What: The Jayhawks with Abigail Washburn

When: Saturday, 7 p.m. (doors at 6)

Where: Club 9ONE9 (919 Douglas St.)

Tickets: $35 at hightideconcerts.net, Lyle's Place, Ditch Records, the Strathcona Hotel and McPherson box office

Gary Louris has assembled quite the collection of memorabilia over the years, a cache of posters and tapes and photographs that cover his career as leader of altcountry favourites the Jayhawks.

Louris has often wondered why he keeps such things, given his aversion to discussions centred on his accomplishments. "I don't really look back, and I don't listen to our old records that much," Louris said recently, during a tour stop in Los Angeles. "I just can't sit and listen to hours and hours of old stuff."

As luck would have it, his catalogue of Jayhawks material came in handy last year. Two of the most cherished recordings from the Minneapolis group, 1992's Hollywood Town Hall and 1995's Tomorrow the Green Grass, were reissued in a deluxe format, with unreleased cuts, demo recordings and live versions included, in addition to expanded liner notes.

To help facilitate the process, Louris turned his cache of recordings over to close friend and longtime Jayhawks fan P. D. Larson, who took the back-catalogue ball and ran with it.

"[The reissues] were something that I knew I had to do, because I was the keeper of the archives. It was my idea to do [the reissues] but then I had to oversee them, so I just dumped off a bunch of boxes to my very detail-oriented friend and asked him to sift through it."

Larson's discoveries did more than satisfy a Jayhawks collector. They reintroduced audiences to a pair of expertly crafted recordings that, in some ways, were never given their proper due in the first place.

The group's core lineup parted ways in 1995 when co-leader Mark Olson left the group, in need of both time and space apart. Olson and Louris began working together again in 2005, loosely at first, unsure if a full-blown reunion between two strong personalities would work.

Once the band's two creative powers convinced the remainder of the group - pianist Karen Grotberg, bassist Marc Perlman and drummer Tim O'Reagan - that some live dates were in order, the Jayhawks were reborn. Post-reunion relationships in the band have changed, Louris said, though not necessarily in a bad way. Everyone is older and more experienced, which contributes to the group's new mandate: Play until it isn't fun anymore.

"There are different dynamics, and that comes with people doing their own thing. You have to learn how to be a band, not just individuals, and that's something we still work on every day and every show. Olson and I have gotten used to planning our own lives and doing it our way, so it affects everything - the way we travel, how we play, the volume at which we play. Like any marriage, it's about finding a compromise where everybody is happy."

Mockingbird Time, the first batch of new music from the core lineup in 16 years, arrived last year to some of the best reviews of the band's career.

Not only did the response catch nearly everyone by surprise, it let Louris and Co. know they had reformed for the right reasons.

"In terms of legacy or what we've proven," Louris said, "I think we could stop today and I wouldn't feel like we've left any stone unturned."

mdevlin@timescolonist.com