Louris/Olson Summit Due 2009!

This is not a Jayhawks reunion.  Repeat: this is not a Jayhawks reunion.

By Brian Creech

Don’t you love it when musicians can put their differences aside and start acting like mature adults?  For Gary Louris and Mark Olson, it took 13 years for the two to quit pouting and start playing music.  As the Jayhawks Louris and Olson (along with Marc Pearlman) wrote some of the most affecting vocally harmonized country-rock of the 90’s.  Then Gary said something stupid and Mark left in a tizzy.  Louris kept the Jayhawks together, going on to release three more albums before disbanding the group in 2003.  Since then, Louris and Olson have released solo albums, toured together, and have slowly started to quit blaming the other one for problems they can’t really remember having in the first place.

Actually the conflict wasn’t that catty.  Olson just wanted to spend more time with his wife and everyone was like “cool, go do that.”  Those Midwesterners are so darn polite. 

Annnnnnnnnnyway, earlier this year, Louris and Olson got back together to record a new album’s worth of material together.  The album is called Ready for the Flood and is due January 27^th, 2009 on New West Records.  It was produced by Chris Robinson (Black Crowes) and is the first album of new material since Olson left the Jayhawks in 1995.

According to a New West press release, “Ready for the Flood captures the stripped down, fingerpicking guitar playing and  Laurel Canyon sound of an earlier time…The result is an organic, intuitive and loosely confident album with several stand out tracks including on Turn Your Pretty Name Around and Chamberlain, SD.”

Louris and Olson will tour Europe this fall with North American dates coming in the New Year. 

[Photo of Gary Louris courtesy: 89.3 The Current/Stephanie Curtis, http://www.thecurrent.org)