the Jayhawks

the Jayhawks, American roots rock group that was an influential pioneer of the alternative country and Americana movements but became increasingly eclectic in its range of styles. Founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1985, the Jayhawks have long been revered by the musical literati, but during a career of more than three decades they have failed to gain a widespread audience to equal the high regard in which they are held by pop music critics. The band’s principal members have included Mark Olson (b. September 18, 1961, Minneapolis), Gary Louris (b. March 10, 1955, Toledo, Ohio), Marc Perlman (b. July 29, 1961, St. Petersburg, Florida), Karen Grotberg (b. March 18, 1959, International Falls, Minnesota), Tim O’Reagan (b. October 1, 1958, Chandler, Arizona), Kraig Johnson (b. May 9, 1965, Minneapolis), Jen Gunderman (b. November 23, 1969), Stephen McCarthy (b. February 12, 1958, Richmond, Virginia), John Jackson (b. August 19, 1974, Hartford, Connecticut), Ken Callahan,and Norm Rogers (b. August 1, 1956, Ferriday, Louisiana—d. February 19, 2018, Sioux Falls, South Dakota).

The Jayhawks emerged in the mid-1980s as part of a vibrant Twin Cities (Minneapolis–St. Paul) music scene that included Prince, the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Soul Asylum, Trip Shakespeare, and the Gear Daddies. The band’s original three-piece lineup, anchored by guitarist-vocalist Mark Olson, evolved to include drummer Norm Rogers and guitarist-turned-bassist Marc Perlman. Before the release of the Jayhawks’ self-titled debut album in 1986, they were joined by guitarist-vocalist Gary Louris. Olson, who wrote and sang lead on most of the band’s early songs, provided the group’s controlling sensibility, grounded in traditional country music and an appreciation of such artists as Hank Williams and Tim Hardin. From the outset, what distinguished the Jayhawks was the group’s signature vocal sound, a blend of Olson’s bleached baritone and Louris’s melancholic tenor. Sometimes singing in unison but more often in harmony that was reminiscent of the Everly Brothers, Simon and Garfunkel, and especially the Louvin Brothers, Olson and Louris fused their voices into a seamless whole that was unquestionably greater than the sum of its parts.

Louris’s roles as a songwriter and a singer grew on the band’s second album, Blue Earth (1989), released on the local Twin/Tone label. The Jayhawks began earning comparisons to the Byrds and country rock pioneers the Flying Burrito Brothers, partly because of Olson’s vocal resemblance to Gram Parsons, the Burritos’ front man. With Blue Earth, the Jayhawks became prime movers of alternative country, though their marriage of punk rock energy with traditional country was less evident than that of the emerging genre’s other principal bellwether, Uncle Tupelo (forerunner of Wilco and Son Volt). Blue Earth caught the attention of producer George Drakoulias when he heard it playing in the background during a phone call with the Twin/Tone offices, which led to the band’s signing with major label Def American Recordings and to Drakoulias’s producing the band’s breakthrough album, Hollywood Town Hall (1992).

With a sound that was fuller and more layered than that of Blue Earth, Hollywood Town Hall was widely praised by critics and produced a raft of songs that became staples of the Jayhawks’ live performances, including “Waiting for the Sun,” “Clouds,” “Crowded in the Wings,” and “Settled Down like Rain.” Louris’s inventive lead guitar playing on the album (encompassing snakey string bending and fuzz) would become another of the band’s signatures.

Olson and Louris’s lyrics were impressionistic and oblique, leaving room for listeners to make their own meaning. The Jayhawks’ deeply atmospheric songs were suffused with melancholy, longing, and loss, concerned with heartbreak, healing, and hope, and grounded in clear-eyed introspection. They were the reflections of often-disillusioned protagonists and recidivist romantics.

On the band’s next album, Tomorrow the Green Grass (1995; also produced by Drakoulias), the Jayhawks expanded their musical palette to include a broader range of roots-oriented styles, thus helping to define what would become characterized as the Americana genre (which borrowed from the blues, folk, bluegrass, and rock and roll as well as country). The album, another triumph with the critics, featured the hit “Blue,” along with the memorable “Nothing Left to Borrow,” “I’d Run Away,” and “Miss Williams’ Guitar.” The last song, a love letter to singer-songwriter Victoria Williams, foreshadowed Olson’s departure from the band in 1995. Determined to shape his musical destiny away from big-label pressure, Olson married Williams and joined with her and multi-instrumentalist Mike Russell to form the Original Harmony Ridge Creek Dippers.

Over the years, there were other personnel changes, most notably the band’s succession of drummers, from Norm Rogers to Thad Spencer, Don Heffington, and Ken Callahan before stabilizing in 1993 with Tim O’Reagan. Keyboardist-vocalist Karen Grotberg joined in 1993, and guitarist Kraig Johnson joined in 1996 (he left in 2001 and rejoined the band for an interlude in the mid-2010s). When Grotberg stepped away in 1999 to raise her daughter, keyboard player Jen Gunderman replaced her.

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With Louris as the group’s new principal songwriter, lead vocalist, and driving force, the Jayhawks explored still other genres. Without fully deserting the band’s country influences, Sound of Lies (1997) delved into melodic pop rock, building on Louris’s affection for the British Invasion in songs whose bright sound belied their darker subject matter, some of it the product of Louris’s divorce. Smile (2000), helmed by Bob Ezrin (producer of Pink Floyd’s The Wall), experimented with power pop and electronic music, mixing bleeps and drum loops with twangy guitar. The infectious “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” and the orchestral “Smile” are the standout cuts on a cohesive album lauded in a New York Times review with a headline that spoke to the band’s continued lack of commercial success: “What If You Made a Classic, and No One Cared?” Guitarist Stephen McCarthy, formerly of the Long Ryders, temporarily joined the Jayhawks on the Ethan Johns-produced Rainy Day Music (2003), which marked a return to the group’s rootsy approach and boasted a clutch of songs that would become fan favourites, not least “Save It for a Rainy Day” (with a music video starring Mary-Louise Parker), “Tampa to Tulsa” (written and sung by O’Reagan), “Stumbling Through the Dark,” and “Tailspin.”

In 2005 the Jayhawks began a long hiatus during which Louris continued to play with Perlman and Johnson in the supergroup Golden Smog, which at one time or another included Soul Asylum’s Dan Murphy, the Replacements’ Chris Mars, and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. In 2008 Louris made the solo album Vagabonds. Later that year he and Olson, who had begun playing together again, released Ready for the Flood, which was reminiscent of their early Jayhawks collaborations. When interest in the Jayhawks was rekindled by the release of Music from the North Country: The Jayhawks Anthology (2009), the band reformed in a core configuration that would persist into the 2020s: Louris, Perlman, O’Reagan, and Grotberg. Olson joined them briefly to record the generally well-received Mockingbird Time (2011), but his presence was short-lived.

Produced by Tucker Martine (known for his production work for the Decemberists) and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, Paging Mr. Proust (2016) is arguably the band’s most adventurous recording. Influenced by the likes of the Velvet Underground, Television, and “Krautrock,” it includes the churning “Leaving the Monsters Behind,” the pulsing “Comeback Kids,” and the lilting reflective idyll “Quiet Corners & Empty Spaces.” The group’s next album, Back Roads and Abandoned Motels (2018), primarily a collection of songs that Louris had written for other artists, was the brainchild of Sony Music A&R (artists and repertoire) man John Jackson. Not only did Jackson conceive of and coproduce Back Roads, but he also joined the Jayhawks briefly as a multi-instrumentalist. The album’s highlights include “Gonna Be a Darkness,” a haunting meditation on death written with Jakob Dylan and sung by O’Reagan, along with the confessional “Everybody Knows,” written with and for the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks).

During this period, the Jayhawks also operated as the backing band for Kinks front man Ray Davies on his Americana (2017) and Our  Country: Americana Act 2 (2018) albums and for singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding (recording under his given name, Wesley Stace) on his album Wesley Stace’s John Wesley Harding (2017). The band consciously democratized its approach on XOXO (2020), on which O’Reagan and Grotberg, who had long provided distinctive harmony vocals, shared lead vocal and songwriting responsibilities with Louris. In 2021 Louris released his second solo album, Jump for Joy.