As a member of the Jayhawks, Gary Louris has made music with Ray Davies of the Kinks and other figures throughout his long career like legendary producer Bob Ezrin. But for his newest solo album, Dark Country, he found himself working mostly alone.The record arrived on Valentine’s Day appropriately enough, as it’s a collection of songs lovingly crafted as a tribute to his wife, Stephanie. But Dark Country, through songs like the initial single, “Getting Older,” finds the songwriter also confronting his own mortality and the passage of time. The music, largely acoustic, has a tone that calls to mind some of Neil Young’s quieter and more acoustically-based work. While Louris is a longtime fan of Young’s catalog, he points out late in our conversation that his musical origins started in a place that might surprise some.Watch Gary Louris’ ‘Getting Older’ VideoWhich made his collaboration with Davies on two albums, 2017’s Americana and 2018’s Our Country: Americana Act II, an important milestone. “It was the honor of a lifetime, really, to work with my musical hero,” he tells UCR, saying that the experience went beyond his love of artists like Young and Bob Dylan. “I’m actually an Anglophile at heart of all things British. So working with him was such a thrill and thank God, he didn’t disappoint me. Sometimes you meet your heroes and then it’s ruined. He had a theatrical kind of way of looking at music, which makes sense when you look at some of his records. His songs are almost like little mini-plays. But he would direct people in a way that was less musical and almost more theatrical.””He definitely had an uber attention to detail, whether it was the way [Jayhawks drummer] Tim [O’Reagan] would hit the bell on the cymbal or the way I’d sing a background vocal. He was very, very particular, but not necessarily wanting perfection revived,” he details. “You know, the Beatles had George Martin, Glyn Johns and Phil Spector. The Rolling Stones had Glyn, Jimmy Miller and Andrew Loog Oldham. The Kinks were pretty much self-produced, kind of like Led Zeppelin. I think Jimmy Page and Ray Davies are very under-appreciated for their production. The fact that Ray could be so musical yet still have so much attention to detail [is important]. Sometimes in my work, I can want to get it done and just move onto the next thing. He’s very much about making it great.”READ MORE: Top 10 Ray Davies LyricsDark Country found Louris similarly motivated in his pursuit of the muse as he began to work on the songs and the album that was taking shape, though he admits that the path itself wasn’t initially clear. “I knew what I wanted to do, but how I was going to do it was a question,” he explains. “I knew I was writing songs because I’d finally found this, the love of my life. I’d never really written a really personal, what I would call, autobiographical record. It was just what was happening and is happening now in my life, right? I was writing these songs with no particular purpose but the lyrical content always seemed to be about Steph. When I made the [Jayhawks album] Rainy Day Music, Ethan Johns, the producer, had talked me into singing and playing live. [He wanted me] to do as much as I could in the moment as opposed to overdubs, fixing everything and layering everything. I’ve done it both ways. There’s many different [approaches], but you know, you always react to what you did previously. My previous solo record was very much virtual instruments and things like that. I wanted to do something different because that’s what you do as an artist. You want to keep evolving.””Also, by necessity, at the time, as a newly Canadian resident, I would be qualified for grants here in Canada. The initial idea was to maybe put together a small combo and do more of a live record, kind of like my friend Ron Sexsmith did — which is still pretty live, but in a studio with musicians,” he continues. “But the grants didn’t come through and as I kept writing these songs and making better sounding demos, I started realizing this is the record. You know, this is what’s being given to me right now. I have a great studio and some really cool old vintage gear that works for this kind of record. It became more obvious to me that it was going to be me, myself and I pretty much on this record. I brought a couple of friends in to do a little bit on a couple of songs. Steph is also on it a little bit, but in general, it became what I think it was supposed to be. So once I realized what the record was going to be, I started getting up every morning and going down the stairs to my studio, recording and really doing a real push to get it done.”Louris says that the spirit of Dark Country is meant to feel like it is often just him and the listener in a room. Indeed, the music conveys that casual feeling. You can hear the sound of his breathing as he plays through “Dead Porcupine,” an analog hiss rising up in between the sounds of the instrumentation. It’s not hard to imagine that perhaps you ran into the songwriter and had a moment where he handed you a cassette with some of his latest songs, still in progress. It feels very in the moment, as intended and it’s something that the songwriter admits he’s wrestled with at times. “When it’s yourself, sometimes you’re not quite as accepting of it. You want to clean things up a bit, but you can’t, when it’s live like that,” he points out. “There’s many different ways to make a great record, but if you’re doing it this way, especially this kind of music where it’s got love songs on acoustic guitar, you play your guitar around your vocal and you sing around your guitar playing in a dynamic way. When you overdub it, you get the best, most linear, solid acoustic guitar that you can — or whatever instrument. Then, you get your best vocal and you make it as airtight as you can. You start going down that road of fixing things and it’s hard to stop.”He’s made records that have been big productions, notably Smile, his 2000 album with the Jayhawks that was produced by Bob Ezrin (Kiss, Pink Floyd). The title track alone sounded like it could have been a lost Phil Spector production, but the album as a whole, speaks to what Louris detailed earlier. It showed an evolution and also, a different side of the Minneapolis band, while also highlighting their familiar strengths. “We’d already made Sound of Lies [released in 1997] and it was a pretty dark record, made in Minneapolis and kind of left to our own devices. We’d [also] made some pretty rootsy records and I wanted to make a big pop record, I really did,” he explains. “I’d made a list of people I thought it would be out of the box for us to work with. I know we tried to connect with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, which would have been really unusual. We also talked to Bob Dylan’s brother, David [Zimmerman], who is in Minneapolis and did some work on Blood on the Tracks. We spoke with a few different people [also] that we never really heard back from.””But Bob responded and we [loved his work], I say, ‘we,’ because [Marc] Perlman and I both love Lou Reed’s Berlin and [Pink Floyd’s] The Wall. I grew up with [the music of] Alice Cooper and all of those cool records,” he continues. “Peter Gabriel’s first solo record [is another one] I loved. When we contacted him, Bob responded with a 10 page letter going through our demos song by song with detailed reactions and opinions. We met him and to this day he’s a good friend. We tried to think outside of the box and make a big record. With Bob, he was all about not being reverent to your audience and to do what you want to do. You lead and you don’t follow “It was somewhat of a divisive record. We lost some people and gained other people. Some people love that record. It’s been kind of in between. I think it’s a successful record, but I think it’s one [that] has more songs that I would have left off than some of our other records. Other songs were more successful than other records. It’s interesting, we were certainly trying to expand our horizons.”READ MORE: How Bob Ezrin Helped Peter Gabriel Escape from GenesisLouris has been playing some solo shows in support of Dark Country and he’ll look to do more in between Jayhawks dates as the year progresses. He also says he’d like to explore some of the songs further in a group setting. “I have other material for the band, but some of these songs I’d like to hear done by the Jayhawks,” he confirms. “In fact, we’ve done of a few of them live, so you may hear some of these songs again and a more rocked up version, or at least live.”Watch Gary Louris’ ‘Two Birds’ VideoTop 40 Singer-songwriter AlbumsFrom Bob Dylan and John Lennon to Joni Mitchell and Billy Joel.Gallery Credit: UCR Staff