Bluesy Son Volt begins tour in LR

Jay Farrar has the blues, and this is a good thing.

The roots-rock singer-songwriter has regrouped his band Son Volt for an excellent new album, Notes of Blue, and will kick off a tour tonight at Little Rock's Rev Room.

Farrar found inspiration for the record by parsing the work of bluesman Skip James and British folkie Nick Drake, among others, and experimenting with their different guitar-tuning approaches.

"I've always wanted to do a recording that focused a bit more on the blues," he says from his home in St. Louis. "I've done some songs over the years that were influenced by or inspired by blues, and this was just a chance to focus on it a bit more."

It also gave him a chance to work on fingerpicking, which can be heard on the folk blues of "The Storm" on Notes of Blue.

"That style of guitar playing is a common thread through Nick Drake, Skip James and Mississippi Fred McDowell," he says. "Ultimately, it's all folk music."

Balancing out the folk-leaning influences is Farrar's return to crunchy, electric guitar, which gives the collection an even mix of his songwriting strengths. Farrar rips on his electric six-string with a swinging ferocity on "Lost Storm"; rolls through the steady, north Mississippi hill country shuffle of "Cherokee St."; and pulls out a fuzzy, Neil Young-ish solo on the inspiring "Back Against the Wall."

And to achieve the guitar tone he was searching for, he called on an old friend.

"I brought out the old Webster Chicago amplifier that was featured on the cover of the first Son Volt record," Farrar, 50, says. "It seemed like the right time to bring it out."

Yeah. That first Son Volt record.

Released in 1996, Trace was Farrar's first statement after the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, the wildly influential trio he formed with high school pals Jeff Tweedy and Mike Heidorn in 1987 in Belleville, Ill. Over a span of just four albums Uncle Tupelo, inspired equally by the Flying Burrito Brothers and Dinosaur Jr., unwittingly became the poster boys for a form of American roots rock that would later be called no depression (from the title of their first album and the name of a Carter Family song from the '30s), alt-country or Americana.

After their 1994 split, Tweedy formed Wilco while Farrar got with drummer Heidorn and put Son Volt together.

The critically beloved Trace was followed by two more Son Volt albums -- Straightaways from 1997 and 1998's Wide Swing Tremolo -- before Farrar shelved the band and worked on solo efforts, including Sebastopol and Terroir Blues. He's part of a duo with Anders Parker called Gob Iron and has collaborated with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie on One Fast Move or I'm Gone, an album of Jack Kerouac lyrics. He also teamed with Parker, Jim James and Will Johnson on New Multitudes, using Woody Guthrie lyrics.

Son Volt, of which Farrar is the sole constant member, returned for 2005's Okemah and the Melody of Riot. The band's last album before Notes of Blue was 2013's Honky Tonk, inspired by the Bakersfield, Calif., country twang of the '60s.

Farrar, who is married to his high school sweetheart, Monica (the couple have two children), is ready to get on the road with a group, as his recent tours have been mostly solo acoustic affairs.

"It's been a while since I've been out with a band," he says. "I'm looking forward to the camaraderie and the chemistry that goes along with that. And I'm looking really forward to playing electric guitar."

Weekend on 03/02/2017