A Beautiful Struggle

Gary Louris isn’t the most approachable guy in the world. Musically, he’s generous—his lyrics are direct and heartfelt, his guitar lines expressive, his voice full of ache and wonder—but offstage Louris seems like he’d rather be left alone. Perhaps that’s why the middle-aged man standing before the former Jayhawks frontman and me at Cuppa Java in Bryn Mawr is so nervous. His left hand shakes as he speaks.

Sorry to interrupt. You were with the Jayhawks, right?
Right.

I just wanted to say, the American flag upside down on, I can’t remember which album . . .
They all had it.

I thought maybe that was your decision?
It was the label, Def American’s.

You know what that means, right?
Uh, not exactly.

Nation in distress.
Oh, does it?

It’s a call for help.
Oh.

So anyway, I think it’s great it’s on there.
We’re actually not on that label anymore, but we were a long time.

My cousin was Katie O’Brien.
Oh, yeah?

I thought you knew her, but I wasn’t sure.
Yeah, she was a friend of mine.

We all miss her.
Yes, we do. Well, good to see you. What’s your name?

Gabe
Gabe. OK. I’ll keep Katie in my thoughts.

With that, Gabe is out the door. “Katie was a musician. She was in a band called Dutch Oven,” Louris explains. “She killed herself.” He takes a sip from his latte and pauses for a couple seconds. “Where were we?” he asks.

At fifty-three, Gary Louris knows about calls for help; it’s what most of his songs are about. In twenty-five years as a professional musician, twenty of them with the Jayhawks—a band that has always had an influence far greater than its commercial footprint—Louris has focused relentlessly on one subject: pain. His pain, to be specific. He’s got a new album out, Vagabonds, his first solo effort since leaving the Jayhawks three years ago. More pain, beautifully textured and exquisitely produced, but pain nonetheless.

In some hands, this preoccupation with personal agony might come off sounding like a ninth grader’s MySpace page. But in Louris’s hands, it transcends, more often than not, thanks to the evocative conviction and richness of his distinctive voice. When he sings “We stranded on the vine, destitute and shaken, looking for a sign” or, from the new album, “We’ll get by, but we don’t know how,” the lines don’t come off as mawkish, but rather healing. It’s a neat trick, the sort of emotional alchemy that leads to awkward encounters in coffee shops.

“Whenever somebody comes up to me and shares something, that’s rewarding because I always feel like I don’t do enough,” says Louris. “I don’t get out in the community, work at Sharing and Caring Hands, like I should.”

Instead, he writes songs. Louris’s music has been categorized as alternative country, a hybrid movement he and the Jayhawks are credited with spurring—but that association has never worked for him. Louris considers himself primarily a soul man. “Not necessarily soul music in the sense of Al Green, but music with soul, that’s always been my goal—to make pop music that had some weight to it, some meaning, some feeling,” he says.

Vagabonds, for example, is filled with soul, or at least plenty of feeling. It finds him reflecting once again on his place in the universe and wondering what it’s all about. Jayhawks fans will find plenty of Louris’s musical calling cards—soaring vocals, pretty melodies, moody guitar, killer bridges—but this time there’s something new: a sense of acceptance. “The theme of the record is a certain searching for meaning, whether it’s within a relationship or a search for spirituality and realizing that you’re never going to find the answer, but the struggle is beautiful,” he explains.

It hasn’t always been.