The Jayhawks - Live From The Women's Club: Volume 1 (2002), Volume 2 (2005)

The veteran Americana rock band, The Jayhawks, had been whittled down to a trio by the time they took on an all-acoustic tour that made its way to their hometown of Minneapolis where they played live at The Woman's Club on April 26, 2002. The performance was recorded and released on two CDs, both with a few studio demos and outtakes added as a bonus. It's the only acoustic tour the band has ever done.

Gary Louris stars on vocals and acoustic guitar; Marc Perlman plays bass, mandolin and guitar; and drummer Tim O'Reagan also plays guitar and sings. The band played twenty-eight songs during the evening that included much of their standard repertoire: "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," "Save It for a Rainy Day," "Blue," "Waiting for the Sun," "I'd Run Away," and a few other gems.

The sound of the show is very good and the crowd noise is minimal, so the songs are front and center with very few of the distractions you'll often find on live records. Even though much of the setlist was originally written and recorded as rock songs the evening was strictly a laid-back affair. The trio never worked up a sweat.

Acoustic concerts in small, intimate venues are always better experienced live than on record, but if you're a Jayhawks fan and are in the mood for some quiet listening these albums are for you.

Both CD covers slipped by proofreaders and were incorrectly issued using the name "Women's Club" instead of the singular "Woman's Club." Volume One also carries a designation as "an official Jayhawks bootleg."

You can still buy Volume One on CD directly from The Jayhawks' official website or by download from Bandcamp. Volume Two is available only by download through Bandcamp. Currently, there are no plans to release it again on CD and neither one is available on iTunes. I was lucky to find both discs quite inexpensively in a used record store in mint condition. 

You can listen to both sets in full below.

Comments

  1. wardo10:17 AM, May 26, 2025

    Very nice indeed. Hoping to come across a disc of Volume 2 someday.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

ALL-TIME POPULAR POSTS

Slower Than Slow: 16 RPM Records

Image
Have you ever heard of a long forgotten vinyl format, the 16 2/3 RPM record? They were half the speed of the 33 1/3 RPM albums that were the traditional standard for recorded music. Most record players in the 1950s and 1960s came with a speed setting to play these long forgotten discs that were considered novelties even during the years they were available. Because most, but not all, 16s had big holes and were 7" in diameter many of them were mistaken for 45 RPMs and at that size the speed allowed for up to 20 minutes of playing time per side. However, there was no true standard size and they were also manufactured to be 9, 10, or 12 inches in diameter, and these larger records played even longer. Just like the other speeds and formats 16s could be played one record at a time or stacked on a changer for continuous play. Radio stations often used the discs for pre-recorded radio shows containing interviews, dramas, and documentaries. More frequen...
Read more

Why Do 45 RPM Records Have Big Holes?

Image
Today we're going to find out why 45 RPM records have much larger holes than 78s and 33s. Believe it or not I often wondered about this burning question when I was collecting hundreds of these little seven inch gems back the 1960s. According to several websites, including Answerbag , the reason for the large hole used by 45s was simple. It was difficult for the old 78s, with their smaller holes, to find their way onto jukebox spindles. The large hole effectively eliminated that problem. Strangely, seven inch 45s were often pressed with the smaller holes used for LPs in many countries outside the United States, especially in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Overseas the inserts (commonly know as spiders) were manufactured into the large holes at the factories but they could be punched out if desired. The Beatles' British single of "Love Me Do," pictured here, is a typical example. Why were the spiders built into English 45s? I was unable to fi...
Read more

10 Great Beatles Songs You May Have Never Heard

Image
I recently paid a visit to a blog that I read regularly published by my British cyber-buddy, Martin Warminger. At his site, Music Obsessive , he just listed what are, in his opinion, the worst Beatles songs of all time . It's an idea I wanted to steal, and I could come up with a short but bad list, but for the sake of originality I decided to do something completely different instead. So, here is a list of ten songs by my all-time favorite band that deserve a better place in the annals of Beatles history. Most of them are only known by their hardcore fans. Here they are in chronological order. You can listen to a few of the rarer ones below. 1. I'll Be On My Way The only known recorded version of this very early, 1963, Lennon-McCartney ditty appears on Live at The BBC . The Beatles never put it on vinyl. Yes, it's simplistic and the lyrics even have the audacity to rhyme the word "moon" with "June." However, the song has one of those undeni...
Read more