Gary Louris doesn’t mind shaking things up. After 35 years of The Jayhawks, he’s seen the band evolve in ways big and small, but their latest album, XOXO, marks a particularly notable shift: more voices, more songwriters, and a more collaborative approach than ever before. “Each record seems to be a little different,” he says. “This one was a little bit… more different.”
For the first time, the band’s other members—bassist Marc Perlman, keyboardist Karen Grotberg, and drummer Tim O’Reagan—step up to the mic for lead vocals and songwriting duties. “I kind of bullied my way into the lead spot for a long time,” Louris admits. “But these guys can write, and it just made sense. Though it’s not like everybody gets an allotment of three songs per record. The best songs win.”
Louris himself had been writing for a separate solo project, which he put on hold when it became clear XOXO would benefit from a wider pool of material. “I had written a lot of songs specifically for that, and I thought, ‘Why not let these guys write more of the Jayhawks record?’” He says the process strengthened the band’s chemistry: “It really brought us together as a family.”
But not all inspiration comes easy. XOXO finds Louris tackling depression and anxiety, particularly on “Little Victories.” “I’ve battled a low-level amount of both in my life,” he says. “The song is me wondering which parent I got it from. They never talked about that stuff.” Another track, “Living in a Bubble,” takes a swipe at the 24-hour news cycle and our collective smartphone addiction. “I wrote it before COVID, but yeah, now everybody’s literally living in a bubble,” he says. “The song was about how social media fans the flame of fear. And then, suddenly, we were all locked inside, and it became accidentally timely.”
Louris still calls Minneapolis home, which made the months following the killing of George Floyd all the more visceral. “I moved back the day after it happened,” he says. “The city was on fire. And you don’t want to say something that sounds trite or obligatory, but real change has to happen.” The Jayhawks responded by using their platform to fundraise and amplify organizations addressing police brutality and racial injustice. “We’ve got a list of causes on our Facebook,” he says. “And half the proceeds from my livestream show, The Sht Show*, go toward them. I’d have been out there in person, but I’m a 65-year-old man without a spleen trying to get to my fiancée in Canada.”
The band’s long-standing blend of American roots and British pop influences is reflected in XOXO’s cover art, a painting by Duncan Hannah titled British Invasion. “We thought about calling the record The Yiddish Invasion,” Louris jokes. “But that didn’t quite work.” While British influences shaped his songwriting, he admits he came to traditional American music late. “I was an Anglophile. Didn’t know a damn thing about traditional American music until the ’80s.” That genre mix, he says, is both what’s made The Jayhawks hard to categorize and what’s kept them relevant. “We aren’t straight roots, and we aren’t straight rock. We sound like The Jayhawks.”
With XOXO out in the world, Louris is already thinking about what’s next—namely, that solo album. “It’s done, just waiting for the right time,” he says. “But I’m always writing, so we’ll see what happens.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
