Son Volt, Farrar to whirl into Detroit

"No feel-good scenes to bring it back / Just falling brick and broken glass," sings Son Volt's Jay Farrar on "Way Down Watson," from the band's latest record, "Straightaways." The song details the destruction of the Coral Court Motel in Farrar's native St. Louis, a historic site razed to make way for retail development.

"In 'Way Down Watson,' Jay is just saying, 'Man, there's a beautiful old building and now it's nothing but a future strip mall,'" said Son Volt drummer Mike Heidorn in a recent interview with The Michigan Daily.

But Farrar is doing much more than that. "Way Down Watson" speaks volumes not only about this specific incident but about Farrar himself, and likewise about his band. The reverence for the past shown in the song's lyrics is equally present in the so

Son Volt will play Detroit's Majestic tonight at 8 p.m.

unds he and his bandmates put forth. The five - Farrar on guitar and harmonica, Jim Boquist on bass, Dave Boquist on guitar, banjo and fiddle, Heidorn on drums and Eric Heywood on steel - excavate the musics of America's past and resurrect the spirits of Ernest Tubb and Gram Parsons, filtering them through latter-day influences like Bob Dylan, John Fogerty and Neil Young.

"We're just extending what has been there for years," Heidorn said, "from Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams. We're big fans of the traditional instruments - fiddles, banjoes, harmonicas, acoustic guitars - because it's just good-sounding wood."

"Way Down Watson" is a textbook example of this ethic in practice, a spare meditation featuring only Farrar's guitar, harmonica and droning baritone vocal.

"He's commenting on what's been lost, our lost ways, and what used to be," Heidorn said. "His sense of community has been heightened lately, seeing things like this around where we live. When things get torn down, you lose a little bit of your heritage."

PREVIEW
	Son Volt, with Apples In Stereo Friday at 8 p.m. The Majestic, Detroit

"Way Down Watson" laments not only the loss of one building but something more profound - the song is Farrar's commentary on a society he feels has turned away from its past in the blind pursuit of economic profit. "A man in a tie will bum your dime 'fore he'll break his 20 dollar bill," Farrar sang in 1991; on the same album, the seminal debut of Farrar and Heidorn's former band, Uncle Tupelo, he sang of "the sound of people chasing money and money getting away."

Uncle Tupelo's third record, "March 16-20, 1992," featured several songs that voiced similar sentiments, including this verse from "Criminals": "We've got shackles to keep the laws / Made by men who bought and sold themselves / Not a prayer to keep their powers at bay / They want us kinder, gentler, at their feet."

Of Farrar's penchant for sociopolitical commentary, Heidorn said, "It really is thought-provoking. I think he says more with half a phrase than a politician could say with a 15-page speech."

But political issues are only one of Farrar's many themes. Returning to "Way Down Watson," the song could also be interpreted as an allegory for a romantic relationship coming to a gut-wrenching, crashing conclusion. "Feel the heartstrings sinking fast," he sings; "another treasure found, another tumbling down." Throughout the latest album and, indeed, his career, Farrar has plumbed the emotional depths of love with poetic grace and powerful impact.

"Straightaways" offers one of his most mournful love songs yet, the keening "Left A Slide." As the song ebbs and swells atop Heywood's weeping steel, Farrar sings, "Minefields there were from the start / Watching out for the worst, never clear 'til it hurts / Call it off, make amends / This life burns down from both ends."

"I like the way he can twist a phrase," Heidorn said. "I think he has a true talent for that and I always enjoy hearing it."

Besides his active working-class consciousness, his appreciation of history and his ability to speak eloquently about affairs of the heart, Farrar also has a philosophical side steeped in existentialism. On the first Tupelo record, Farrar sang that he would prefer "a whiskey bottle over Jesus" - he believes that "there's nothing greater than the traveling hands of time," as he sang in "Tear Stained Eye" on Son Volt's 1995 landmark album, "Trace."

Farrar's faith rests not in any God but in the knowledge that transcendence is found in the simplicity of life itself - "Learning is living and the truth is a state of mind," "Tear Stained Eye" continues. Sounding much like a modern-day Camus or Sartre on the new album's "Creosote," he sings that "Everyone faces what they deserve / It's a carousel to claim or curse / We're stickin' around, at least for the ride."

If that ride is Farrar's career trajectory, I'll certainly stick around to follow it. No songwriter working today writes with such depth, intelligence, complexity and subtlety as Farrar; no band can shift from roiling, Crazy Horse fury to delicate, Van Zandt introspection with such versatility, cohesion and ease as Son Volt. This songwriter is the most important in America right now, and his band the best.

09-26-97