Artist: Gary Louris
Live Reviews from web archive February 15, 2009
Mark Olson & Gary Louris
A couple weeks back, we posted my colleague David Cantwell’s review of the new Mark Olson & Gary Louris album Ready For The Flood, and I’ve been thinking about his thesis contention that what was most missed in the work of both artists during their decade of separation was what he called “The Voice: the [...]
Record Review from web archive January 27, 2009
Mark Olson & Gary Louris – Hawks of a different feather
We each inevitably hear music in the particular ways that we do at least partly because of all that we’ve heard before – because of the context and expectations we bring to new work. For instance, many of us have anticipated Ready For The Flood, an album by Mark Olson & Gary Louris, in light [...]
Record Review from web archive December 5, 2008
Gary Louris
There’s little surprise that Gary Louris could make a solo album superior to or at least comparable with the seven albums he recorded with the Jayhawks. The band’s seventeen-year career required more the endurance of a marathon runner than of an afternoon jogger; successive lineups faithfully maintained the brand name even as the audience for [...]
Column from web archive November 6, 2008
Kirsten Jones: More mad miles than money
About five years ago, singer-songwriter Kirsten Jones was in New Zealand, on holiday from her work as a major-label account executive in Toronto, when she took a sea kayaking trip that would change her life. The leisurely paddle on the open water took an abrupt, dangerous turn when a storm blew in, leaving the novice [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #74 March-April 2008
Gary Louris – Alone together again
Is there, perhaps, a distinction between stopping and ending? Maybe stopping is the absence — intentional or otherwise — of future plans to continue with what had been an ongoing concern. Ending feels more like a deliberate act calculated to ensure something ever happens again. Of course, a stop can turn out to be an [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #64 July-Aug 2006
Gary Louris & Mark Olson – Aladdin Theater (Portland, OR)
This reunion show was as on-key as it was low-key. Gary Louris and Mark Olson quietly walked onstage about 8:05 p.m. (there was no opener); Olson saluted the crowd, and they both sat down on stools to embark on the first of two sets. (Louris: “Per the management; first time we’ve done two sets since [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #57 May-June 2005
Alejandro Escovedo / Jon Dee Graham – Fitzgerald’s (Berwyn, IL) / Mark Olson & Gary Louris – Maintenance Shop (Ames, IA)
Rarely do club shows seem to have as much at stake as a pair that braved the February freeze of the midwest. For Alejandro Escovedo, the highly-anticipated, sold-out performance at Chicago’s suburban FitzGerald’s marked a return to the road after a couple years of convalescence. Over the course of his recovery following his April 2003 [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #56 March-April 2005
Mark Olson (and Friends) – 400 Bar (Minneapolis, MN)
The sight of Gary Louris’ beloved Gibson SG guitar sitting on the stage of the 400 Bar in Minneapolis before a scheduled New Year’s Eve solo show by Mark Olson, his former Jayhawks partner, seemed to confirm the rumors of a “Jayhawks reunion” that had been running rampant ever since an “act of plumbing” forced [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #44 March-April 2003
Gary Louris – We just wanted to make a record that felt right
Whether the Jayhawks’ day in the sun will ever come seems perhaps a moot point today. In a perfect world, one could have envisioned the Minneapolis band reaching the same kind of commercial peak as, say, the Counting Crows, but the ever-elusive big break never turned their way. Yet they’ve hung together for close to [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #42 Nov-Dec 2002
Gary Louris – Slow Bar (Nashville, TN)
By now, it should be apparent that Gary Louris can exist in all sorts of different habitats. A member of the Jayhawks since the mid-late 1980s and the group’s kingpin since 1996, he’s seen the band through multiple lineup shifts and a gradual sonic shift from edgy, slightly twanged-up, harmony-drenched roots-rock to layered, lovely, expansive [...]
