Son VoltAfter spearheading the alt-country movement with Uncle Tupelo, Jay Farrar pursued his visionwith Son Volt, who recorded three landmark albums in the ’90s before the groundbreaking artistput the band on extended hiatus and cut three solo LPs. Missing thefree exchange of ideas andthe surprises that inevitably occur when a group of simpatico musicians lock together, Farrarassembled a new lineup of Son Volt in 2004 and has since releasedninealbums.The latest album,Sound Signal Serenades, was released as a special 2026 Record Store Day limited edition LP.JayFarrar’s work often seeks out the ghosts of America's discordant or forgotten past, converses atlength with them, and writes songs that stake a claim to a better future

On some other plane out there in the great big multiverse, Kelly Willis could well be the biggest Nashville country music star of the last 35 years. But things panned out rather differently for her here on this Earth. The Oklahoma-born Army brat was barely into her early 20s and still cutting her teeth fronting a spunky rockabilly band in Austin when a “check-this-kid-out” tip from Texas songwriter Nanci Griffith landed her on the radar of producer Tony Brown, who promptly signed her to MCA Records. How exactly her auspicious fireball of a debut, 1990’s Well Travelled Love, and even a plumb spot on the soundtrack to the following year’s Thelma & Louise, somehow failed to burn Willis’ name and voice into the mainstream consciousness remains a bone of bumfuzzlement for many a fan and critic to this day, but suffice it to say — Willis was still in her early 20s when MCA dropped her just two albums later.

And that, perhaps goes the Kelly Willis story in yet another alternate universe, was that. But lucky again for all of us here in this reality, “our” Kelly Willis was just getting started. Liberated from the Nashville playbook and emboldened by a jolting shot of nothing-left-to-lose, she set about making her next record in Austin her way. The end result, 1999’s aptly-titled What I Deserve, changed everything. “A big part of making that record was me thinking, ‘I’ll probably never get to make another one after this, so if this has to be my swan song, I’m not going to compromise,’” she says today. “That was a really big sea change for me to take the reins like that, and it was incredibly satisfying and gratifying that it then found a home with [independent label] Ryko and did so well. It was a pivotal moment that fueled the rest of my career.”