From The Desk Of The Jayhawks’ Mark Olson: Songwriting (The Wah-Wah Banjo)

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.

Olson: Victoria Williams lives in Joshua Tree, Calif. Go out and find Happy Come Home and play it for your neighbors, children and parents. These are the ones that they’ll want to hear again and again. You can pack up in a van and drive out to the middle of nowhere and run low on provisions and break down, and it won’t really matter. The music contained on this album is some kind of litmus test of the soul. You’ll be able to talk with these people and wait out the long night, and when dawn comes, help will arrive.

Video after the jump.