After a short time Charlie Pine, a local record shop manager and college radio station worker, suggested himself as manager and broker. Together with the band he grounded their own label, Bunkhouse Records, and over ten days in '86 and $12,000 of Pine's money they record the self-titled LP-album as bait for a major-league deal (a few thousand copies). They earned a somewhat strong following in the Minneapolis area, but failed to do any money on tours far from home. In 1988 A&M Records gave the band $1,000 to record some demos, but the demos didn't do any impression on the label. It was a devastating experience for the band and a personal low point for Louris, who had also recently been in a car accident. He decided he had enough of the financial uncertainty and the travelling, and he returned to full-time work at an architectural firm, throwing the Jayhawks existence on hiatus. Thad Spencer had in the meantime started to handle the sticks (October '88)

Pine was now desperate to make a quick deal, so he shopped the band's A&M demos to the local "always out of cash" label Twin/Tone. The tapes were polished up, a few songs quickly added, and they even got Gary Louris down to dub a few of his old parts. Luckily Louris decided to join the band again. Blue Earth was released in 1989. They hit the road on a national tour with a new drummer, Ken Callahan, but failed to hit it anywhere near big. Especially was the band and Pine dissatisfied with the promotion. But in "background promotion" they were good. It is said that George Drakoulias discovered the band while he had a phone call with the label during the spring of 1990.....

George Drakoulias signed Jayhawks to Def American (later renamed American Recordings) for $25,000. This was the beginning of a lot of things for the Jayhawks. They were told to fire Pine, and hire someone who knew the L.A. scene. So they did. They had to record an album that was polished enough to reach a wide public. So they did. They spent a lot of their time in studio trying to get everything right. Especially was Ken Callahan dissatisfied with Drakoulias way of "dictating" how it should be, and Perlman said later that he thought/thinks the album was/is too stiff. Anyway, the album reached a wider audience when it was released in September '92. Def American worked hard on promoting the band as a band that doesn't have huge hits but gets critical praise and sells lots of albums over time. They hit the road with their label mates Black Crowes, and a keyboard player, Karen Grotberg - first only on the tour, later as a permanent member.

Sometime during the tour Ken Callahan decided to call the quits. It is said that they were constantly out of money (paying studio debt to American), and Ken couldn't think about another studio session with Drakoulias. Then in the spring of 1994 they again went in studio with Drakoulias to record what should be "Tomorrow the green grass". For the first time they hired a session drummer, Don Heffington, while Tim O'Reagan from the Leatherwoods would be their tour drummer. The more poppy album was released in 1995, and Blue was something like their first hit both in USA and parts of Europe. Everything seemed fine, but late in November 1995 Mark Olson said that he had enough. One of the main reasons was that he wanted to spend more time with his MS-sick wife, singer-songwriter Victoria Williams.

The reasons were maybe a bit deeper than that, and Louris or Perlman could have made the breakup instead. Some reasons were that they both were tired of sharing vocals all the time, to only have half of the songs on each album (the songs were always 90% one of them - and Louris had many of the more countrified things), and they were driven in (a bit) different musically directions.

The Jayhawks was history in about a month or two. Then the band including O'Reagan resorted to find out what they wanted, to play some songs, and just have some fun. Luckily they decided to keep on, even under the name The Jayhawks. The album to be named Sound of Lies was recorded in May 1996, but it wasn't released before in '97. To fill the guitar space they hired Kraig Johnson from Golden Smog and Run Westy Run., and they also used the skills of the classically trained violin player Jessy Greene from the Geraldine Fibbers to broaden their sound. The album featured song credits by Perlman and O'Reagan, and the moody style was indeed infected by Louris divorce. Their more Beatlesque style earned new fans, and left older fans in doubt. To complete the whole thing American Recordings folded somewhere around the time the album was released and the (European) tour started.

Again confused about what to do, Louris, Perlman and Johnson spent some more time with Golden Smog, while the band did some Midwestern gigs now and then. Sony picked up American Recordings, and re-released their three latest albums. Somewhere around Christmas '98Grotberg decided to leave the Jayhawks, mostly because she the next summer/fall should give birth to a baby (named Hannah Sophia - and while we are in this children spirit - Mr. Wilson is written to Gary's son Henry Wilson), and didn't want to tour while her child was growing up. About the same time Sony decided to give the Jayhawks a (last) chance to hit big. Grotberg agreed to be with the band until the next album was recorded. The Jayhawks spent much of 1999 in their own studio and Flowers Studio in Minneapolis recording a new album. After some serious thinking they decided to hire Bob Ezrin as a producer. The Jayhawks "advertised"(!) in the newspapers to get a new keyboard player, and the Dag keyboard player Jen Gunderman became their last addition to the ranks (Jessy Greene was now no longer in the band). 

The Sony label Columbia Records released the album Smile May 9th 2000. It seemed that they did put some effort into promoting the record, evidenced by 3-4 label shows. The reviews that the album got were either very good or somewhat bad. Anyway, the album showed a further direction into pop/rock. The catchy song "I'm gonna make you love me" was chosen as a single and like the album it got a good deal of airwave the first week, before it faded away. Even though some of their loyal fan base didn't like the direction the album took, almost everyone loved the gigs from the extensive tour the Jayhawks did in USA and Europe following the release. Highlights were old songs resurfacing, sweet covers, and songs like "Bad Time" with Marc Perlman playing guitar (jam) solos, "Sister Cry" where Kraig Johnson played a long solo break, and lastly "Baby, baby, baby" which included Gary Louris ending the song playing guitar among the audience (or in the street). The label tried to push the Jayhawks on a new following by making them an opening act for Matchbox 20 during the autumn, but as many Jayhawks fans said: "It should have been the other way around". Year 2000 ended and year 2001 started with even more great gigs.

Year 2001 can quickly be summed up like this. The spring included vacation and playing gigs in Spain in February (for the first time). This tour was also the last one with Kraig Johnson as one of the Hawks. Right after winning 3 awards @ the 21st Annual Minnesota Music Awards followed some summer gigs in USA, with Stephen McCarthy taking Kraig Johnson place. Since Stephen also played pedal steel in addition to guitar, the line-up change included a step back into "country" direction (Louris: "I always felt like Kraig was temporarily on loan to us from his brother, anyway. But that lineup ran its course. Right now, I'm intrigued by the less-is-more approach."). The first signs of a trio Jayhawks were also shown before the Jayhawks returned to Spain in October with a song about all the "Fools on parade" there. Right before Christmas the decisions were made and the Jayhawks were now stripped down to the core members Gary, Marc and Tim. Due to the change in sound (and that everything was acoustic), Jen Gunderman had to leave the band without ever been playing or singing on a Jayhawks record (Louris: "We're experimenting with the no-keyboards sound. She was great, but I think to have just four guys in the band made it easier for us to get around and go places"). Stephen McCarthy was stepping in on some gigs. For old Jayhawks fans the hopes of a reunion were raised when news that Louris had been visiting Mark Olson's house in Joshua Tree (California) appeared. Two songs were made "Say You'll Be Mine" (released on Mark Olsons' record and "We Are Not Afraid". (Louris: "We remained friends (after Olson left the Jayhawks) and we just haven't ever really gotten back to writing songs. This is not going to be something that's going to be an everyday thing. But it just happened to be that somebody wanted us to do it, so they kind of arranged it. And we had such a good time that we thought, well, maybe we'll do it again sometime.").

2002 started with many more shows in this acoustic format, before they in June finally headed into studio with all the new songs the fans had heard the last year. The choice of producer this time was Ethan Johns which had produced Ryan Adams' kind of breakthrough Gold". The album to be called "Rainy Day Music" wasn't scheduled for a release before April 2003, so the autumn included even more acoustic gigs. The Jayhawks also discovered that they could make more money when they didn't have to all the electric equipment with them.

2003 should have started with more tours in both Europe and the States but they had to be cancelled because Gary was ill with pericarditis, a life-threatening infection of the tissue that covers the heart. Some may remember that Bob Dylan had the same problems back in 1997. But after some rest Gary seemed to recover well, and new gigs were booked. 

From an interview with Louris on Norwegian radio:

About the breakup:

For starters, we didn't really have anything like an official breakup saying that we broke up. What happened was that Olson left the band November 1st in 1995 - after Halloween I remember. Shortly after that, Perlman had to do an interview about the Golden Smog and he said that Jayhawks were over with, in a reply. It was a kind of reaction to what happened - it was really quick - we didn't really even know what was going on. We were back on a month later after Olson left. So there wasn't like this huge breakup. The reason why Olson left are many, and I shall let him fill in when he comes through with his band, but the basic ones are that we were together for 12 years. It's really long time to be working with someone, especially the way we were doing songs together. We were little tired of working with someone and always have to share a vocal - songwriting. I think he wanna explore, have control over a band again. He left, it was a bit sad, we shed a couple of tears, and said that this is the end of this. I thought about what I wanted to do, and the band wanted to carry on, so I guess I knew all along that I wanted to play with this band. It's just the matter of being a lead singer.

About the title "Sound of Lies":

We are kind of depressing people. I guess I never really thought of -when I named it that - of being asked why. We needed a title, it was not that we had a title first and said: "Let's make a record about this kind of thing". It was a song I had, one of my favorites. It seemed to sum up some of the dark period I was going through in my personal life at the time that spawned a lot of the lyrics. It's really about the physical feeling of - the sound of lies to me is like your body is like a reverberating bell. And when you lie it's like gonging that goes on in your body, just eats away at you. You know, like you know got to get away the life to your loved one, when you're unfaithful and they didn't find out. But it gets you in the end - it's basically a celebration about the truth. Learning to tell the truth. The truth is always the best. It seems to be an ongoing theme in many songs, so I guess it seemed like a good title.

 Back in the year-end of 2000 someone posted these unofficial sales # in USA

Blue Earth                                33,940
Hollywood Town Hall                165,214
Tomorrow the Green Grass       233,177
Sound of Lies                            71,478
Smile                                       69,968
                                                 ---------
Grand Total                             573,777

and right after Tim gave his thoughts about the low numbers for the two last albums to a Spanish magazine (Rock de luxe): 

"Let's be sincere, our expectations about the sales haven't been fulfilled at all" says Tim. We asked him to describe their mood with an adjective and he says: "Frustrated. We feel out of place. We make accessible music, but richer than most of all of those at the top, and we cannot make it. You end up perplexed when you see what people ask for, when you see how people don't think much about the things and about the way where the musical culture is bound to. We trusted in a great production and we got to play the game from the inside of this corporative system, just to take our music to a bigger audience, but it seems impossible. When we decided to experiment with pop (sound of lies), getting away from folk and bluegrass, we were satisfied. Now, we just gave a step forward and went a bit further. I won't deny that we feel better playing old songs, cause it's something that we've been doing for the last 15 years, but it doesn't mean that we miss it or that we are going to repeat ourselves. Our purpose is making an album which is even easier to listen to, but facing new challenges".

Further reading:
Jayhawks card at All-Music Guide (type Jayhawks)