Old Salt Union returns to Domino Room

Published 12:00 am Thursday, March 28, 2019

None of the members of newgrass band Old Salt Union are bluegrass musicians by trade, as bassist and vocalist Jesse Farrar readily admitted during a recent conversation with GO! Magazine.

But Farrar at least grew up surrounded by acoustic music, country music and Americana. His name should look familiar to alt-country and rock fans: Farrar’s uncle is Jay Farrar, founder of legendary alt-country band Uncle Tupelo (which featured Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy) and later Son Volt. And as it turns out, the Tupelo-Son Volt connection is only the tip of the iceberg.

“I didn’t have much of a fighting chance,” Jesse Farrar said recently from his home in St. Louis, a few days before kicking off a tour with Old Salt Union that lands at the Domino Room on Thursday. “… My grandfather, Pops Farrar, started me real young. He’d take me down to the Soulard Market (in St. Louis) on a Sunday afternoon. I was probably 5, 6, 7 years old, and he’d hand me an Irish drum, and he’d play the accordion, and we’d sit out there all day outside the market in Soulard and play music.”

Farrar eventually found his own musical path away from acoustic music, playing in punk bands in high school and studying jazz for stand-up bass in college. Once he graduated college, he started making a name for himself in hip-hop production, but his roots called him again.

“For some reason, I had to balance out the many years of the acoustic music,” Farrar said. “So I started producing hip-hop with some local guys in the St. Louis area, and that was fun for a while. But then, every action has a positive and negative reaction. Coming from that, I think it was a necessary step because it made me want to play acoustic music again.

“And so then, this band popped up, and had I not stepped away into more of the digital world,” Farrar added, “maybe I wouldn’t have been so interested in joining this band. But here we are, and I’m glad it all worked out the way it should.”

Everything more than just worked out for Farrar and the rest of Old Salt Union, including fiddler John Brighton, guitarist Graham Curry, mandolinist Justin Wallace and banjoist Ryan Murphey. In six short years of national touring, the group logged appearances at festivals such as LouFest Music Festival in St. Louis; Yonder Mountain String Band’s Harvest Festival and FreshGrass Music Festival in Northampton, Massachusetts. The band’s Central Oregon appearances over the last few years illustrate its rapid rise, too, with opening slots for Yonder Mountain and others leading to a headlining performance late last year and the return headlining appearance Thursday.

Much of the band’s success, especially over the last four years, came from FreshGrass. In 2015, the band won the festival’s Best Band award, which in turn caught the attention of Compass Records co-founder and Grammy-winning banjo player Alison Brown, known for her solo work and stints with Alison Krauss and Union Station.

“We drove straight there, from St. Louis to Northampton, Massachusetts,” Farrar said. “I think it cost some money or something to get in it — to get in on the competition. We were really shooting our shot as best we could, and sure enough, we won just because I think we were something different than what they were typically used to seeing. So that led to a recording session at Compass Records.”

A single, “On My Way,” led to a full record deal and the band’s third, self-titled album, released in 2017. Produced by Brown, the album features re-recordings of songs from the band’s early, independent releases, including the albums “Western Skies” (2013) and “Bridge” (2014).

The group recently finished an all-new album with Brown once again producing. Farrar revealed the album’s title, “Where the Dogs Don’t Bite,” and fans can expect a few singles to trickle out before the full album drops in late summer or early fall.

“When we got with Alison, we said, ‘OK, we want to put our best foot forward, and we want to compile our favorite songs over the last three records,’” Farrar said. “… Although it served its purpose as an introduction to folks who had never heard of us before, but for us, it was a weird situation. The last time we released a full record of new material was 2015.”

On previous albums, Farrar’s hip-hop days, Brighton’s classical violin training and shared interests in jazz improvisation and alternative rock led to eclectic material even for a newgrass band. Elements of Eastern European folk mark songs such as “Flatt Baroque” and “Madam Plum,” while “Hard Line” and “On My Way” mix string-band instrumentation with moody, minor-chord rock structures. Expect even more genre-bending on “Where the Dogs Don’t Bite,” Farrar said.

“I think this album’s a little darker in sonic aesthetics, but maybe a little more positive in the actual writing of the lyrics and such,” he said. “But I think it’s definitely more — it’s edgier. I think it’s a little more alternative. We don’t have distortion on anything or anything like that, but I think it’s a little more aggressive and a little more dramatic in the architecture of the songs.”