Download: Son Volt “Down To The Wire”

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(from American Central Dust out now on Rounder)

Onetime component of the vastly-influential alt-country originators Uncle Tupelo, Jay Farrar has traveled an arguably harder road than ex-bandmate Jeff Tweedy. While Wilco draws inspiration from the odder corners of post-Radiohead skronk and so reaps a megabuck harvest of acclaim, Farrar’s Son Volt continues to burnish the spare and anthracite-hard aesthetic of high lonesome. With American Central Dust, Farrar’s gift for lean incisiveness and social observation takes the gospel of Roger McGuinn and Gram Parsons in unexpected directions, while the bravura instrumentals of Mark Spencer and Chris Masterson tether the whole to the traditional eloquent toughness of country music. This is an essential and rewarding listen for anyone ready for hard-thinking about evil days, past and future, but the present shows Farrar & co. at the very top of their game. Here, Farrar belies his rep as a “difficult” interview and gives the year’s best slab of alt-twang some vital context. This interview by Ron Garmon.

What was growing up in Belleville, Illinois like? What did you hear on the radio?
Jay Farrar (guitar/harmonica/vocals): A whole lot of classic rock and a little bit of commercial country, I guess. All those things kind of informed and also acted as a negative inspiration to dig deeper than those songs and keep trying. I was more into garage rock and bands like X.
Indeed. It seems like all roads to glory in the 1980s and 1990s passed through the Nuggets compilation.
Yeah, but I don’t know if it’s gotten any better. One thing that has gotten better is the Mexican radio, which is what I listen to when I travel.
How much of American Central Dust is inspired by recent, um, developments in American life?
You know, the songs were written in the summer of ’08 and the prevailing mood of the country was that we needed change. I supposed there’s something of that in it. A song like “Down to the Wire” has more of looking at things through a historical lens.
If there’s hope in that at all, it’s mixed with some degree of country-boy fatalism.
(laughs) Maybe that fatalism comes naturally to anyone who knows what’s going on, but I felt overall this was an optimistic record.
Tell us about the current lineup of Son Volt.
Mark Spencer on steel guitar and keyboards and Chris Masterson on electric and lap steel. I think the coalescence and chemistry after we’d done eight months of shows before we recorded the record is in the end result. There’s more interplay between Chris and Mark and more of soloist’s sensibility.
A song like “Down to the Wire” recalls for me the Band’s “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)” somewhat and not in just instrumental virtuosity. Both are rooted in history and, as a protest song, could, well, “hope” be the missing element in “Wire”?
I think the main thing I was emphasizing in that song is not particularly Hurricane Katrina, which looms large in everyone’s consciousness. I was traveling through Colorado a year or so back and walked into a museum that had an exhibit detailing an incident that happened to some striking local miners about a hundred or so years ago. The governor was close to the mining magnates, who would just call him up the National Guard and have the workers shot.
That was the war between Governor Peabody and what became the IWW. “Cocaine and Ashes” isn’t like your typical public service announcement on drug use.
That’s a good choice of words on your part. [Keith Richards snorting his father’s ashes cut with cocaine] just struck me as being really honest and not something someone would make up, although it was called into question later. But it still moved me enough to write a song about it.
This album is getting compared to Son Volt’s debut Trace.
You know, primarily the focus of this record was to try to make it more cohesive overall, coming off The Search, which was about exploring different possibilities and trying to find traditions. This has more familiar instrumentation and going for a more familiar aesthetic. Even in terms of writing the songs, I was using more standard tunes as opposed to alternate tunes. The primary thing I did different on this record is I played acoustic instead of electric guitar.
The point of “When the Wheels Don’t Move” is something that would occur to anyone taking a trans-American road-trip in the year 2009. Would you care to speculate on our post-prosperity future?
Well, now, I just drove the length of Iowa and it’s pretty much populated with the windmills and that was really wild. I think things are slowly changing.
I went through my home state of Virginia and the locals there are debating the meaning of these big, ugly, unnatural-looking contraptions.
I like them. They’re kind of whimsical.
True. Virginia mountaineers are little given to whimsy, however. Was there any particular person who inspired “Pushed Too Hard”?
No, just kind of a reference to a lot of stuff I experienced over the years. New Orleans blues guys—James Crutchfield especially—inspired that. I used to see him quite a bit before he died in pre-21 fake-ID type of situations.
“Sultana” really grabbed me. This mournful remembrance of a long ago disaster can’t help but put 9/11 into people’s minds. This massive 1865 steamboat explosion killed up to 2000 people, yet seems to be forgotten.
The [boat’s] name “Sultana” struck me as sadly powerful and still sort of stands as the worst domestic maritime disaster in American history—I just started becoming interested in the “why” of that event.
The details around it are heart-rending. When the boiler exploded, the boat was crammed full of Union ex-POWs who’d just been sprung from hellholes like Andersonville and were desperate to get home
Bad news on top of bad news. President Lincoln had just been assassinated.
How much of a history buff are you?
It was the one class I pretty much paid attention to while in college when I went for a couple of years.
Is Rounder your new label?
Yes. Reason being, they have a long-term commitment to the ideals of the music they believe it, so it seems like a fit.
Tell us about the tour.
We’re on the road now, in Omaha and headed west. We’re playing at the Wiltern, I think. I’ve driven by it before. Now I get to see the inside! We’re touring into November.
Evaluate the place of your old band in recent musical history.
Well, I just revisited one of the songs we’re in the set, but it’s difficult to go back to a place you were at 21 or 22. It’s like naked baby pictures or something.

SON VOLT WITH THE COWBOY JUNKIES ON THUR., JULY 16, AT THE WILTERN, 3790 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 7 PM / $20-$35 / ALL AGES. LIVENATION.COM. SON VOLT’S AMERICAN CENTRAL DUST IS OUT NOW ON ROUNDER. VISIT SON VOLT AT SONVOLT.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/SONVOLT.