The Jayhawks have quietly but steadily cultivated a consistent blend of jangle-pop, west coast country-rock, and Beatles-esque harmonies with a hint of psychedelia since the mid-1980s. They garnered a steady following in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul in their home state of Minnesota, with the rest of the world joining in with the release of 1992’s universally acclaimed Hollywood Town Hall. Since then, their output has been remarkably consistent; their songwriting prolific and rooted in captivating melodies, including creative left turns when you least expect them, and all the while remaining authentic yet accessible.
With their latest album, XOXO (due in stores July 10th), The Jayhawks wanted to make a truly “full band” album, where everyone shares in the songwriting and arranging. As a result, guitarist/vocalist Gary Louris, bassist Marc Perlman, drummer Tim O’Reagan, and keyboardist Karen Grotberg have crafted one of their strongest, most consistent albums to date.
The Jayhawks’ new album XOXO arrives in stores July 10th | Official Store
I recently spoke with Perlman—who, along with Louris, has been in the Jayhawks since the very beginning—about the making of XOXO, how they’re surviving professionally and personally during a pandemic, and their thoughts on the happenings in their home state since the murder of George Floyd and the effect it’s had on Minneapolis and the world in general.
How did the band approach XOXO differently from your previous full-band studio effort, 2016’s Paging Mr. Proust?
Well, I think Gary decided probably after we made Paging Mr. Proust, he was going to want to include the rest of the band in the songwriting more because really, the whole band has been writing songs for a long time. It just hasn’t really been an opportunity for the rest of us to get our songs on a record. And at some point, when a band has been together long enough, it’s just something you have to do.
You have a co-write on a couple of tracks, including the Stonesy Satanic Majesty’s-era “Illuminate.” What was the writing process like for the album?
Well, the way the songs came together were from all different parts of the process. You had songs that people brought in that were finished and you had songs that were open-ended, and then you had songs that were kind of put together in the writing sessions that we had. We got together for maybe two or three weeks and had what we call writing sessions, which kind of sounds pretentious, but for lack of a better word, where we all would just bring in ideas and throw them out there and see what other people could add to them. “Illuminate” was one that really came together from scratch.
That was written during one of the writing sessions?
Yeah, exactly. I came in and started riffing, and then everybody started jamming off of that riff, and things kind of went from there. That's something that's really fun to do. If you've got the right kind of people playing together. You can’t do it all the time, but when it happens, it's a very satisfying way to put together a song.
Another co-write of yours is “This Forgotten Town,” which is the perfect way to kick off the album; it grabs you right off the bat. Was that put together the same way as “Illuminate?”
Kind of. I think I had a little more of a formed idea. But really it was sort of the same way where I brought in this idea and then Gary went with it. People started adding nuances here and there for both “Illuminate” and “Forgotten Town.” Most of the lyrics were written by Gary and me together at a later date. With “Illuminate,” Gary and I wrote most of the lyrics that we sang, and Tim came up with these vocal riffs which really helped make the song. For “This Forgotten Town,” Gary and I got together and sat around like we used to do in the old days and wrote the lyrics together, which was a lot of fun.
And so when did you guys get together in the writing room?
You know, that’s a good question, because, you know, time has become irrelevant, right? It's really hard to tell. I think it was the end of last summer.
And you went into the studio in the late fall?
Yeah, it was just starting to get chilly. We recorded the first ten days we were in the studio. It’s about 45 minutes south of Minneapolis, called Pachyderm. It's a studio that's been around for a long time nestled out in the woods in a town called Cannon Falls. A lot of great records were made there: some Jayhawks stuff, Soul Asylum, Nirvana’s In Utero was recorded there. It was great for us to get out of town. And it was just four of us and the engineer (Nick Veitbakk). Then we finished the recording up in Minneapolis, maybe in about another week or so at a studio called Flowers, which was founded and run by a very close friend of ours, Ed Ackerson, who unfortunately passed away not too long before we went into the recording, so it was kind of an emotional time for us to go in there and record.
How did that emotion translate onto tape? The album is definitely melancholy in places, but I also feel a sense of affirmation, a sort of acceptance. That seems to be the overarching theme of the album.
I think the emotional part of recording at Flowers was personal. I don't think it really had anything to do with what came out. I like to think that that's sort of how Jayhawks records are in general. We all write in ways that reflect our personality. Karen’s songs are very wistful and beautiful. She writes very close to her heart. And Gary's songs are, you know, I don't need to describe them...and you can really hear Tim's musical background. We all knew of Tim, not just by reputation, but we’d seen him play in town in his previous bands—The Leatherwoods being the most prominent one—and I always knew that he would be the kind of drummer that would fit really well in our band. And the fact that he's an amazing vocalist was kind of the kicker.
O’Reagan’s two songs on XOXO have a serious Replacements vibe, who just happen to be fellow Twin Citians.
Yeah, “Dogtown Days” and “Society Pages,” which are both Tim O’Reagan songs, definitely have some of that in it. I think it's really cool to have them on a Jayhawks record.
But the Jayhawks were always sort of an outlier in that scene. We really just didn't sound like anybody else at the time that we started, which I think was indicative of what the Minneapolis music scene was like, which also speaks to the diversity of the Twin Cities. Obviously, there's the Prince sound, which came out of all parts of Minneapolis and St. Paul. And then you had the twin-tone sound, the SST sound, Husker Dü, Soul Asylum, the Replacements. You had a great garage band scene, great punk/new wave scene, and then you had us. And it wasn't like we all hung out in different corners of the bar and stared at each other. We were all playing the same venues and we were all friendly with each other. We never really thought of it as being anything other than music.
I’m glad we have new Jayhawks music to get us through the summer and beyond because this year seems rife with tragedy. The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop I’m sure really hit home for you guys.
The whole incident was very devastating and us being in the Twin Cities being exposed to it before everybody else was...I guess jarring is the best word. And everything that happened after was just kind of mind-numbing. It was a very tragic situation, especially for Minnesotans who aren't really used to that kind of chaos.
Did the Minneapolis we saw in the news daily run in contrast to what you guys knew or grew up with? Is it an accurate portrayal?
Minneapolis-St. Paul and the Twin Cities metro area has a reputation for not being diverse which cannot be further from the truth. It's a very diverse community; a vibrant ethnic community. We probably have the largest Somali population in the country, and before that, post-Vietnam had one of the largest Hmong communities.
And you know, I don't really see Minneapolis being any different than any other major city. I think the rest of the country got more of a wake-up call to what the Twin Cities were like than what Twin Citians are. We have one of the coolest hip-hop communities in the country. We have some of the greatest museums. We have some of the best food. And I think it's sad that the first images that the rest of the country got of the Twin Cities were the kind of chaos that they saw. But at the same time, I think it's a wake-up call, and because the wake-up call came from Minneapolis, people's image of us has changed.
Like everyone else, you guys have been living through this pandemic. What has life in the era of COVID-19 been like for the Jayhawks?
I don't think it’s any different of a struggle than anybody else. I think we're kind of having a harder time adapting to the new way of doing things than other bands. We're not really a band that is going to latch on to streaming or virtual live performances that don't include audiences. So, we're a little late to that game.
Plus, Gary was just until recently living in upstate New York. So we just didn't really feel like we wanted to do the thing where we're all in different houses playing. It would’ve been kind of problematic. But now that we're together, that is the number one thing on our agenda to discuss.
And what is being brought to that discussion as far as plans to tour and/or perform in the future when all this settles down?
We just got together and played for the first time since this all went down to do some video shoots. Live, not synced. It's just live renditions of our songs for various outlets. And it was strange, you know? Everybody, including the film crew and the sound crew, we’re all trying to figure out the best way to go about doing this and I think everybody's starting to learn how to do it. In our case, because we're not the quickest on the uptake in the new technology, by the time we get it together, I'm sure there's gonna be a vaccine and we’re gonna start playing live again anyway, so, we’ll see.
But everybody’s healthy?
Yeah. I mean, considering our age, we're all doing pretty well. We all live pretty quiet lifestyles anyway. We weren't getting up and missing our day jobs like most people who are really struggling; a lot of people that weren't lucky enough to have jobs or that can work out of their homes. And everything I do is in the gig economy. It's either working in live events. playing weddings or bartending weddings, which all went by the wayside, too. For a lot of us, our hair is growing long and we’re just kind of wandering around in face masks, getting our cups of coffee at the coffee shop, and going for walks.
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