Veteran Minneapolis roots-rockers the Jayhawks and new folk-rock supergroup the Thorns take to the club circuit together in June and July, each group supporting a recently released album.

The Jayhawks [ tickets ] issued their seventh album, "Rainy Day Music," in April. Though the band has recorded for Rick Rubin's American Recordings label for more than a decade--and now for American/Lost Highway--the new release marks the first time that Rubin has been intimately involved in one of the band's albums, according to the group's label biography.

Ethan Johns (Emmylou Harris, Ryan Adams) produced the final set, but Rubin--at the band's request--helped Jayhawks leader Gary Louris mold the songs during pre-production.

"We wanted to write songs that sounded good on an acoustic guitar," frontman Louris said in a statement. "We figured, if they stood on their own, they were strong songs. We know it's not a new theory, but it felt right."

The Thorns feature singer-songwriters Matthew Sweet, Pete Droge and Shawn Mullins. The group got together as an experiment in the spring of 2002, and came up with a batch of acoustic-guitar and harmony-driven songs reminiscent of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Nirvana) produced the group's eponymous debut album.

The trio wrote and recorded demos for the album in California's Santa Ynez Valley, north of Santa Barbara.

"It was hot, middle of summer, and we'd just sit out on the back porch all day and work on these songs," Droge said in the band's record-company biography. "Then at night we'd put a microphone out on the back porch and cut the demos right outside, with the crickets chirping, the wind blowin'. We'd have two mics, one on the guitar, one for the vocals, and we'd track it into Matthew's laptop."