June 15 marks the triumphant re-emergence of Mark Olson, late of the Jayhawks and the Original Harmony Ridge Creek Dippers. That’s when his first record in over two years arrives via the HackTone label, The Salvation Blues, a wide-ranging musical travelogue that found Olson recording in places as far-flung as Olson’s hometown of Minneapolis, a mountain retreat in Oslo, Norway, and an old schoolhouse in Krakow, Poland.
The record was produced by the legendary Ben Vaughn and includes three songs with Olson’s erstwhile Jayhawks bandmate, Gary Louris, on vocals.
One of them, “Poor Michael’s Boat,” was co-written by Olson and Louris years ago but had never been gotten down properly on tape.
In his recent past Olson has been contending with a bitter divorce from his wife, singer/songwriter Victoria Williams, and its aftermath—including having to give up his California desert home where he and Williams had lived for many years. According to a statement from the record label, the album reflects much of this experience: “It's a collection whose overriding sentiment Olson sums up (every bit as eloquently as you'd expect) in the first verse of the title track: ‘There's such joy and sweet moments to be found in this world/ We know they'll come to an end/ Just how makes our hearts hurt/ Salvation blues/ And these blues will help us all.
’ [The album builds] gradually, beautifully, into a set of story-songs that, like the best poetry, leaves a singular impression of the author's deepest feelings while still being open to imaginative interpretation.”
Meanwhile, Olson will be doing a select string of dates at Mo Pitkins’ House of Satisfaction in New York (34 Avenue A; call 212-777-5660), April 17, 19, 24 and 26.
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