After the Jayhawks’ first album with Mark Olson in 16 years (Mockingbird Time) fulfilled all my wishes for that reunion, I was eager to see them live as soon as possible. Luckily, they’ll be playing a club gig in Cologne on March, 16th, which is a one hour drive for me. I’ve been a fan since 1992’s “Hollywood Town Hall”, but only saw them on stage once, at the Pink Pop festival 1993 in the Netherlands (and what a great festival that was, so many good memories…), since they don’t tour Germany very often.
Anyway, now I’m lucky to look forward to that concert and interested to hear what their shows were like recently. So if anybody saw them lately (since Olson rejoined the band), please fuel my anticipation.
Yeah, Gary Louris and the band continued to produce fine albums after Olson quit in 1995, but what makes their sound unique has been always the special chemistry in the Olson/Louris harmonies. I’m not qualified to express it in musical technical terms, but their voices, as different as they are, blend together perfectly. What always comes to my musically untrained mind as a similar example of dual harmonies are those by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.
I saw them at the Basilica Block Party last summer in Mpls. I enjoyed every minute of it, but I cant offer a great critique since I was pretty trashed by the time they took the stage.
I didn’t get to see them but they played in KC just a week or so ago. Here’s a link to a review in the KC Star’s music blog if you’re interested. Sounds like it was a good show!