Gary Louris
As singer, guitarist and songwriter of the Jayhawks, Gary Louris built a deeply compelling body of music whose artistry and integrity won the loyalty of an international audience and the respect of both critics and his peers. With Vagabonds, Louris launches his solo career on a high note, delivering a deeply felt, exquisitely-crafted set that features some of his most evocative and personally-charged work to date.
If Vagabonds has a recurring theme, it's the search for something to believe in—a soulmate, as reflected by "True Blue," "Baby Let Me Take Care of You" and "To Die a Happy Man"; or a guiding, unifying principle, as intimated in "Black Grass," "We'll Get By" and the title song. "Sometimes I write with a specific idea in mind, but mostly it evolves from the subconscious, and that seems to make a more interesting song for me," Louris explains. "That approach always leaves something between the lines; otherwise it becomes too specific.

On this set of songs, there's the element of searching or yearning for an answer of some kind, and looking at yourself at a certain age and realizing, 'God, I still have not figured this out at all." The sense of spiritual striving is manifested not just in the lyrics but in the ensemble vocals of what was semi-whimsically dubbed the Laurel Canyon Family Choir, which includes the Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs, the Chapin Sisters and Black Crowes’ frontman Chris Robinson. A longtime Louris supporter, Robinson produced the album with noted engineer Thom Monahan, whose resume includes recent releases by Devendra Banhart and Matt Pond PA. Vagabonds was recorded at Hollywood’s Sage and Sound Recording with an ensemble that includes bassist/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Wilson, drummer and Vetiver member Otto Hauser, pedal steel player Josh Grange and keyboardist Adam MacDougal. The album's effortlessly soulful performances are the product of Louris' rapport with this close-knit group of Los Angeles-based musicians. Louris and his fellow players cut the album's tracks in loose, organic fashion, emphasizing inspiration and spontaneity over formality. "This record's a little different for me," Louris notes. "I've made records in a lot of different ways and I've learned that what I love the most is the synergy of a group of people playing together and the nuances and mistakes that happen live. That was really exciting for me; you'd finish the take and what happened at that particular moment is what you hear on the record."

This approach was well-suited to Louris' new songs, which balance brooding introspection and melodic uplift. In addition to preparing to tour behind Vagabonds, Louris has been engaged in a number of varied projects, including an upcoming collaboration with fellow Jayhawks co-founder Mark Olson, with whom he previously reunited for a low-key—but rapturously received—acoustic tour in 2005. Gary Louris began his recording career with the fabled Minneapolis indie combo Safety Last before co-founding the Jayhawks, who in their two-decade career rose from their indie roots to international prominence. Concurrent with his time in the Jayhawks, Louris was a charter member of the part-time alt-rock supergroup Golden Smog, which at various times also included members of Soul Asylum, Wilco, the Replacements and Big Star. Along the way he also found time to lend his writing, performing and production talents to albums by acts as diverse as the Black Crowes, the Dixie Chicks, Counting Crows, Joe Henry, John Hiatt, Lucinda Williams, Roger McGuinn, Maria McKee, Nickel Creek, Carrie Rodriguez, Tift Merritt, the Sadies, and the Wallflowers. After more than 20 years with the Jayhawks and building a powerful repertoire of collaborations, Gary Louris has much to reflect upon with the release of his first-ever solo album: "I'm stepping back into my own head a little more. I think this record is a search for meaning, knowing one may never find an answer. But maybe finding the answer isn't the point. Maybe the questions are more important than the answers, and I think that is somewhat liberating. It is almost a celebration of the pain, the pain of existence."

This metaphysical element is evident in the lyrics but also in the instrumental performances, especially Grange's yearning pedal steel, which seems to occupy some previously unexplored astral terrain. Together, the backing vocals, instrumental textures and understated rhythms provide the album with its singular character. And while the resulting tracks are clearly the work of this distinctive artist, there's a previously unexplored element present as well "I thought it sounded like me," he says, "but friends I played it for said it sounded like I had moved into a different area, in a good way—that it was a different side of me."

Ike Reilly
“We Belong To The Staggering Evening” is the natural yet alarming evolution for Reilly and his band. Sounding furious and maniacal and on top of the world at the outset, “The Staggering Evening” is performed with something to prove and nothing to lose. Handclaps and tambourines, the call-and-response, twisted-gospel vocals, and driving NYC-underground guitars are all part of Reilly’s American portrayal of rock ‘n’ roll in this lost new era. Produced by Reilly, "The Staggering Evening" is an album that should be blasted on a hectic Friday night from jukeboxes in bars that haven’t banned smoking, from college dorm rooms, from economy cars in shit traffic, and stuck in the ears of iPod-listening subway riders. It’s a “Cops” episode; it’s Lenny Bruce after being the celebrity judge on “American Idol;” it’s a night full of lust and regret, blood and anarchy, and a blind date with the disaffected -- a hilarious night that begins with a swill and ends with a tender kiss.

The Ike Reilly Assassination have established themselves as one of the most uncontrived and devastatingly emotional live bands in America; the complex and shifting nature of Reilly’s personae and songs takes the audience on a celebratory and refreshing ride through alleys of friendship, faith, family, sex, death, drugs, rebellion and work. Jim Walsh of City Pages in Minneapolis said that The Ike Reilly Assassination is “reminding us, yet again, of the unique power and glory that is an American band, and at the moment I’d be hard pressed to find one more ferocious…” Reilly’s compelling solo performances are equally intriguing. The leader of the fierce IRA will show up with just an acoustic guitar, performing with Tom Morello at political rallies in Los Angeles or at the birthday party of the great crime writer Elmore Leonard outside of Detroit or in the clubs and pubs in Ireland as an American troubadour. Johnny Hickman of the band Cracker has called Ike “one of the best songwriters in America" and in fact some of Reilly’s anthemic songs are mainstays of the Cracker set. The monster of a band that is The Ike Reilly Assassination and Reilly’s unique take on America and the American song is what brings us now to "We Belong to The Staggering Evening." David Carr of the New York Times said, “Ike Reilly saddles up his unparalled muse and one of the best working bands in America and takes us to a new place, again. No one else in America rocks the common man's experience in such uncommon ways.

Modern and ancient, punk and pub, heart-breaking and knife-wielding, Mr. Reilly's new record [“We Belong To The Staggering Evening”] plays for keeps.” "The Staggering Evening" is a corroded rock 'n' roll record that is dripping soul and energy, but the melody and the imagery is what is the most immediately memorable. Songs you are sure you’ve heard before, but, try as you might, you just don’t remember them having the same subject matter. Songs about suicide girls and broken promises, about the sheen that’s missing on the armor of the American knight, about a girl named Tank who doesn’t take any shit, songs about sex and sex and sex, and in the middle of the hilarity and chaos we find the poignant “Broken Parakeet Blues,” a song about the humanity of the American soldier. Who belongs to the staggering evening? The band? Ike? You? Us? Most likely everybody. Ike Reilly’s “We Belong To The Staggering Evening” is all-inclusive. Just listen or look inside it and you’ll see someone you know.