Nothing evokes the feeling of cowboy blues quite like a steel guitar caressing over a couple of acoustic guitar chords. Throw in a down tempo beat over a few verses about loved lost and lost love and you’ll have the Marlboro Man throwing back a shot of whiskey, telling you about the one that got away.

There’s a particular beauty in alternative country music’s ability to have the listener find content in the present and regard the past like the ending to a good book. Though the genre never broke through to the mainstream, alternative country bands have been producing music for decades and at the forefront of innovation and success is Son Volt, which will play at the WOW Hall tonight at 9 p.m. Lead by singer and songwriter Jay Farrar, Son Volt has released seven albums to date, with their most recent, Honky Tonk, released in March of this year. They’ll hit Eugene still sounding fresh and clean after all of their years playing on the dusty trail.

In 1969, Gram Parson’s influential country rock group The Flying Burrito Brothers released their opus, The Gilded Palace of Sin, and with it created a new genre of music that mixed the steel guitar and crooning tales of country with the beat of a rock band. Years later, Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy formed Uncle Tupelo and furthered the sound of country rock into alternative country by adding elements of punk and applying Hank Williams-style harmonies to their vocals. The group was met with modest critical acclaim but little commercial success and the band dissolved after a fallout between Farrar and Tweedy in 1994. Tweedy went on to form Wilco and Farrar teamed up with Uncle Tupelo member Mike Heidron to create Son Volt and released their debut album, Trace, in 1995. From then on, the group has maintained a solid following and continues to play throughout the country. Their latest record Honky Tonk has the band playing more somber tales of aging and traveling on life’s long road. “Shifting phase left us to realize/ There’s nothing more that we can do/ ‘Cause it can’t go wrong, we can’t go right,” sings Farrar on “Hearts and Minds.”

Sharing tonight’s bill is Colonel Ford, a hillbilly country band featuring members of Son Volt. Tickets are $18 in advance and $20 at the door. Doors open at 8 p.m.