About a decade ago, I formulated a new genre based on a particular guitar sound that would for several years be heard on Radio 2 after midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. Bob Harris Country is made up of dozens of great acts with a country tinge that ordinarily one would call Americana: you can hear the Rickenbacker, the harmonies, the stick on the drums, and Bob Harris coming out of it cooing “ah, such a great song”. Whatever Americana is was defined by acts like Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Buddy Miller, Jim Lauderdale, Lucinda Williams, and The Jayhawks.
The last of these acts, who have been together for four decades, are from the great state of Minnesota, which has given us music as diverse as Semisonic, Prince and The Replacements. Their albums have been produced by Peter Buck of REM and have recorded with Ray Davies; such is the esteem people have for bandleader Gary Louris as an elder statesman of the Americana movement. Louris is assisted by founder member Marc Perlman on bass, as well as Tim O’Reagan on drums and Karen Grotberg on keys. This has been the lineup since the 2011 reunion, soon after which founder member Mark Olson left for a second time.
The four-piece’s four-date UK tour in September 2026 promotes their 12th studio album (and first since 2020’s XOXO), Sanctuary Park, produced by Bob Ezrin, who also sculpted the sound of the classic 2000 LP Smile. As ever, it is a chore to describe the Jayhawks’ sound, which mixes power-pop, folk, country and soft rock. I like Perlman’s description of them as “a musician’s band”, but maybe they would get a kick out of being called Bob Harris Country.
In a busy but quiescent Electric Ballroom, the band aired most of their 11-song new album, starting with its opening track Keeping Our Heads Above Water, which Louris wrote with Mat Kearney. About half of the album was inspired by Louris’ wife Stephanie, the Kingston Girl who informs the McCartneyesque song of that name (Kingston, Ontario, that is) and who is part of the audience; one of those songs, Always And A Day, is classic rock’n’roll in the Jayhawks style.
Louris offers an apology for his country of birth before playing American Midnight, an American’s view from his adopted home of Canada; early in the setlist, Mr Lincoln, written with Emerson Hart of the band Tonic and sung (like Tampa to Tulsa) by O’Reagan, puts us in Ford’s Theatre, Washington, DC, at the moment when the president was shot, mere yards away from where the memorial was later placed. Perlman’s bass, which has a tic-tac part on that song, is locked in two dozen grooves throughout the evening and holds things together. It is odd to see a four-piece rock’n’roll band where rhythm guitar parts are provided by a keyboard, with Grotberg piping up with quick solos throughout the evening. Louris’ lead guitar wigouts, meanwhile, are pleasantly Neil Young-esque.
The title track of the album, Sanctuary Park itself, boasts a rumbling groove, while Leap Of Faith, a singalong that closes the album’s first side, benefits from the mandolin thrums of the guesting great Sid Griffin, who embraces Louris after the pair close out the song eyeball to eyeball. The smashing All The Right Reasons comes complete with three-part harmonies while Quiet Corners & Empty Spaces and Angelyne, on which Louris coos a plaintive “forgive me”, compete for the set’s poppermost chorus. The intro to Waiting for the Sun, meanwhile, reaches back to the music of 1973, to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. It’s basically Old Grey Whistle Rock.
Louris notes his friendship with Counting Crows (he sang on their masterful debut album August and Everything After) and Jakob Dylan of The Wallflowers, who themselves are due in the UK in November. Louris airs Gonna Be a Darkness, which he and Dylan wrote for the TV show True Blood. His talents are such that he can even make a melancholy lyric sound reassuring, as he does on Tailspin.
Louris’ songs are so well crafted it is like wandering around one of those artisan workshops where a visitor can appreciate an upholstered chair or a dappled, patchwork quilt. “Too many songs, not enough time,” he says, although he and the band play for nearly two hours with no more than a minute’s pause. With four decades of tunes, it must be agonising to pick a setlist. There is no room this time around for the irresistible pair of Big Star, and I’m Gonna Make You Love Me, the latter synced to the Dawson’s Creek soundtrack, but they stick The Man Who Loves Life, and I’d Run Away in the first 30 minutes of the two-hour show. Sister Cry and Settled Down Like Rain, which also made the setlist, came out on the Hollywood Town Hall album in 1992; they were timeless then, and they are timeless now.
It was delightful to hear the old chestnut Smile (“when you’re down and out”) and, of course, the melancholy Save It for a Rainy Day, with its “so sad” hook. That song came during the encore alongside their cover of Grand Funk Railroad’s Bad Time, a UK number 70 hit released on their 1995 album Tomorrow the Green Grass. The album also begat Blue, here the set closer proper, with accompaniment from opening act Dave Fidler and a few hundred people on the floor straining to hit the falsetto note on the title word. Otherwise, the room is so polite that each Jayhawks fan could be sat at home listening to Bob Harris, with a beer on the table and a smile on their face.
Louris recently told KCRW’s The Current that “there’s still a chip on our shoulder that we’re not appreciated”, which explains why he was so grateful that a thousand people showed up on a Wednesday night in Camden Town to hear some Bob Harris Country.
