Tomorrow the Green Grass

If you’re not one of the 200+ going to the Jayhawks’ concert this Saturday, January 28th at the State Room in Salt Lake City, or one of the thousands attending the tour elsewhere around the nation, you probably didn’t listen extensively to their new CD, Mockingbird Time. The CD is the first with the original Jayhawks’ lineup in years, and Louris, Olsen and Co. held very little back. Filled with three-part harmonies and crunchy guitar riffs, you can’t help but tap your toe and sing along to tunes like High Water Blues or Cinnamon Love.
However, if you’re reading this, you probably have given Mockingbird Time many listens, and I am not paid to convince you to believe a CD is great if you already do. (Yeah. They don’t pay me). Instead, I’ll be spending some time on an older CD, and one that has not lost its flavor—indicated by the number of tracks the Jayhawks have been playing from it during their 2011-12 tour of MT.
If you are familiar with Tomorrow the Green Grass, you know how listenable the CD really is. Written in 1995, amid a huge rush of music, especially out of the Minnesota area, the Jayhawks proved they had what it took and became one of the forerunners of their genre. Mark Olsen and Gary Louris’s haunting harmonies on tunes like Blue, Miss Williams’ Guitar, and Red’s Song are known by every Jayhawks fan, and the cover Bad Time (originally done by Grand Funk Railroad) is known by virtually everyone above 20 and below 80 years of age. The upbeat, distinctive crunch that is Gary Louris’s SG isn’t missing either. Real Light has two featured solos, which Gary sticks to in his shows. Nothing Left to Borrow features great guitar melodies which turn into a seemingly mocking narrative sung by Olsen and Louris. All in all, the album remains one of the best in the genre to date. If you haven’t picked yourself a copy in the last 8 years, get one. It’s available on iTunes and Spotify. And if you’re in the Salt Lake area, you might get scalped and gouged, but you might get lucky and get into the show.
-Schiffmeister