Jay Farrar is a man of few words. But that doesn't mean that Farrar, the primary singer/songwriter for the alt.country-rock band Son Volt, doesn't have anything to say. Reclining at his St. Louis home days before the band begins a tour to support its second album, "Straightaways," the mutton-chopped frontman hardly seems the maudlin, troubled genius he's often portrayed as. After stumbling through a few terse responses to questions about the band's upcoming tour, Farrar, 30, even cracks a smile when he talks about his preference for the warriors of winter over the boys of summer.

\\"I've never really been a huge baseball fan," Farrar says, a confession that runs counter to the rural stereotypes that have dogged his band. "I grew up on a diet of NHL hockey -- I'll follow the Stanley Cup while on the road, even if I do tend to get to the sports page last."

\\While discussing the new album, the former Uncle Tupelo guitarist (who casually lists his influences as "the Stones, the Beatles, you know ... the usual") seems solemn rather than sullen -- and noticeably anxious to hit the road. The band is so eager to pile on board the mystery train that they've bypassed choosing a single or making a video, much to Warner Bros.' chagrin. "I guess there are other avenues for a musician to be involved with [besides] playing music and touring," Farrar says. "But for right now, I enjoy the road."

\\Farrar's interest in highways and byways factored heavily into the making and mood of "Straightaways," a road album much in the tradition of Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty." Recorded in two two-week sessions at studios in Cannon Falls, Minn., and Bloomington, Ind., that bookended Son Volt's stint on last summer's H.O.R.D.E. tour, the album reveals the toll that the miles traveled have taken on the band's collective psyche.

\\"We took a pretty no-frills approach to this record," Farrar says. "And that's the one idea that I had going into it -- that it should reflect the band as it is and correlate with how we've been playing over the last year." Unlike "Trace," the band's bright-eyed debut album of timeless Byrds-ish jangle pop, "Straightaways" elegantly sprawls across its 40 minutes. The album's rockers ("Caryatid Easy," "Picking Up the Signal") come early and its ballads ("Last Minute Shakedown," No More Parades") stay late, a distinction Farrar says has as much to do with when the tracks were recorded as the Midwest state of mind of the respective players.

\\"We did a lot of recording at night for 'Straightaways,' and probably a lot more daytime recording for 'Trace," Farrar says. "On the new album, the band generally concentrated on recording the acoustic numbers at night and the more electric numbers during the day. It's strange, but I sort of think of 'Trace' and 'Straightaways' as being companion pieces."

\\But in spite of their complementary nature, Farrar believes that it was the miles and months traversed during the two years between albums that tempered Son Volt's sound into a shared vision rather than a personal one. Farrar -- whose frenetic, Sex Pistols-influenced chops had been a hallmark of Uncle Tupelo's cow-punk sound -- has even grown accustomed to his new role of rhythm guitarist, having relinquished lead guitar duties to studio journeyman and multi-instrumentalist Dave Boquist, saying he "just like[s] the way Dave plays."

\\"I think the neat thing about Son Volt is that we share a lot of the same sensibilities," Boquist says. "I've never felt restricted -- and if I did, I wouldn't be in this band. If someone makes a comment like, 'Y'know, maybe it should go a little more this way,' nobody's egos gets bruised. We all have limitations, and sometimes where one person's limitations end, another person can step up and lead the material in a slightly different direction."

\\That didn't mean recording "Trace" was a painless experience. "The sessions for 'Trace' weren't tense, but there was a little uneasiness about what we were all gonna play and what we were all gonna do," Boquist says. "[Drummer] Mike Heidorn hadn't played a whole lot for a while, and I remember he needed to have his knees Ace-Bandaged for 'Trace.' He turned in an amazing job on the record, but I think he felt a little more confident with 'Straightaways.' "

\\Such amicability between band mates is a marked difference with Farrar's earlier partnership with Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. The Belleville, Ill., high school friends (and current Son Volt drummer Mike Heidorn) formed Uncle Tupelo back in 1987 out of the remnants of an earlier band, the Primitives, which included Jay's brother, Wade, on vocals.

\\After a string of critically acclaimed and commercially ignored independent releases -- including the "March 16-20, 1992" album produced by R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck -- Tupelo signed with Sire Records, and released "Anodyne," an album with a near-even split in songs written by Tweedy and Farrar. The proverbial wheels came off the band's wagon when Farrar walked out a few months later during a break in the subsequent tour. According to Tweedy, Tupelo had become "basically two songwriters sharing a band." Farrar agreed, saying that the idea behind the group "had just kind of run out of gas."

\\The band's swan song was an incendiary cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Effigy" recorded for 1993's "No Alternative" compilation, but its legacy has taken on a near-Velvet Underground mystique in certain quarters. It also became a focal point for the so-called "No Depression" alternative country movement, which took its moniker from Uncle Tupelo's debut album, "No Depression" (which in turn featured a cover of the Carter family song of the same name).

\\Perhaps afraid of being pigeonholed in the scene he helped inspire, Farrar is reluctant to discuss the genre and his relationship to it. "I just think it puts me in the position to tread the line between musician and, uh, politician," Farrar says, chuckling, "and I certainly don't have any desire to be a politician."

\\Guitarist Boquist is more direct in his take on the burgeoning "insurgent country" sound. "These categories are created by those seeking a common language," Boquist says, "but I don't think it's a portrayal of anything as much as it is a way of communicating. If it helps put forward the music, fine, but it's nothing we solicit."

\\In June, the band will be putting forward its music by touring Europe for the first time before returning to the States for a late-summer/early-fall outing. Luckily, the long and winding road that lies ahead for the g