Critic's Pick: The Jayhawks

The original version of the North American rock band The Jayhawks skewed to country rock, as if Gram Parsons had relocated to Minnesota in the 1980s and rocked up the sound he perfected on The Flying Burrito Brothers’ 1969 album The Gilded Palace of Sin. For my money, singer and songwriter Mark Olson, who founded the group in Minneapolis in 1984, wrote excellent, Parsons-esque tunes for The Jayhawks’ 1989 full-length Blue Earth. Olson sounded something like Parsons crossed with Kaleidoscope singer Chris Darrow, whose vocals grace that band’s late-’60s albums Side Trips and A Beacon From Mars, on Blue Earth. By the time The Jayhawks released their 2000 album Smile, Olson had departed the band, which was now headed by Gary Louris. The Jayhawks were an essential band for the alt-country fans who read No Depression magazine in the ’90s, but Smile — like a lot of their post-1990 work — registered as an amalgam of Beatles-style rock that skirted power pop. Their new album Sanctuary Park boasts slick production from Bob Ezrin, who has helmed records by Lou Reed and Alice Cooper. Sanctuary Park is a species of Americana that isn’t genre-specific, which means you won’t hear much alt-country on the album. Nashville singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier opens.

7:30 p.m. at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s CMA Theater

224 Rep. John Lewis Way S.