Caught in the Carousel

Mark Olson

The Salvation Blues
Hacktone Records

Mark Olson

First, a word about the packaging, and may I add that I don’t usually give a shit, but this CD is so beautifully put together to look like a tiny hardcover book of poetry that I fell in love with it before it even hit the player. Whoever designed this CD should get some sort of CD designing award or at least be first on the trampoline at the company picnic. And now a word about Love—the tragic loss of it has inspired books, paintings, poems, songs, and clearly, this CD. When Mark Olson left the Jayhawks, I wore a black armband for three months. He was the founder of the band, its nucleus, its center, its heartbeat. For me he was everything. Olson gave up touring and moved to Joshua Tree with his wife, the lovely and worship-worthy Victoria Williams, who’d been diagnosed with M.S. They lived there together for some time, making pretty music under the name of the Harmony Creek Dippers. I drove through that desert one sizzling afternoon, the heat quivering off the asphalt, blurring those bizarre trees into a mirage, to pay homage to Gram Parsons and wondered how any relationship could survive this sun-baked place with not one decent restaurant. I figured it must be a special kind of couple who could do that.

Olson still lives in Joshua Tree and this two year project seems to reflect, among other things, the loss of his relationship with Williams. The first cut on The Salvation Blues, “My Carol” brought me to my knees and I found myself down there again for “National Express”--yes, a song about a train (wasn’t it Paul Simon who said “Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance?”). “Keith” is pretty and spare and I love it even though it sounds like it was written under the influence of windowpane acid. And “Sandy Denny” is achingly beautiful (“…remember our broken hello, the way the bottles flew, so we go on alone”).

You’ll find the usual suspects on the list of musicians who appear on The Salvation Blues: Greg Leisz, the prince of the pedal steel, Kevin Jarvis on drums and it’s produced by Ben Vaughn. Those of you looking for a Jayhawks fix will be pleased to know that the incomparable Gary Louris harmonizes on vocals. In the liner notes, violinist Michele Gazich writes, “Come gather round Mark Olson, folks. He speaks to your heart. He says that life is hard to live, but he also gives us hope.”

He couldn’t have said it better.

—Yvonne Prinz