Rediscovering Kerouac with Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard

Photo Credit: Autumn De Wilde

I missed the Son Volt show this past Tuesday (and, incidentally, I'm missing Matt and Kim tonight...further indication of how my week is going) so I'm fairly certain that I missed the opportunity to hear Jay Farrar play what is now my favorite Jay Farrar song. "San Francisco" is from the forthcoming soundtrack, to be released next month, of the documentary One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur. Farrar teamed up with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie to write and perform the songs. There's a great article about the making of over on Paste Magazine's website.

Excerpting and adapting Kerouac's text and setting it to music is a much more difficult task than it seems, being as it's one long stream-of-conscious narrative, but if the two songs they've posted on the site are any indication, wow--who'd have thought they could pull it off so well? Kerouac's vibrant and haunting prose really comes through. This may very well turn out to be Farrar's most vital work since Uncle Tupelo. I'm almost obsessively curious to hear how the adaptation of Kerouac's poem "Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur" that closes the book turned out.

Tracklist:

1. California Zephyr
2. Low Life Kingdom
3. City And Sur (Willamine)
4. All In One
5. Breath Our Iodine
6. These Roads Don’t Move
7. Big Sur
8. One Fast Move Or I’m Gone
9. Final Horrors
10. Sea Engines
11. The Void
12. San Francisco

Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard Tour Dates:

10/23: El Rey Theatre – Los Angeles, CA
10/24: Bimbo’s 365 Club – San Francisco, CA
10/26: Lincoln Hall – Chicago, IL
10/28: Webster Hall – New York, NY