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From The Desk Of The Jayhawks’ Gary Louris: Writing And Singing With Mark Olson

Gary Louris and Mark Olson left Jayhawks fans in a lurch when they parted ways rather abruptly in 1995. Turns out Olson had tired of all the obligations and trappings that came with the Minneapolis-spawned group’s hard-won success. So he escaped to the Mojave Desert to ply a rootsier, salt-of-the-earth trade with the help of wife Victoria Williams. Ah, but time—and perhaps a little fiscal motivation—has a way of smoothing over the rough patches in many productive creative partnerships. (Unless you’re Bob Mould and Grant Hart.) And 15 years later, the Jayhawks have returned to us more-or-less fully intact. For how long, no one really knows, but they just did a string of shows to back the enhanced reissues of 1992’s Hollywood Town Hall and 1995’s Tomorrow The Green Grass (American/Legacy). With their sugary (if unrefined) harmonies, rugged intelligence and casual accessibility, the albums are to the alt-country movement what One Of These Nights and Hotel California were to ’70s SoCal country rock—even if the comparably modest sales figures may not indicate as much. Louris and Olson will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with Louris.

Louris: Now I want to make it clear that I love the Jayhawks, including Marc Perlman, Tim O’Reagan and Karen Grotberg. But I just want to zone in on this one aspect of the band and what has branched out into our duo career. I have done alot of co-writing with other people. Sometimes it is fun, sometimes it is a disaster. But with Mark, it is always magical. It comes down to the fact that we trust each other and we seem to balance each other. I am the symmetrical one. He is the writer who ends up with some very atypical constructions. We have rubbed off on each other. But we always get it done, we do it fast, and it is always interesting. And we don’t mull it over until it kills the original idea. The same with the singing. His low, loud baritone offsets my sometimes overly sugary-sweet tenor, and somehow they become another person altogether. The so-called “Univoice.”