The Midnight Rambler

Son Volt rides that lonesome all-American road

When Jay Farrar was writing the new Son Volt album, "Trace," he spent a lot of time driving around. He'd had the bad sense - or unexpected good sense - to put together a band whose members were scattered all over the map: brothers Jim and Dave Boquist, the bassist and guitarist, lived in Minneapolis: Drummer Mike Heidorn lived outside St. Louis; Farrar was based in New Orleans. As he drove up and down the country, tracing a vertical line along the Mississippi River, Farrar's head filled with images of aimlessness and wandering, highways and dead ends, neon signs and late night radio stations. Like any good writer, he filtered them all into his work. "Trace" is a lovely lonely ode to drift, an all-American blend of country and rock, loud riffs and pretty acoustic fills, lilting lap steel and bluesy slide guitar, Farrar's songs are jumbles of observation, advice and stream-of-consciousness detail that catalog his own emotional universe. "When in doubt, move on," he sings in one song. "There's nothing greater, nothing more / than traveling hands of time," he laments in another. It's the detachment you feel when it's past midnight and you're moving, but you don't know quite where you're going.

These themes have dogged Farrar since his days as one of the chief singer-songwriters in Uncle Tupelo, a ragged, rootsy Mid-western band that released four albums before splitting up in 1994. "It just sort of ran out of gas," says Farrar. Minus Farrar, the rest of Uncle Tupelo formed Wilco, which released a well-received album. "A.M.," earlier this year. But "Trace" is evidence that the soul of Uncle Tupelo rests with Farrar. His dark visions, sullen voice and obsession with things past come across like nostalgia for a world that probably never was, but even more certainly never will be. For him, looking back is a means of escape. "I'm interested in older musical equipment and older forms of music," he says. "You can kind of remove yourself from now."

Nothing to do: Farrar must have had wanderlust as a teen, but his family never went anywhere. For most of his life he lived in Belleville, Ill., a conservative, nothing-to-do kind of town 25 minutes from St. Louis. His father worked on a dredge boat on the Mississippi, and accumulated cars in his spare time. "At times he had 13 cars in the backyard," Farrar says. "It was a hobby. Or a way of life." The only vacation the family ever took was to New Orleans, and when Uncle Tupelo broke up, that's where Farrar headed. At the time of this interview, though, Farrar had completed yet another trek: he was back in Belleville, visiting his parents. He says he doesn't really mind going home again, even though he spent most of his life trying to get away. It's just one more stop on a road that goes nowhere and everywhere.

-Karen Schoemer
Newsweek Magazine

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