Making his solo debut after 17 years with Minneapolis's Jayhawks and a further four years as a producer (The Sadies) and session musician (Dixie Chicks), Gary Louris has always been a craftsman. Later Jayhawks albums suffered from the shotgun marriage of their shimmering songcraft to rock riffs, squandering five years of promise from 1992's Hollywood Town Hall onward. The Jayhawks were as out of step with the mainstream as Nirvana back then, when Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus dominated the pop country charts. Unlike Kurt Cobain's much-needed scouring of pop, the Jayhawks quietly championed melody and clarity, with Louris and songwriting partner Marc Olson inviting comparisons to an earlier generation of chart-trained songwriters like Jimmy Webb and Carole King.
In a surprise shift from the producer’s chair, Louris invited the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson to pilot Vagabonds. The Crowes never bettered the deep soul of The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, another 1992 anomaly. Like the Jayhawks' best work, it drew on forebears like Otis Redding and Gram Parsons, whose merging of gospel and rock grew naturally from their musical upbringing. Throughout their careers, both Louris and Robinson have yearned for such conviction, now only experienced second-hand. In Louris's world, every day is like Sunday — see “She Only Calls Me on Sundays” and the title track. On “To Die a Happy Man,” Louris's Laurel Canyon Family Choir — Jenny Lewis, Susanna Hoffs, Vetiver’s Andy Cabic and others — offer non-denominational redemption and “We'll Get By” closes with a “Hey Jude” outro as The Byrds might have played it.
Although Louris knows the Laurel Canyon era, Vagabonds doesn't seek to recapture its songwriterly vibe. Instead, the album replaces the Woodstock generation’s sense of entitlement with a more urgent plea — all we can offer in an uncertain world is each other. The thing about craftsmen is that, sometimes, they draw a new roadmap to your soul. This may not be Gary Louris’s time, but it may be a great time to listen.
