Sometimes things fall through the cracks. With a new album by Gary Louris and a new performance and conversation that launches WMOT’s 30A Songwriters Sessions for 2025, I thought about his iconic band the Jayhawks and the Americana Honors and Awards. Did you know that in all this time, the Jayhawks have received only one nomination? Yet with their distinctive and influential blur of alt-country and Minneapolis power pop, starting in the 1980s, they probably should have a Lifetime Achievement Award by now. While we wait, we have Louris’s new solo album - his third - and it’ll make you feel like a winner.
It’s called Dark Country, a title that feels more like the backdrop to its stories than the stories themselves, which are largely about falling in love in the post-pandemic era and while approaching age 70. The opener, on the album and in this sit-down session with our own Jessie Scott, is “Getting Older,” about the complacency that can set in when we don’t do maintenance on long-term relationships. Then the mood turns sunnier, as Louris, with a chiming 12-string guitar, sings “Couldn’t Live A Day Without You.” That’s how he starts his WMOT set, including the story of courting his new wife Stephanie over phones and screens from long distance before he moved to Canada to be with her. It’s heartening hearing a fellow of his age sing a song of such simple ardor in that famously clear and keening voice.
Louris grew up in Toledo, OH and moved to Minneapolis for college, and he tells Jessie that in that era, musically speaking, “it was the place to be.” While the Replacements rocked hard and Prince launched his funk-centric rock career, Louris joined a band started by songwriter Mark Olson that was leaning into country rock. Their self-titled debut of 1986 opens with pedal steel and twangy guitar, and the follow-up got cranky critic Robert Christgau to gush that it sounded like a lost Flying Burrito Brothers album. In some ways, the Jayhawks broke out with Hollywood Town Hall in 1992, where I think they found the esthetic we know and love. While there were ins and outs as Olson came and went, the band forged on into the 21st century making brilliant music, up to their most recent, the exceptional Xoxo, in 2020. Louris has been the anchor all along, but his solo efforts have been notable too.
Jessie and Gary talk about the present more than the past in their conversation. But he does give a hint where some of his Brit pop overtones come from. “I'm still quite an Anglophile,” he says. “I love everything British, whether it's a Great British Bake Off or The Crown or Monty Python, The Beatles, the Stones. The Kinks are my favorite.” And he gets real of course about the album of the moment. “It is a love letter. I think mostly in my time, I've written songs that are more poetic license, a mixture of images, stories, different things mixed together,” he says. “But this record is completely literal, biographical love songs to my wife. With a few outliers there.”
Watch the full performance and behind-the-scenes interview here or on our YouTube channel, where you can follow more of our 30A Songwriters Festival coverage. This year's lineup includes Devon Allman, Maggie Rose, Jontavious Willis, Liz Longley and more.
New video episodes are posted every Friday, and Gary’s audio edition of the 30A Sessions will air on WMOT on April 1.
