more aggressive mood.
While his previous work almost always had a critical sociological under-pinning, “Jet Pilot” was the most overtly political song Farrar had ever written. Opening against a back-drop of distorted guitar, Farrar went after Bush for Iraq, begging out of Vietnam, and the increasing divide between the rich and poor. But he didn’t stop there; he also reminded people of the President’s coke-snorting/alcoholic past, which had somehow been whitewashed from the public record: “Junior likes to let his hair down,” he sang, “only problem is, word gets around.”
“Atmosphere,” which decried the “madmen on both sides of the fence,” was the strongest rock song Farrar had written since Trace, turning a slow-burn start into a full-throttle crescendo with momentum reminiscent of Uncle Tupelo. “Endless War” was another crunchy rocker lamenting the current state of affairs and apportioning blame to both sides, with a rare Farrar solo and noisy outro.
Farrar’s anger stemmed in part from the legacy his children would be left by Bush’s reign. But that homelife he’d been experiencing since Son Volt had been on hiatus, also seeped into Okemah; Farrar was clearer than ever on what was worth fighting for. “Afterglow 61” was a hard-charging paean to the highway of the same name alluding to Dylan, but instead of now focusing on the dark side, Farrar seemed to celebrate what the road had to offer: “There’s no reason to feel downhearted/There’s music in the wheels it’s there to be found.” The sitar-driven exotica of “Medication” might have been right at home on his solo discs, but decried any medicinal escape by insisting “on a different solution.”
His answer came in the next two songs. The up-beat rocker “6 String Belief” is a paean to the power of pure rock music to overcome its corporate co-optation, which he also used as a metaphor for our social ills as well: “Killed by consolidation, killed by saturation/The underground will correct with reaction, rebellion.” On the luxurious, organ-accented country shuffle “Gramophone,” Farrar links his family’s personal musical heritage with the “hillbilly” and “juke joint” legends that informed his own musical upbringing. Backed by Duplantis’ best harmonizing on the record, Farrar puts it simply: “Colors in sound jump out/Sitting by the gramophone/Same as stoned/If it warms the soul takes the strain away.”
Farrar stressed those connections again on “World Waits For You.” It begins as a rather syrupy piano-and-voice piece but soon morphs, adding Heywood’s thick and rich pedal steel lines before finally erupting into an elegiac full-band reprise, Farrar’s final communal plea echoing through the symphonic reprise: “Find strength from the words/Of those that went before/Take what you need/But leave even more.”
Farrar was clearly re-invigorated, and drew renewed inspiration from his family without losing his keen social eye. The lyrics were more opaque than ever, though, making Okemah a difficult record to sing along with — something no musician should entirely forsake. As for the new band, they’d acquitted themselves well. Rice’s clean leads lacked the sloppy soul of Dave Boquist’s, but he would eventually be replaced by Chris Masterson, whose guitar playing was much warmer. Heidorn had excelled at anticipating the beat and thereby driving songs, where Bryson, a better technical drummer, tended to lag just slightly behind the beats. Duplantis quickly proved why he has been much-sought after, providing both solid bass and back-up vocals that fit well enough with Farrar to match Jim Boquist’s.
The addition of De Borja’s keys during the tours for Okemah added more subtle shadings to the Son Volt sound, changes that solidified with the release of 2007’s The Search (Transmit Sound/Sony). Opening with the piano-based dirge “Slow Hearse” seemed to be a direct connection with Okemah’s final song, but Farrar incorporated more of the “space junk”-like instrumentation of his solo stuff by adding backwards guitar loops to the outro that could have come straight off the Beatles’ Revolver.
The Search blended those and other new accents -- mellotron swirls (“Underground Dream”), Eastern accents (“Circadian Rhythm”), and Memphis soul horns (“The Picture”) -- with the band’s base of solid rock riffs and old-school country. Farrar also brought back Heywood to play on a couple tracks; not only do his rich, surging lines make "Methamphetamine" -- a devastating chronicle of the drug's scourge -- one of Farrar's most evocative songs, they provide a bridge between the two versions of Son Volt.
Farrar seemed less concerned with the political landscape and Bush’s bleak legacy this time around, as the lyrics concentrated on the corrosive cultural and personal effects of our blind rush into the "progress" of the Information Age. On the title track, he saw a nation that's totally plugged in, but increasingly tuned out and alienated. Finding meaning in the "modern cacophony" and post-modern cultural hall of mirrors is more difficult than ever, yet never more paramount. Gasoline junkies, terror threats, eroding liberties, televangelists, immigration wars and ecological disaster run through the record's lyrics like a 24/7 satellite news-ticker. You still aren’t likely to sing along with it, but it’s a collage of imagery that leaves an impression.
But The Search isn't a Luddite screed or nihilistic rant; hope rides along like a passenger on this particular journey. The optimism is hard-won, of course, and tempered by a healthy degree of road-tested realism. Like all art that resonates, Farrar's music shuns doctrinaire answers; unlike the arrogance of the Bush administration and the free market missionaries that characterized the era, he's been around enough to know not to trust any simple answers. That doesn't preclude cause for hope, though, because the search itself fundamentally changes us. As he sings on "The Picture" over a joyous blast of horns, "We'll know when we get there/If we find mercy." And over the years, those changes have embraced Son Volt, too, for better or worse.
