An interview with Jay Farrar

The following article first appeared in the July 2009 issue of the Medford Sneak Preview.

Back to the basics: An interview with Son Volt’s Jay Farrar
By Vince Tweddell

Son Volt lead singer Jay Farrar says he tried to get back to the fundamentals on the band’s new record, American Central Dust, a very literate, sometimes introspective, other times rocking, twelve songs.

Indeed, this new album—which will be released July 7—signals a return, or at least a nod to, the band’s early releases, most notably the mid-1990s album Trace, which has to be listed in the top ten of any alternative country music junky.

Pedal steel, lap steel, pianos and violins all inhabit and enrich much of this powerful new album, something that Farrar said in a phone interview with The Sneak Preview was very different than the last album. He said while recording the last album, The Search, the band attempted to stretch out with their instrumentation, including the use of horns and backward guitar loops.

The new album is stripped down, bared for the world to see. Provocative lyrics, acoustic guitars, simple melodies and Farrar’s signature low drone of a voice leave a listener with no choice but to push repeat again and again, trying to understand how this band makes music that’s as much of an art as it is a commentary celebrating the daily lives of working men and women, past and present.

The haunting, piano-led “Sultana” tells the story of the steamboat Sultana, which on April 27, 1865, tragically sunk in the Mississippi River after one of its boilers blew. Some counts estimated the death total at 1,800, about three-quarters of the total passengers. The boat was overloaded six times its legal limit.

Farrar, who lives in St. Louis, said his interest was piqued in this tragedy by the sight of the “debris and carcasses of old ships when the river gets low.” When he heard the story of the Sultana, he was struck and motivated by the name Sultana, “a sadly, powerful name.”

The song “Cocaine and Ashes” is a tribute to Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. Richards once said he snorted his father’s ashes mixed with cocaine. While many were outraged with that story (Richards later recanted, saying it was a joke), Farrar was struck by the “idiosyncratic demonstration for the love of his deceased father”—as if Richards knows drugs and he was paying tribute in his own way.

Another piano-led song, it starts off, “I’ve had strychnine/I thought I was dead/I snorted my father and I’m still alive.” The sad violin that accompanies the piano reinforces Farrar’s intention that this is an empathetic look at an often outrageous man. “Body and soul/Cocaine and ashes/We’ll get to that place in time/Tears and blow on my mind.”

Other highlights include a pedal steel solo in the song “Dust of Daylight” that will bring a smile to anyone’s face who happens to believe that any song is improved with the addition of a pedal steel (as I am). In this song, Farrar sings of the confusion of love—an old standby that can’t be sung about enough. “The dust of daylight pulls you down and you must wait/Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make.”

Farrar said he was thinking about young bands just starting out on tour that had gas expenses greater than their pay per gig when writing “When the Wheels Don’t Move.” He wrote the guitar heavy song during the summer of 2008 when gas prices reached the $4 a gallon mark. “Who makes the decision/To feed the tanks and not the mouths/When the wheels don’t move.”

Farrar, who has recorded three solo albums sandwiched between six Son Volt offerings, said he’s satisfied now working within the structure of a band. “The band concept seems to be winning out,” he said. “There’s always a collective goal in mind that everyone feeds off.”

He said he learned much from his solo work, specifically what his limitations are.

Asked what those limitations are, he chuckled. “There’s many,” he said, adding that he dabbles with many instruments, but is not an expert with them.

His songs have at times reported on the ills that can plague this nation. That’s something he learned from listening to the greats who have come before him, a la Bob Dylan and Neil Young. “If there is any element in being a reporter, I learned it from them,” he said.

His style is a mixture, the fusion if you will, of rock, folk, and country elements picked up from the aforementioned artists and the old honky-tonk type music he still listens to. It’s something sadly unrepresented in today’s Nashville, something he has mentioned in past interviews that irks him. “They (Nashville) produce what sells. They’re going to continue to do it.”

Is that a commentary on us the consumers? “To some degree,” he answered.

We don’t know what Nashville or other musical pretenders will produce. What we know is that Farrar will continue to write the songs that mean something to him, searching, haunting songs that speak to the whole of the American landscape and we the people who live, work and move through it.
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Son Volt plays the Britt Festival July 18 with The Cowboy Junkies.
For more information: www.sonvolt.net and www.shorefire.com/clients/sonvolt