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Okemah and the Melody of Riot

  • Legacy
  • Transmit Sound

Latest record from alt-country hero Jay Farrar is named in part for Woody Guthrie's birthplace.

Okemah is a small town in eastern-central Oklahoma that's famous as the birthplace of Woody Guthrie, who serves as the guiding spirit of Son Volt's comeback album. On the leadoff track, "Bandages and Scars", Jay Farrar (the only one remaining from the band's original 90s line-up) reveals the impetus for Okemah and the Melody of Riot: "the words of Woody Guthrie ringing in my head" got him thinking about the current political climate, which ostensibly inspired these songs. It's as if, denied the opportunity to record Guthrie's lyrics, Farrar has made his own Mermaid Avenue, one that bypasses the original's time-capsule quality for an explicitly contemporary relevance. Or maybe it's the times that have made Guthrie more significant now than he was seven years ago.

He's not the only musician Farrar turns to for guidance on Okemah, which is perhaps his most politically and socially charged album since March 16-20, 1992. He alludes to Bob Dylan on "Afterglow 61" (named after the highway) and both Gil Scott-Heron and John Fogerty on "Jet Pilot", which revisits Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" but with a much more specific target (just guess). But Farrar doesn't seem to be trying to re-fashion himself as a modern-day Guthrie on these songs; as always, he's much too reverential toward his influences to think he might occupy their ranks. Instead, he's reviving them for a tumultuous era that he thinks needs them desperately. "There's no reason to be downhearted/there's music in the wheels there to be found," he sings on "Afterglow 61", elaborating on the genre he helped define.

Okemah proves to be not just 13 protest songs, but 13 songs about protest songs. Farrar believes unquestioningly in music's ability to affect tremendous social change, soothe a nation, or stop an "endless war with no moral face." That idea still sounds as attractive and optimistic now as it was 70 years ago when Guthrie sang about the Dust Bowl, and although he doesn't seem to consider that perhaps reverent hindsight grants protest music most of its power, Farrar wants to resurrect that musical populism as a weapon against the current administration.

Appropriately, Okemah is grassroots in both politics and sound. Despite its new line-up, Son Volt churns out the same sturdy riff-heavy rock of Trace and Wide Swing Tremolo, but the band sounds more invigorated on songs like "6 String Belief" and even on slower tracks like "Medication". Farrar's and Brad Rice's sandpaper guitars evoke the mythic Americana of 70s Southern rock, especially against the chugging rhythm section of drummer Dave Bryson and one-time Meat Puppet Andrew Duplantis on bass.

Despite the heightened band dynamics, Farrar remains the central figure on these songs, and his distinct approach complicates and occasionally compromises Okemah. The melodies are less lethargic than those on Straightaways and the lyrics more intelligible than those on Wide Swing Tremolo; if they're devoid of Guthrie's humor, at least "Jet Pilot" manages some disgusted sarcasm toward (you guessed it) Bush. And "Who" manages a devious ambiguity: "Who makes the minutes move/ The post-meridian news/ Who, who else but you?" "You" could be either the populace or Fox News; the song either a populist anthem or a middle finger.

As the album progresses, though, Farrar's lyrics become increasingly stilted and veiled, reverting to the forced wordplay and disconnected evocations of his most obscure songs. In the past, this tendency toward purple opacity could be excused, but on Okemah it hinders Farrar considerably, clouding the issues rather than arguing or elevating them. "Ipecac" takes on big corporations and class differences-- important topics after the Enron fallout-- but, head-scratchingly, he warns us to "watch out for love like ipecac", perhaps more drawn to the word's cutting consonants than to its connotations. Okemah is in the end too cerebral, lacking the gutpunch impact of the best protest music. With "rock and roll 'round my head like a 6-string belief," Farrar's been thinking so much about Woody Guthrie that these songs never leave his own head.

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