Mark Olson
Music can often be born out of a journey. In the case of The Salvation Blues, the new HackTone Records album by Mark Olson, the journey and the music are inseparably intertwined.
Few listeners with an interest in American roots music will be unfamiliar with Olson’s curriculum vitae. Between 1986 and 1995 he co-wrote and recorded four albums with the pathfinding Minneapolis band the Jayhawks. After exiting the group, he moved to Joshua Tree in the California desert and married singer-songwriter Victoria Williams, with whom he established the loose-jointed collaborative group the Creekdippers.
The Salvation Blues is, in many ways, Olson’s first true solo album and has its roots in the dissolution of his relationship with Williams in 2005. Leaving behind his house they had built in the desert and disbanding the Creekdippers, Olson moved in with his aunt in Colorado and began a period of rootlessness. As he sings poignantly on the new album’s wrenching “The National Express”: “Where is my home? How could I lose this in a day?”Olson says, “I was deeply depressed. Everything had fallen apart.”
In January of 2006, Olson flew to Cardiff, Wales, to stay with his friends, novelists Charlotte Grieg and John Williams. He says, “I’d lived my whole life in America, and all my major relationships were shot. I had to start over.”
He adds, “I was not thinking about music until I got over to John and Charlotte’s. They embarrassed me. They were writing their asses off, and I was laying around. I was a mess.”
Olson was impressed by the couple’s discipline, and inspired by the English folk music they played for him. “They had all these people I’d never heard of
