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Jayhawks at First Ave Jayhawks Setlist
Jayhawks Tour Dates
01/17/2019 Swyer Theatre Albany, NY
01/18/2019 Brooklyn Bowl Brooklyn, NY 01/19/2019 Brooklyn Bowl Brooklyn, NY Read More
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The first day of Winter means the longest night of the year to us here in the Northern Hemisphere and there was no better place than to be inside of the Mainroom at First Avenue in Minneapolis, for the first of two shows from the band that has played that stage more times than any other, The Jayhawks.
The three-band evening began with a crisp set from Tuomo & Markus, a new project described as Nordic Americana from Finnish soul/jazz artist Tuomo Prättälä and singer/songwriter Markus Nordenstreng of The Latebirds. Performing as just a duo, the pair returns as a proper six-piece, in just a few weeks, in support of debut album Dead Circles, to headline the Cedar Cultural Center on January 18.
Playing the songs in a more stripped down nature, it was easy to focus more on their lyrics, Simon and Garfunkel-like delicate harmonies, and the laid back nature of songs like ‘Spinsters’ (about male not female), ‘Vanity Blinds’ (borne from an existential crisis brought on by impending fatherhood), and ‘Over the Rooftops’, co-written with their local friend, explaining it by saying, “If you need a chorus, you call Louris”.
We’ve predictably heard a lot of Prince covers in the room over the last two and a half years since he passed, but few more inventively done than the pair’s version of 1985’s ‘America’ - “I was aware of a short little man who has done a lot in this club” Nordenstreng humbly prefaced the song, also mentioning the many other Minnesota bands he grew up listening to, half a world away.
The South-meets-North combination of roots and soul from local (by-way-of Tennessee) singer/songwriter Chastity Brown has served her and the area music community, increasingly well. Still in support of last year’s Silhouette of Sirens (Red House Records), she’s been an honest and genuine artist who showcased her latest songs with her band on their final show of the year, complete with cello and violin, and co-vocalist Aby Wolf (the area’s go-to choice for vocals- if I needed a new answering machine message, she’s my first choice to record it).
Brown and the band determined their evening’s mission statement pre-show, in the venue’s Green Room- “to be patient, to play pretty, and get a little sexy” and proved it on songs like the opening ‘Lost’, radio single ‘Drive Slow’, and new single, written in response to a chance encounter with a biased white supremacist, ‘Mad Love’.
“We treat the stage as a front porch” Brown mentioned mid-set, and the friendly vibe of her and her band playing to some 1,500 Twin Cities neighbors, shone through in her forty-five minute performance.
Since reuniting in 2014 with their 1997-era line up (Gary Louris; Marc Perlman; Karen Grotberg; Tim O'Reagan; John Jackson) The Jayhawks have shown little signs of slowing down, releasing another record of new music this year, Back Roads and Abandoned Motels (Legacy Recordings), a collection of two new songs alongside contributions songwriter Gary Louris wrote for other outside projects.
With thirty-five years of material to draw from, the band’s two-hour fifteen-minute set started on a classic upswing with 2000’s ‘I’m Gonna Make you Love Me’ then dove back to the 1989 Blue Earth album for deep cut, ‘Ain’t No End’, before jumping back ahead twenty-five years to 2016’s ‘Quiet Corners & Empty Spaces’.
Louris, with now fully gray hair, glasses, and goatee (looking more like Gary Oldman) remains in fine form, and the current line-up clearly has a joyful spirit of synchronicity playing together, with drummer O’Reagan and keyboardist Grotberg getting several turns on lead vocals, letting Louris concentrate further on solos.
Louris had mentioned the songs on the new record, though written for others, still “felt in their wheelhouse” and they did seamlessly flow within the set, from The Dixie Chicks’ ‘Everybody Knows’ to “Gonna Be a Darkness’ (“a beautiful song about death” w/Jakob Dylan) to ‘Long Time Ago’ (w/Tonic’s Emerson Hart).
Louris admitted to 1997’s Sound of Lies’ as being one of his favorite records and with that lineup intact, reprised several from the disc including ‘Trouble’, ‘Dying on the Vine’, and ‘Big Star’. Former member and friend of the band Kraig (Run Westy Run) Johnson appeared mid-set, helping out on several tracks then disappeared, to re-emerge toward the show’s end.
An additional three-piece horn section perched in the back stage right corner at the midway point, to liven up songs like ‘Smile’, ’Long Time Ago’, and ‘Come Cryin’ to Me’. “We see them become part of your lives” Louris confessed to the crowd about the band’s many songs, “and it makes me very happy”.
Johnson rejoined for the main set-closing classic ‘Blue’, with the crowd singing along as well, and it wasn’t long before a generous six-song encore began, with Louris playing 1992’s ‘Settled Down Like Rain’ solo. Grotberg then joined him for 2000’s ‘Broken Harpoon’ before taking the lead herself on a Billy Walker cover, but the highlight had to be with Johnson and longtime Soul Asylum guitarist Dan Murphy (looking thinner but very happy) forming “semi-Smog” an almost lineup of alt supergroup Golden Smog (sans Jeff Tweedy) for a version of 1998’s ‘Until You Came Along’.
Pearlman and Johnson next swapped instruments for the closing ‘Bad Time’, a 1975 song from Grand Funk Railroad that The Jayhawks would cover on record twenty years later, and given some extra punch on this night, by the horn section and the additional members on stage.
With over two hours under their belt, a few songs were still missing (notably ‘Save it for a Rainy Day’) but that would just be more motivation to try and make it into the next night’s sold-out show and undoubtedly another solid performance from hometown musical heroes The Jayhawks.
(click on any photo below to enlarge and see full image)
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