The Jayhawks only slightly fell into the Americana movement when the band began in the 1980s. Co-lead singer-songwriter Gary Louris says: "We worked in a bubble all our lives ... If we were in a movement, we didn't know it." The band is, from left, Marc Perlman, Mark Olson, Tim O'Reagn, Louris and Karen Grotberg.
When the Jayhawks formed in the mid-1980s, they weren't exactly considered cutting edge. Hair metal was still king and grunge rock was on the way. The Jayhawks' music featured folksy rock, nice melodies and pretty harmonies.
Jayhawks co-lead singer-songwriter Mark Olson remembers no "outpouring of joy" greeting the band's arrival.
"Lyrically, and in some senses melodically, in the 1990s there was a little bit of a self-destructive, violent (attitude in music)," says Olson. "And here we were singing these pretty harmonies, singing songs about what could be construed as people's families and about dreams ... We were definitely not received as: 'This is where the minds of the youth of America are at!'"
Maybe not, but the group definitely found an audience. The Jayhawk's 1995 album "Tomorrow the Green Grass" was a college radio favorite and is now recognized as a classic. In September, the reunited band released "Mockingbird Time" — the first Jayhawks release to feature Olson and co-lead singer-songwriter Gary Louris' unmistakable vocal blend since "Green Grass."
Olson says, for the most part, the duo's harmony is something that just happened naturally.
"I have to attribute that to the chance thing of life — how people are when they're born," he says. "He can sing high and hears really great harmonies on the top. I just sing low and hear really great harmonies on the bottom. I don't listen for the melody so much as I listen for alternate melodies. When we get together we're just going with what we were born with."
Louris agrees.
"I like singers who you can tell who they are when they're singing," says Louris. "They carry their character and personalities in their voices and I think that's something Mark and I have. We have very distinctly different voices separately, and together it's a third voice."
Louris and Olson first met in Minneapolis in the early 1980s. Both were in short-lived rockabilly bands. Olson began the Jayhawks, and when the group's original guitarist dropped out early on, Olson invited Louris to join.
The connection between Olson and Louris was immediate. Both were fans of Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Olson had fallen in love with folk and country music after hearing the Byrds' "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" and the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Gilded Palace of Sin."
"I started following it backwards," says Olson.
While people in the South might have been familiar with the Louvin Brothers, the Delmore Brothers (artists who were covered on "Sweetheart") and other country vocal greats, it was all new to young men from the North.
Producer George Drakoulias, heard the band's second album ("Blue Earth"), signed them to Def American Records, and produced the band's album "Hollywood Town Hall" in 1992.
"Tomorrow the Green Grass" followed three years later. Olson completed the tour with the album, but left the group before recording began for the follow-up.
"I'd been in the band for 12 years and I just felt like I needed to do something else," says Olson.
Olson and his then-wife Victoria Williams worked together, and Louris took the Jayhawks in a more rock-oriented direction.
"We haven't trod one particular road — for the right reasons," says Louris.
In 2001, Olson and Louris began working together again, writing songs and playing a few shows. The two released the album "Ready for the Flood" in 2009. The two say the next step just seemed to be a full Jayhawks reunion.
Olson says there is no doubt that people are more excited about the band now than they were in the 1990s:
"On the last tour we just did, we played Scotland and it was just unbelievable. The people wouldn't leave the building. We had to go back for three encores."
Still, Louris says he knows the limits of the group's popularity.
"This music is not mainstream music and it never will be," he says. "It's not dance music or party music. We're never gonna be the next big thing."
© 2011, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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