"I was pretty much born disappointed," Gary Louris says on the horn from northern California, outside of San Francisco, stumbling through the dark. This comes while discussing the Jayhawks' new record, Rainy Day Music, something of a partial revisit for the band to its pre-Uncle Tupelo, proto-alt-country roots of the mid-to-late '80s, before such terms were thrown around.
Back then, you'd just say "they've got kind of a country thing going," then go hang out at the arcade. Oh, the band plays New City tonight, incidentally.
Unlike a lot of self-congratulators out there, the Toledo-raised singer freely admits his current reservations about revisiting his roots.
In Louris's case, along with ex-co-singer Marc Olson, that meant and means being a founding member of a band that bridged the gap between Gram Parsons in the '70s and outfits like Son Volt, Whiskeytown and the Old 97s (which are all moving into the realm of nostalgia themselves).
Rainy Day Music is less pop-rock than the two previous albums, Sound of Lies and Smile, both Louris-helmed, both fine records, full of nature references and broken hearts.
I ask him if living down the band's importance in cool-country (as in not hot country) history made him want to return to the otherwise neglected sound.
"Definitely," he says. "There was kind of an itch I had to show people that we really knew how to do the roots thing. In retrospect, I don't really know if we do," he says with a chuckle.
It should be explained that there are basically three camps of Jayhawks fans now.
The traditionalists relish the bare-bones, acoustic production of the band's first few albums, including 1992's breakthrough Hollywood Town Hall. That was the highlight of the Olson days, before he went off to find God and his wife, Victoria Williams.
"The people who like Hollywood Town Hall the best," Louris admits, "are usually a little unforgiving and can be a little strange to talk to."
Then, after Olson's departure, came the wonderful, catchy The Sound of Lies in '97, which some critics unjustly give only three stars. They're quite wrong.
"In a way that's my favourite record. It's the only one where we got drunk and played," Louris laughs.
"That was more of a do-it-yourself record, and it certainly had an edge. It's usually the people who like this record the best we like the most. It's a weird, dark record, a little bitter. This new one is a bit sweeter and nicer than we actually are."
Which brings us to the third camp, the neophyte fans, who claim prematurely that Rainy Day Music is the superlative Jayhawks experience, which Louris finds funny.
"The record was supposed to be a singer-songwriter, folk-rock kind of record, but we kind of screwed up. We ended up tinkering more than on Smile, which some people said was overproduced. That's funny, because that record went by really quickly, figuring out these songs took more time."
Well, it's not a bad position to be in, either way, loved from several angles. Right, Gary? "Well, I have an idealized vision of what life is supposed to be, and it's never gonna be that way. Pretty much, life's been a letdown. I'm aware of this kind of outlook and I'm trying to deal with it. I just hope my son doesn't inherit this."
