Sometimes you can go home again. In the case of The Jayhawks—the Minneapolis-bred Americana veterans who are celebrating their 40th anniversary this year— going home meant securing a reunion with producer Bob Ezrin, getting him back behind the board for another album, Sanctuary Park, released in late August on the Thirty Tigers label. The Jayhawks are Gary Louris (guitar and vocals), Karen Grotberg (keys and vocals), Tim O'Reagan (drums and vocals), and Marc Perlman (bass and mandolin). A little more than a quarter-century ago, Ezrin produced Smile, the band's acclaimed 2000 album, on Rick Rubin's imprint, American Recordings.
Coming in at a concise 42 minutes, Sanctuary Park teems with the three-part harmonies and acoustic flavors The Jayhawks have honed to sweet perfection over four decades. Reconnecting with Ezrin (Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Kiss, Peter Gabriel, many others) has again managed to bring out The Jayhawks' best qualities.
"Bob's always had a soft spot for The Jayhawks, and we've stayed in touch over the years. He's a great and loyal friend and an interesting guy I have tons of respect for," Louris, the band's chief songwriter, told me during a recent Zoom call from Ontario. "But even he said, 'This is not gonna be Smile Mark 2. This is going to be a simpler record that plays to your strengths.' Knowing Bob like I do made it easier for us to understand each other and communicate our ideas."
Smile took many months to compile. Sanctuary Park took far less time in the studio, however—just 10 days. "That forced our hand to simplify our approach," Louris said. "We had a budget and a certain amount of recording time, which I think worked in our favor." Consequently, Sanctuary Park is a much more stripped-down affair than Smile was.
"Focusing on the harmonies and the vocal arrangements was quite intentional," Louris said. "Before we made this record, I thought, 'What do we do better than most anyone else?' I think the songwriting is really strong, and the second thing about us is the vocals. I mean, we're all good at our instruments, but there's something about the blend of Karen, Tim, and myself that people always get excited to hear whenever we play. When we do that three-part harmony thing, it just sounds like magic. So I said to Bob, 'I want this record to focus more on our vocals and the songs.'"
The palpable synergy between the producer and the band led to some unusual decisions. A striking feature of the album is a cappella sections at the front end of several of its songs: "Kingston Girl," "Hands Upon the Wheel," "Leap of Faith." "That's where we took Bob's suggestions, like, 'Let's take this vocal part, move it to the front, and feature it,'" Louris told me.
"My battle on every record is that I want them to turn my vocals down and turn theirs up more—but I always get talked out of it, no matter what. I still don't like listening to my own voice, but they're always like, 'No, your lead vocals should be louder than ours.'"
Louris ended up liking the way his voice appears on the title track, out in front of the mix. It's a song in which he namechecks The Clash and Teenage Head, a punk band from Hamilton, Ontario, that took its name from the title of a seminal 1971 album by San Francisco power pop/punk progenitors The Flamin' Groovies.
"Oh, you caught that? Yeah, they were the Ramones of Canada," Louris said. "That song used to have a different feel when it was in 2/4, but I completely changed it into a slower, heavier song. What I also like about it is that it's just completely different than everything else on the record."
Sanctuary Park is the band's 12th studio album—and yes, they've been around for 40 years—yet Louris feels he still has more to give. "I'm on a crusade to prove you don't necessarily do your best work when you're younger," he told me. "I mean, I've always been a late bloomer. I wasn't even in The Jayhawks until I was 30. I wasn't even in a band until Iwas26."Heis71now."Iwas very backward."
I mentioned a few musicians I feel kept doing great work into their 60s and beyond: Lou Reed, Neil Young, Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen. "Dylan had his moments, and even Leonard Cohen made some great records later in his life," Louris agreed. "It's harder at this age, because you're trying to avoid doing what you've already done, and you don't wanna be caught trying not to do something new. On the other hand, you do have more experience. But nobody wants to hear you talk about aging, illness, or death either. I'm not gonna write about teenage love affairs, so it's a tough one, but it can be done. We're gonna keep doing records until the tap runs dry or until we feel the songs just aren't any good.
Photo By Steve Cohen
That led Ezrin to make a surprising suggestion. "He said to me, 'Have you listened to that Beyoncé record, Cowboy Carter?'" Louris (second from left in the photo above) isn't a fan. "He said, 'Listen to the vocal arrangements.' So I listened to it, and I could tell she put a lot of thought into them. I don't think we've ever not done that, but I said, 'Yeah, okay. I'm not gonna sit here and listen to it over and over, but I get you. Let's put some extra thought into it.'"
