Jay Farrar at the Majestic: Shared Dream

I shared a sort of waking dream with 204 other people Saturday, November 6th, at the Majestic Theater (capacity: 600) in downtown Madison, Wisconsin.  Although I arrived 15 minutes late, I found an empty seat in the front row.  Onstage Jay Farrar and sideman Gary Hunt played and sang mostly melancholy songs with a quiet urgency and mellow determination.  Farrar's acoustic guitar blended perfectly with Hunt's electric guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin and fiddle, yielding an entrancing contemporary Americana sound.  

Poised and serious in a black cowboy shirt, black boots and black jeans, Farrar proved that he is still a better singer than his old bandmate Jeff Tweedy (Uncle Tupelo, Wilco), but his songs are more meandering and vague than Tweedy's best stuff.  Farrar may not have had the success with Son Volt that Tweedy has had with Wilco, but he is clearly as talented.  I couldn't name the songs, aside from "Big Sur" - an homage to Jack Kerouac - but they all moved or intrigued me.  Sadly, not many local music fans seem to be in on the secret.

"I don't know about you," Farrar said in his mild Belleville drawl, introducing a song, "but when I hear the word 'God,' I think of Willie Nelson.  Locoweed grows because God says so."  Farrar also name-dropped Leadbelly in one tune and alluded to Highway 61 in another.  Jay Farrar appears to be travelling the same wild desolate road as Dylan, Willie, Cash, Kristofferson and other American mystic-rebel explorers of music, mood and truth.  In his shaggy moptop and freakfolk beard, Farrar ushered the small devoted crowd to a celebratory gathering under artificial blue stars - a weary guide, but a good one.

He deserves more ears.  Twenty years ago, while fronting punk-country pioneers Uncle Tupelo, Farrar wrote "Screen Door" and sang a bold cover of  "No Depression," A.P. Carter's classic hymn to heavenly hope.  He's now age 44, still creating smart lyrical songs, like Michael Stipe's younger country cousin.  The only important difference:  he now sips water onstage, not beer or whiskey.