“It’s a historic town, and in the song, it’s just referring to the fact that every time the river floods, the town is in danger of being flooded,” Farrar says. 4,411) on the banks of the Mississippi River. Exactly how the Times Beach tragedy relates to a chorus that simply states “Only you’ll ever know / As day by day disappears / Only you’ll ever know” is a mystery - but it’s the feel, the emotion, that counts, and Farrar delivers that in spades.Įven more oblique is “Tear Stained Eye”, which mentions Ste.
The biggest difference between Farrar and Tweedy as songwriters is that Tweedy generally takes an up-front and straightforward approach, whereas Farrar’s lyrics are couched in poetry, imagery and metaphor. Not that the entire song is necessarily about that. And I think they’re building some kind of incinerator there now to burn off all the topsoil and debris that’s dioxin-tainted.” And then when the river flooded once, the whole town had to be evacuated. I guess years ago it had dirt streets, and someone had sprayed oil on the streets to keep the dust down, and the oil had dioxin in it. “There’s a place off of Interstate 44 (in Missouri) on the Meramec River, a town called Times Beach. When I ask Farrar about one of the most memorable lyrics on the new album - “There’s a beach there known for cancer waiting to happen,” from the hauntingly hushed “Ten Second News” - he readily offers up the inspiration for the line. The studio’s across the street from a bank where they still have bullet holes circled in the wall outside, supposedly bullets from the James Gang.”Īnother anecdote relates more directly to the music. I guess Northfield is the place where the James Gang got turned back by the locals. “We recorded at a studio in Northfield, Minnesota. Notoriously tight-lipped in interviews - not because he’s rude or insensitive, but just because he apparently prefers to let his music do the talking - Farrar does manage to open up ever so slightly when our conversation turns to small-town stories and myths. “I don’t really know I think my dad’s family is from around that part of the state, though.” “My dad has a hat from that town, from some general store or something like that,” Farrar says, though he’s unsure if there’s any tie between Farrar, Missouri, and his family history. Louis that comes up in an interview with Farrar a few weeks before the release of Trace, the band’s debut album for Warner Bros., due out September 19th. It’s one of several tiny burgs south of St. Yes, Farrar - population 90, Perry County, Missouri. “Windfall,” “Tear Stained Eye,” “Ten Second News,” “Out of the Picture” and “Too Early” take a turn down rambling dirt roads, where the dust of dobros and fiddles and accordions and steel guitars is carried off by a wind that takes your troubles away, way down into the streets of the smallest towns in America.įlat River. But there comes a time for quiet reflection. Sometimes it’s wide-open stretches of rural two-lane with the pedal to the floor: “Live Free,” “Route,” “Drown,” “Loose String” and “Catching On” burn rubber with the intensity of a desperate man fleeing the scene of disaster. It took some gumption for Tweedy to take the wheel and steer Wilco back onto the highway, but he’s done it.įarrar, meanwhile, has headed for the back roads with Son Volt. Jeff Tweedy and the other Tupelo members have found a new groove as Wilco, mining Tweedy’s more pop-oriented songwriting instincts to a fuller extent, yet still mixing in the traditional instrumentation and influences that made Uncle Tupelo the beacon of a dynamic and substantial country-rock revival. The band appeared to be poised at the brink of a commercial breakthrough when Farrar simply up and split, to the surprise of seemingly everyone except himself. It’s a fitting title for the debut album by Son Volt, the path taken by Jay Farrar after he left Uncle Tupelo in the spring of 1994. Definition number one: A way followed or a path taken. “Trace” - definition eight, Webster’s New World: a) the visible line or spot that moves across the face of a cathode-ray tube b) the path followed by this line or spot. The soft glow of the cathode-ray tube glimmering through cracks in the back of the old black-and-white, fading ever so slowly even after we had switched off the set and drifted into dreams. The flickering embers of a once-blazing fire at summer camp years ago.
The slim needle of the AM radio dial in that old Chevy stationwagon, dimly lighting the dashboard as we coasted along the winding river road, heading home from another serene Sunday afternoon at the lake. It’s a warm, incandescent, comforting burnt-orange blur.
0 kommentar(er)
