Jay Farrar: You know, Doug was always an inspiration, and he’s an icon in that he represented his own way. Paste: So instead of penning an entire dark pandemic album that you’d then have to go out and sing every night, you chose to dig into the past. So without further ado, Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. And it’s good timing, with all the crazy news headlines darkening our days, because we certainly need a distraction. And currently, Son Volt-with ex Bottle Rockets guitarist John Horton recently replacing departing axeman Chris Frame in the lineup-is on the road again, backing Day of the Doug and the belated 25th anniversary of the group’s first post-Uncle Tupelo disc, Trace from 1995. The set’s intro and outro are actual lively phone messages Sahm himself left on Farrar’s answering machine, which he has always saved and treasured.

Whereas when you’re covering someone’s songs-especially someone like Doug, who’s been such an inspiration-there’s just an element of fun that goes with it, and you’re kind of following a template along the way, and just kind of adding your own elements and tweaking things here and there.” “Because that’s essentially what we were going for, as well as looking to mix things up a bit-it’s a completely different process to do a tribute record than it is to do a regular Son Volt record, where you’re kind of building the whole foundation from the ground up. “So Family Guy is not far off, I guess,” Farrar, 56, chortles of his pet project, a true labor of fanboy love.Īnd his own personal coronavirus diversion.

Only his took the rowdy, ribald form of Day of the Doug, Son Volt’s new Doug Sahm tribute album, featuring fresh takes on a dozen lesser-known chestnuts from the late Sir Douglas Quintet/Texas Tornados maestro, like “”Float Away,” “Poison Love,” “”Keep Your Soul,” “Huggin’ Thin Air,” and the man’s shrewdly self-referential “Sometimes You’ve Got to Stop Chasing Rainbows.” Sahm, of course, never quit show business despite many disappointments, and was still touring with The Texas Tornados on November 18, 1999, when he passed away from heart disease in his Taos, N.M., hotel room bed. And he’s not above whipping up an attention-diverting distraction himself, especially during our grim universal bete noire of late, the pandemic lockdown and ensuing aftermath that seemed to consume everyone’s thoughts since March of 2020. Jay Farrar admits the joke is still unusually hilarious. Conway Twitty!” And yes, the show brazenly cuts to grainy old live footage of the country legend crooning an entire mournful tune, with the Griffin clan, afterwards, sitting calmly at their dinner table, all problems from three minutes earlier somehow resolved.

As in one of the show’s most surreal skits“Yikes! Looks like I need a distraction!,” he yelps in the first of several similar recurring gags relied on over the seasons. Leave it to animated Family Guy father Peter Griffin to always find the perfect cutaway-gag solution to whatever trouble he bumbles into.

Son volt tour dates