Song of the Day: The Jayhawks - Waiting for the Sun (1992) After spending a few days looking at Tom Petty, I thought it would be interesting to bring up the Jayhawks, whose major label debut (of which this is the first track) was produced by longtime Petty engineer and producer George Drakoulias. Drakoulias production work with The Jayhawks featured arrangements and mixing that very much recalled what his business partner Rick Rubin was doing with The Heartbreakers around the same time, and you could just about call this Jayhawks album, Hollywood Town Hall, a more country version of Petty. Hollywood Town Hall has experienced a meteoric rise in my tastes over the last several years, and I now consider it easily one of the ten best albums of the 90s. Its ten songs represent an utterly perfect example of timeless Americana songwriting, of music that exists outside of zeitgeist. So much of the great music of the early 90s, be it the explosion of the Seattle scene or the shifts in sonic focus of 80s stars like R.E.M. and U2, was all about taking mainstream music somewhere it hadnt yet been, and exposing mass audiences to sounds that previously only existed on the fringes. Even The Jayhawks became a part of the Alt.Country movement that was gaining steam at the time, that really wasnt who they were. In the a real sense, The Jayhawks were the best version of The Eagles--a version that never quite existed but always should have. Try and imagine The Eagles if theyd never discovered cocaine and never become megastars, and instead just kept churning out wonderful country-rock like Take it Easy to a small but devoted audience… Its hard, because that version of The Eagles existed so briefly before they turned into a bigger, rowdier, and not-as-good version of CSNY, except in cowboy hats. But The Jayhawks are The Eagles that could have been. Ive always thought The Eagles were incredibly overrated, but there was never any question of their ability. I just dont think they used it that well, or that often. The songwriting and harmonies were often top-notch, but they were just as often overshadowed by everything that goes along with being larger than life. The Jayhawks were never larger than life, which is why they could always sound like real life actually permeated into their songs. For so much of the 00s and my 20s in general, I let the concept of coolness really affect my thoughts on music. I became seduced by shitty bands like Interpol, who created a fake persona of NYC edginess that relied on nothing more than dark suits, over-applied hair product, and a shameless raping of the Joy Division discography. And yet I fell for them, because they effectively sold coolness to an audience that wasnt looking deep enough to see how calculatingly manufactured it was. Getting heavily into The Jayhawks in 10 and 11 (when their best albums were reissued) is something that really helped me start figuring out with greater lucidity the parts of music that mattered to me. Whatever cool is, its not something that would initially seem to apply to The Jayhawks. Theyre just dudes in normal clothes, writing and playing songs driven by great melodies and an idea of what American Music is. But as Ive gotten older, Ive realized thats actually what cool is. Its not something that you can create via formula and then package it up to sell. Its something that you simply have by being genuinely who you are, and genuine in what you create.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 19:31:57 +0000
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