Hometown boys make good

What can you say that isn't hyperbolic and cliché?

While white teenagers from Wayzata named Trevor and Rebecca were being whipped into a "rap" frenzy by the Insane Clown Posse at the Target Center, we adults with less of a theatrical taste were being pushed to the edges of Minnesota Nice in the Mainroom at First Ave by the Jayhawks. Paul Westerberg's mellow sobriety spawned a kind of fearlessly sensitive, six-string, White-guy songwriter fry pond here in town, and Gary Louris has kind of either backed into or outright grabbed the "big fish" title, I still haven't made up mind which. He delivers those love songs with a kind of 500-pound-brass-balls attitude that people like John Denver, James Taylor, and Cat Stevens never seemed to have. I think it gets back to what I was saying about him yesterday on the air; I've just sort of run into him at Mayslack's, Elsie's, and other kinds of neighborhood haunts, and for someone who's such a big wheel, he's a really unassuming and seemingly normal guy. It seems to me if a normal guy were given the lead mic, a cranked up guitar, and a packed-to-the-rafters First Ave, he'd leave everything he had on stage, which is what the band did. It's possible for highly melodic, achingly tenor love songs to have forceful, dark, music-club balls, and the Jayhawks are living proof. It's chilling to hear several thousand people--truck drivers, secretaries, accountants, lawyers, doctors, pimps, pushers, hookers--reach for the falsetto of "bluuuuuuue," and then look up at Gary who seems to be blushing behind the glare of his glasses, while at the same time, reaching for more to give. Last night ranks right up there with the best shows I've ever seen.

While I'm at it, I'd like to give a huge "thumbs up" to the group for singing Tampa to Tulsa, my favorite song on the new disk. I was hoping they'd play it, and the performance was great.