Like the KTMA-TV season of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" or until recently Lifter Puller, the Jayhawks' self-titled debut has long been a local Twin Cities legend. The band released the album in 1986 on tiny Minneapolis label Bunkhouse Records in a very limited run. Shortly afterwards, they graduated to larger local indie Twin/Tone for 1989's Blue Earth, then to American Recordings for 1992's career-making Hollywood Town Hall, yet even as the Jayhawks became alt-country forebears, The Bunkhouse Album (as it became known among fans) remained more myth than music, a rumor on primitive online message boards that became currency for anyone who claimed to have heard it. Now, nearly 20 years after most diehard fans have drifted away, when the Jayhawks barely exist as a band, the album is finally getting a reissue, making its way to CD and digital for the first time ever.
Fifteen years ago, this reissue would have made a lot more sense. Predating Uncle Tupelo's debut by four years, it's one of the earliest alt-country documents, a harbinger of the 90s roots movement that would contrast so sharply with that decade's pervasive irony. And yet, in 2010, when that trend has played out, it sounds like an artifact from a very different era. For the Jayhawks, The Bunkhouse Album is a record of their earliest days; it was made only a year after they'd formed and reveals the band at a very early stage of development, when they were just figuring out what they wanted to be.
The blend of Bakersfield and old-time country with classic rock elements didn't come easy for them yet, but those tight harmonies between Mark Olson and Gary Louris, which have since become the band's defining trait, are present almost from the first notes of opener "Falling Star", as if they occur naturally and effortlessly. Olson, the primary lyricist on this album, writes about petty crooks, drunks, cherry pie, and jail, yet he's never quite believable: Those subjects seem more like country signifiers-- what he thinks these types of songs should be about-- and less like any kind of lived experience or personal observations.
What redeems these songs-- what makes them sound like the band has been playing them for more than just a year-- is the production by Charlie Pine, a Minneapolis stockbroker who became their de facto manager and No. 1 fan. He gives songs like "People in This Place on Every Side" and "Six Pack on the Dashboard" crucial depth, emphasizing the interplay between the instruments, especially the guitars. Louris' and Olson's licks intersect in interesting ways, while Marc Perlman's bass bobs along underneath. They're a good band on their way to becoming a great one, so if The Bunkhouse Album isn't a revelation, it serves as a new point from which to measure the Jayhawks' progress.
