“I felt like it had the right vibe and the right aesthetic for this batch of songs and it was also a nice way to mark that album’s 20-year milestone.There’s no doubt about Jay Farrar’s legacy in modern music. He even re-employed some trusty equipment to help get the job done on gritty howlers like “Cherokee St.,” “Lost Souls” and “Static” by pulling out the same 1930s Webster Chicago amp that is pictured on the cover of Son Volt’s 1995 debut record, Trace. After primarily playing acoustic guitar on the last few Son Volt records, he was ready to plug in the electric guitars and crank up the amps a bit. “I wake up everyday, read the news, and then ask myself, ‘What would Woody Guthrie say about these current times?’ Since November, I’ve been writing more songs than usual trying to make sense of what’s going on.”įarrar had a second major inspirational itch to scratch throughout Notes of Blue as well. So it’s all part of a nice continuum,” notes Farrar. My father played Hank Williams songs and I learned to play music from him. Hank Williams learned from a blues musician. “Blues is such a foundational element in early country music.
“I wake up everyday, read the news, and then ask myself, ‘What would Woody Guthrie say about these current times'”Īlongside the distinctive influences of James, McDowell and Drake, Farrar also highlights the creative motivation that artists like Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie had on his songwriting for Notes of Blue. They worked out as a nice yin and yang with each other to kick off the album.” It’s more overtly uplifting and is about taking on adversity and being a shield against challenges on the horizon. That’s what I’m trying to do with ‘Promise the World.’ The song that follows it, ‘Back Against the Wall,’ is intended to be a rally song. It transcends your mood and your surroundings. “Everyone goes through a dark period and the message of the blues is that music can lift you up. Echoes of Drake can be found in the song’s melancholy lyrical slant as well. “Nick Drake may seem to stand in contrast to those guys,” Farrar continues, “but ultimately they all shared a similar aesthetic in terms of using a lot of finger-picking style guitar, which is one of the main areas I wanted to focus on with this album.” Farrar points to Notes of Blue album opener “Promise the World” as an example of Drake’s influence, citing that it shares the same alternate tuning as Drake’s signature song “Pink Moon” from 1972. “In studying them both, I got to be a student learning the tools of the trade from these classic blues heroes. More than just a creative exercise, it turned out to be an enriching musical education for Farrar. He found inspiration in the haunting minor key tunings of James and in the acoustic slide-guitar work of McDowell. It brings up a lot of different creative options.”īy breaking down how both men approached the genre, Farrar was able to hone in on exactly what he wanted to emulate throughout his own songwriting on Notes of Blue. “When you use alternate tunings, it requires different chord voicings and it sounds completely different from what you normally hear on guitars in standard tunings. “I’ve always been drawn to the tunings of Skip James and Mississippi Fred McDowell,” Farrar tells Rolling Stone Country. To facilitate that fresh approach this time around, Farrar found inspiration in a few seemingly dissimilar yet sonically complementary sources, most notably the work of two iconic bluesmen, as well as the moody acoustic folk ballads of English songwriter Nick Drake. “Over the years I’ve done a couple blues-oriented songs here and there, but this time around there was an opportunity to focus a bit more on it all the way through.” Finding its aesthetic anchor in the storied blues tradition, Notes of Blue is the eighth studio album from Farrar’s Son Volt, a band who often works to widen the fence posts of the alt-country genre it is often credited with helping establish. “The title is obviously a nod to the blues, which ended up becoming the framework of this entire record,” states singer-guitarist Jay Farrar about Son Volt’s adventurous new album Notes of Blue.
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