Falling Cars and Junkyard Dogs

by Jay Farrar

Overview

The former Uncle Tupelo and current Son Volt musician presents snapshots of the people and places he encountered during his decades-long touring career.

In this collection of beautifully crafted autobiographical vignettes, Jay Farrar visits the places he’s journeyed to during his more than twenty years as a traveling musician. While recollections of Farrar’s parents and his formative childhood in the Missouri Ozarks are prominent throughout the stories, it is music and musicians that are given the most space and the final word, since music has been his creative impetus and driving force.

In writing these stories, Farrar found a natural inclination to focus on very specific experiences; a method analogous to the songwriting process. The highlights and pivotal experiences from that musical journey are all represented as the binding thread in these stories, illustrated throughout with photography from his life. If life is a movie, then these stories are the still frames.

“Falling Cars and Junkyard Dogs extends Farrar’s talents as he exhibits an eye for detail and a grasp of the human condition that proceeds directly from his own introspective nature.” —All About Jazz

“Provides some illumination of the creative mind of a very private artist.” —Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593765125
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	03/19/2013
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.01(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Jay Farrar has been a singer/songwriter for over 25 years. He was the founding member of legendary band Uncle Tupelo and has been performing with Son Volt since 1995. Two of his most recent projects were putting original music to the words and poetry of Jack Kerouac (2010) and Woody Gunthrie (2012).

Table of Contents

1 Ozarks 1

1 Aux Arc Reds 7

2 Velma 9

3 Desiccant 10

4 Breach of Promise 12

5 The Last Battle 14

2 Illinois 15

1 Chain Saw Morning 19

2 Taps 20

3 East St. Louis 21

4 Cahokians 22

5 Across the Street 23

6 Thirteen Cars 25

7 Melting Pot 27

8 Patton 28

9 Lead Car in the Parade 29

3 Beat Bars and the Maritime 31

1 Pops Farrar 35

2 Engine Man 36

3 Roll Your Own 38

4 South Pole 40

5 Laissez-Faire 41

6 Dredge Boats 42

7 Brass Buckle 43

8 Hank Williams Sr. 44

4 Six-String Belief 45

1 Strobe Lights 49

2 The M&O Kid 51

3 1979 52

4 Italian Guitar 53

5 Learning the Game 54

6 New Orleans 55

7 Eight-Track Heavana 56

5 Catching an All-Night Station 57

1 A Girlfriend 63

2 Beverly Laurel 65

3 Miami, Oklahoma 66

4 Oxford 68

5 Taj Mahal 69

6 Memphis 70

7 Bobby Blue Bland 71

6 Rhythm of the River 73

1 Riverbend 79

2 1987 80

3 Hell's Hayride 81

4 Trouble in the Hills 83

5 John Smith T 85

6 The Wrong Kind of Wheels 86

7 Strange Old St. Louis 88

7 Americana Technicolor 89

1 Dialectic of Country and Communism 93

2 Captain Jack 96

3 Melungeons 97

4 Tale of Two Rodents 99

5 Stan Kann the Gadget Man 100

6 The Porter 101

7 Buddy Rich 102

8 Operation Kitchen Floor 103

9 The Process 104

10 McSorley's 105

8 The Road is a Spiderweb on the Map 107

1 Texas Lament 113

2 The Band 115

3 June Carter 117

4 Keith Richards 118

5 Bill Monroe 119

6 San Antone 120

7 Falling Cars 122

8 Roger McGuinn 124

9 Palace Hotel 125

9 The Salt and the Steel of the Breath 127

1 Jelly Jaw 133

2 Bennie's Blues 134

3 Alex Chilton 135

4 Sesto Calende 136

5 Ralph Mooney 137

10 The Speculation Din 139

1 Freak Show 143

2 Chuck Berry 144

3 Big in Vegas 145

4 Willie Nelson 146

5 The Bear Suit 147

Discography 148

Editorial Reviews

A slim, sketchy, not-quite memoir that defies categorization but plainly comes from a personal place within its musician author. As the taciturn leader of alternative-country cult favorites Uncle Tupelo and, more recently, Son Volt, Farrar would seem to be the last rock artist who would bare his soul in the pages of a book. And so he hasn't. For an artist resistant to interviews, he generally omits here any mention of the matters that might interest his fans most: the rise and disbanding of Uncle Tupelo, his relationship with Jeff Tweedy (who was Farrar's junior partner in that band, but has subsequently achieved greater critical renown and popularity as the leader of Wilco) and the two different versions of Son Volt, a band he formed, disbanded and reformed with a new group of musicians. In fact, Farrar hardly bothers to mention any musician with whom he has worked, though he pays generous tribute to other, older ones: Taj Mahal, The Band, Doug Alex Chilton, a very troubled Townes Van Zandt. Most of these pieces, too short to be chapters, are a page, a paragraph or even a sentence or two long. Farrar expresses his disdain for the show-business elements of making music: "Musicians are basically cut from the same cloth as carnies. Whoever puts on the biggest freak show wins the prize." He also writes of his father, who saw Hank Williams in live performance: "In my father's world, an unwavering belief and reverence for the power of music occupied the space society usually reserves for religion." Amid vignettes and anecdotes about coming-of-age in hillbilly Missouri, the author offers a "Dialectic Timeline of Country Music and Communism," charting contrasting developments by year, letting readers make of these what they will. Not particularly well-written or elegant, but it provides some illumination of the creative mind of a very private artist.

Kirkus Reviews