Mark Olson and Friends at 400 Bar on 12/31/04

By: Sean Sauder

I attend a lot of live music shows. Though I see a lot of live music, I'm not the kind of person to bring pen and paper to a show, so I have to rely totally on my memory (which can sometimes be a little fuzzy) to recount the events of an evening. Anyway, after spending New Year's Eve at the 400 Bar in Minneapolis, I was inspired to give this a shot.

The evening was billed as Mark Olson with Tim O'Reagan and Karen Grotberg, which in itself sounded like a good show to me. However, with 1 current Jayhawks member, and 2 former members on stage, I figured there was a better than average chance that Gary Louris and Marc Perlman would be in attendance and we'd get to relive the glorious daze of Blue Earth, Hollywood Town Hall, and Tomorrow The Green Grass. Of course, I was right - for the most part, anyway.

The show started with Mark, Gary, and Tim taking the stage. (Soon it would become apparent that Karen was not in attendance). Mark announced that they'd ease in to the nite playing a little bit of "this, that, and the other", and that as the nite progressed we'd get to hear some old favorites. The first song was "Poor GW" from the latest Mark Olson & The Creekdippers album, Political Manifest - "a political reaction to the Bush Administration." Several songs during the evening were from this album, and others by The Creekdippers (Mark's band with his wife, Victoria Williams and Mike Russell).

Immediately after the first song, someone from the audience yelled, "Blue!", a reference to the song of the same name off The Jayhawks 1995 album, Tomorrow The Green Grass. Mark responded that, "Perlman was in the house, and when he gets up here, we'll play it." It only took one more song, until Marc Perlman took the stage and I was hearing "Blue," being transported back 10 years in my mind. They followed with "Will I Be Married," from 1989's Blue Earth.

And so the nite would go, with Marc Perlman taking a break periodically, and Mark, Gary, and Tim playing Creekdippers songs and assorted "old country songs we used to do," and Marc Perlman being invited back on the stage for Jayhawks songs and a few covers. I'm not familiar with all of the Creekdippers material, but "My Own Jo Ellen" was requested by someone in the audience, and Mark obliged, even though"that's a tough one", and Gary, Marc, and Tim, did their best to follow along. They also did a cover of the Tim Hardin song, "A Reason To Believe," and several more Jayhawks songs, including (to the best of my recollection):