The Jayhawks’ Gary Louris Puts a Canadian Love Story at the Center of ‘Sanctuary Park’

Gary Louris’s new life in rural Quebec has seeped into the Jayhawks’ 12th studio album, Sanctuary Park, out August 28. The record is an open tribute to his wife Stephanie Stevenson, whom he married in 2020, and to the Canadian landscapes that now surround him. “A lot of this record is an ode to my wife,” Louris says. “We look at ourselves … as the new John and Yoko, because we’re inseparable.”

The title is lifted from a park in Dundas, Ontario, where Stevenson grew up listening to the Clash. Louris, a Minnesota native and still a U.S. citizen, now lives a few hours east as a permanent resident. That geographical pivot mirrors the album’s thematic blend: childhood memories, adult partnership, and the passage of time. “Sanctuary Park could be anything,” he says. “It could be a place of memories, it could be a place of regrets or hopes.”

The sessions brought in Canadian producer Bob Ezrin—their first collaboration since 2000’s Smile. Ezrin, who recently renounced his U.S. citizenship, reached out after hearing about the project. “It was kind of a Canadian story,” Louris says. The band had just ten days in a Toronto studio, a constraint he calls “a blessing.” The result, he insists, is no Smile sequel; instead, it’s the Jayhawks deepening a long-running affinity for Canadian songwriters like the Band, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell.