ROUTES & BRANCHES
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
October 2, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
When we talk routes & branches, we can follow so much of our kind of music back to Uncle Tupelo, the seminal Illinois outfit whose 1994 fracture gave birth directly to Bottle Rockets, Wilco, and Son Volt. Where Jeff Tweedy formed Wilco out of the remaining pieces of Tupelo, Jay Farrar emerged six months later with his own band's Trace. And while we'll definitely follow Wilco's trajectory well beyond the bounds of alt.country, today's Lookback Machine focuses on Jay Farrar's essential contributions remaining within the frontiers of alt.country and roots rock. Son Volt's first three albums, Trace, Straightaways, and Wide Swing Tremolo largely followed what Uncle Tupelo had started to its likely conclusion. While the band's composition would begin to morph starting with 2005's Okemah and the Melody Of Riot, the singing and songwriting of Jay Farrar has remained the constant throughout. 2023 saw Farrar and co. turn their attention to the music of another formative artist with Son Volt's Days Of the Doug, covering the songs of Doug Sahm with a deliberate effort to dig further into his catalog and to avoid the Bottle Rockets' own tribute album. As the country crawled tentatively out of the pandemic, the band took the tribute on the road on a series of shows that also celebrated thirty years since the release of Trace.
SON VOLT: thirty favorites
- "Windfall" Trace (Warner, Sep 95)
- "Tear Stained Eye" Trace
- "Drown" Trace
- "Caryatid Easy" Straightaways (Warner, Apr 97)
- "Back Into Your World" Straightaways
- "Creosote" Straightaways
- "Straightface" Wide Swing Tremolo (Warner, Oct 98)
- "Driving the View" Wide Swing Tremolo
- "Medicine Hat" Wide Swing Tremolo
- "Bandages & Scars" Okemah and the Melody Of Riot (Transmit Sound, Oct 05)
- "Afterglow 61" Okemah and the Melody Of Riot
- "6 String Belief" Okemah and the Melody Of Riot
- "Joe Citizen Blues (live)" Okemah and the Melody Of Riot
- "Methamphetamine" The Search (Transmit Sound, Mar 07)
- "The Picture" The Search
- "Highways and Cigarettes" The Search
- "Dynamite" American Central Dust (Rounder, Jul 09)
- "Down To the Wire" American Central Dust
- "Roll On" American Central Dust
- "Jukebox Of Steel" American Central Dust
- "Hearts and Minds" Honky Tonk (Rounder, Mar 13)
- "Seawall" Honky Tonk
- "Back Against the Wall" Notes Of Blue (Transmit Sound, Feb 17)
- "Cherokee St" Notes Of Blue
- "Sinking Down" Notes Of Blue
- "Devil May Care" Union (Transmit Sound, Mar 19)
- "The Reason" Union
- "Reverie" Electro Melodier (Transmit Sound, Jul 21)
- "Diamonds and Cigarettes" Electro Melodier
- "Living In the USA" Electro Melodier
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