Jay Farrar-guitar, vocals
Mike Heidorn-drums
Jim Boquist-bass, vocals
Dave Boquist-guitar, banjo, fiddle, lap steel
Historians have observed that rivers are the lifeblood of civilizations, and the river valleys, their cradle. In America, of course, the Mississippi River is that bloodline, and the music of Son Volt - found on the band's Warner Bros. Records debut Trace - taps into the river's rich vein for its power and its poetry.
Jay Farrar, who penned the ten original tunes on Trace, puts it succinctly: "I drew a lot of inspiration for these songs driving back and forth along the Mississippi from New Orleans, where I live, to St. Louis and Minneapolis, where the other guys live."
Trace flows with what Farrar's song "Live Free" calls "the rhythm of the river." It's a rhythm that spans the slow snow melts of the North to the Delta in the South, with the musical heritage of St. Louis and Memphis in between. There are elements of country ("Tear Stained Eye"), folk ("Windfall"), rock ("Drown") and blues ("Ten Second News"). They wash up in the album's wake - sounds dredged from the current by Farrar's distinctive guitar and Dave Boquist's exquisite and varied fills, anchored by the drumming of Mike Heidorn and bass of Jim Boquist and guided by Brian Paulson (producer of releases by Uncle Tupelo, Beck, Superchunk and Squirrel Nut Zippers).
Trace's lyrics, too, scan the Mississippi for clues to life's pageantry and purpose. With words, Farrar paints vivid portraits of the "Delta mud" (on "Live Free") and the opened levee gates of the Midwest's great floods ("Ten Second News") with the eye of one who looks (as he puts it in "Tear Stained Eye") for "traces of the scars that came before."
Raised in Belleville, Illinois - a town within a stone's throw of both the Mississippi River and St. Louis - Farrar took up guitar at age 12. He played in a string of high school garage bands before hooking up with bassist Jeff Tweedy and drummer Mike Heidorn in a rock band called the Primitives.
The Primitives evolved into a better known band called Uncle Tupelo - a group that took the moribund country-rock genre by the throat in the late 1980's and force-fed it both a dose of punk and a good, hard look at its roots. The group's four LPs - No Depression (1990), Still Feel Gone (1991), March 16-20, 1992 (1992) and its major label debut on Sire/Reprise, Anodyne (1993) - were instantaneous classics, and won Uncle Tupelo a ferociously loyal fan base.
After the break up of Uncle Tupelo in 1994, Farrar recruited new friend Jim Boquist (a bassist and backing vocalist for Uncle Tupelo touring companion Joe Henry) for his new band, and took on Jim's multi-instrumentalist brother Dave as the second member. After Farrar added a familiar face to Son Volt by calling former Tupelo drummer Mike Heidorn, the group was ready to record Trace in a studio in Northfield, Minnesota in late 1994.
There are stark meditations on the journey Farrar took from Uncle Tupelo to Son Volt on Trace and on life in rock's fast lane as well. It's hard to listen to Farrar's somber recounting of "too many lost names, too many rules to the game" on "Out of the Picture," or to hear the shuffling sweet intensity of "Loose String" (and its insistence that "too much livin' is no way to die"), without hearing the miles of both journeys tick away on the odometer.
But Trace is far from being a mere glance backward. Its ten new originals are a huge step forward in Farrar's songwriting. Farrar often sketched out the politics of the barstool, the Bible and the factory belt in Uncle Tupelo, but on Trace, songs thread the internal and external into more complex patterns. The flood that haunts the town of St. Genevieve in the tart "Tear Stained Eye" washes through the eyes of its singer as well, while the brute force that crashes through the sublimely powerful rock of "Drown" swallows everything in its path - buildings, relationships and eternal truths as well.
The world that Son Volt summons up on Trace runs the gamut from the bleakness of Missouri's dioxin-poisoned Times Beach (on "Ten Second News") to the hope carried by the free-spirited wind that will "take your troubles away" on "Windfall." The LP poses questions, yet tips its hat to mystery with its final track - a weary, soulful take on Ron Wood's "Mystifies Me" (from the Rolling Stones guitarist's solo LP, I've Got My Own Album To Do).
"When in doubt, move on," sings Farrar on "Drown." With Son Volt, he has done just that. Trace marks a new and invigorating current in American music.
"Recording and playing with new people is liberating," observes Farrar. "Spontaneity is nice with this band, because you never know what's going to happen next. There are no limits."
