EX-JAYHAWK MAKES BIG SOUND IN SMALLER WAY
The Washington Post
November 10, 2013 Sunday
by Walter Tunis
Talking with Mark Olson is like jumping on a plane and following him
around the globe. Figuratively speaking, the frequent flier miles
pile up quickly.
Phoning him for an interview requires calling a Minneapolis number.
That’s where he spent his youth and where the Americana band that
launched his career, the Jayhawks, got its first record deal. But
he answers from Joshua Tree, Calif., his home away from home for the
past 17 years.
And in describing his newest musical project, talk turns to
collaborations with his Norwegian wife, Ingunn Ringvold, the country
where they wrote much of their newest music (Armenia) and the locale
of the record company that will issue those songs (Germany).
It’s enough to give you jet lag.
But with work as a Jayhawk behind him, seemingly for good despite a
well-received 2011 reunion album, “Mockingbird Lane” (“We’re defunct,”
he said), Olson is focused and openly enthusiastic about the songs he
is creating with Ringvold, the instrumentation they have discovered
to color them and their tour.
“It’s just going to be the two of us,” Olson said. “That’s the
challenge. We try to get as big of a sound as possible with just
two people. I think that’s the future of music in a lot of ways,
especially for young people. I don’t see how they can afford to have
a full rock-and-roll band anymore. I’ve been looking at this for a
long time before putting it into practice.”
Olson and Ringvold have clocked some serious miles in implementing
that practice, as well. That’s where Armenia comes in.
“We’ve been working basically for five or six years on building a
repertoire but have had a number of visa troubles over the past few
years that are now solved,” Olson said. “Because of that, I had to
spend time outside of Europe and Ingunn had to spend time outside of
America. So for us to spend time together, we had to go into these
other countries. So we contacted a charity foundation that put us
in touch with a music school in Armenia, this area that was part of
the 1988 earthquake. We made a contribution there, and they helped
us with learning some new instruments.
“Ingunn learned how to play the qanun, which is a very difficult
instrument with, like, 76 strings. We added that to our set and were
able to get a record deal in Germany, of all places. It’s unbelievable,
I know.
“This visa trouble was . . . well, that’s what it was. It was trouble.
But the amazing thing about it was that it landed us in a position
where we spent a lot of time alone together where we played music. Now
that’s turning out to be in our favor because we developed all these
different styles and songs.”
The qanun figures in roughly three or four songs in their shows. But
the repertoire from which Olson will draw will cover all corners
of his career, from early Jayhawks tunes to ’90s music cut with the
ultra-homey folk troupe the Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers to
more recent solo projects.
While Olson places priority on the songs he has written with Ringvold,
he still draws satisfaction when an older tune resonates with an
audience, as well as with himself, in a performance.
“What you’re talking about there is probably the best feeling of all,”
he said. “You go out and play a song you may have written 20 years ago,
and something just connects. Now there are songs I wrote many, many
years ago that never even made it onto a record until much later in my
career. But there is still that feeling. It gives you this sense of,
‘Wow, I did accomplish something.’
“Some of these songs have really lasted for me. That’s the main point.
I suppose. Songs can be good and they can last. But it takes a special
song to last for years and years and years so that you still want to
perform it. That speaks to something other than just the melody or the
lyrics or the tempo. That means the song is feeding into something
else. I liken it to floating. If you have a real nice song that you
really enjoy playing, it’s almost like floating when you play it.
That’s what we try to achieve, anyway.”
– Lexington Herald-Leader
Mark Olson
Performing at Jammin’ Java on Sunday, Nov. 10.