The alphabet starts with Jay Farrar

By MIKE HOULAHAN

Jay Farrar has never threatened to become a mainstream rock'n'roll star, but that's not to say the American hasn't carved out a niche as one of the more influential musicians of recent years.

The term cult hero suits Farrar to a T. The St Louis-based musician struck a rich musical vein in his early 20s when he and band co-founder Jeff Tweedy formed country/punk combo Uncle Tupelo.

The band made four albums before bad blood parted the two and Tweedy decamped to form the equally influential Wilco.

Uncle Tupelo continues to haunt Farrar and with the recent rerelease of those albums, and a heavy helping of unreleased material, a new generation of fans is being created.

"It's always flattering that anyone wants to hear that stuff," Farrar says. "It's weird for me because I've been removed from it for a decade. I look back at it as having weird historical value.

"I had forgotten most of what was going on and what we did, so as we were putting the songs together for the reissues, it was interesting to find these songs and put them out there."

Farrar moved on to form the equally as loved - and equally as defunct - Son Volt, before forming his own record label to release his solo albums.

The Farrar back catalogue now encompasses three entities and 12 albums, some suitably obscure. As some of the fan literature on the webshows, each release is pulled to bits and examined, as befits a "cult" leader.

"If you're not part of the mainstream I suppose you're thrown into cult status pretty easily," laughs Farrar, a man regarded as shy and taciturn, but who turns out to be friendly and possessing a tinder-dry wit.

"I'm really not mainstream, so I guess I fall into the latter. I'm happy with that though. I'm happy that my ideals and my sense of accomplishment are on my terms, especially now that I'm on my own label."

It also freed up Farrar for interesting sideline projects, such as composing and compiling the soundtrack for the movie The Slaughter Rule, a coming-of-age story about a small-town gridiron player which was a part of the New Zealand Film Festival in 2002.

"So far it's just been a one-off chance. I was able to approach songwriting from a different perspective, which was good. From reading the script, the impression I got was that the story was a bit more upbeat than the bleak landscape it was set in, at least in the beginning, anyway."

With his own label, his own studio and without his own band, Farrar now has complete artistic freedom to write and record whenever he likes. Generally that is on his own, but recently he struck up a fruitful collaboration with Mark Spencer (Blood Oranges), who accompanies him on his New Zealand shows.

"Generally I find it a little easier to write for a solo recording," Farrar says. "I guess that's because you're not thinking about who is going to play on a song, but just thinking about the song itself. But I could see it working the other way: in a band context you know who will be playing on a song and how they will approach it, and that familiarity can breed creativity as well.

"For me it's always a way of jumping back and forth between experimenting with new things and going back to things that are familiar.

"Working with Mark has been great. Mark uses a lot of different textures and effects that can present a song in a different way, so we're often able to reinterpret songs from the way they are on the recordings. Also, during the recording process he is instrumental and helpful with his ability to play a wide range of instruments."

Farrar is looking forward to his first trip to the southern hemisphere, and his first trip to New Zealand. His Downunder devotees can expect a set heavy on solo material, but with a few Son Volt songs and occasionally even an Uncle Tupelo number or two.

"It's pretty much a varied mixture but I prefer to have a little structure as opposed to songs I don't know the words to any more."

Performance

* Who: Jay Farrar, American alt-country singer-songwriter

* Where and when: Kings Arms, Auckland, tomorrow night; Bar Bodega, Wellington, Sunday

* Also: Albums Terroir Blues (2003); Stone, Steel & Bright Lights (live album, out Monday)

- NZPA