Master of the Circus
Band leader juggles family, jobs, and career while telling his real-life stories in song
On a stiflingly humid 95-degree night last August, Jason Farlow was standing on a picnic table in a flooded outdoor venue near Washington, D.C.’s Nationals Park. What looked like a great gig for his Richmond-based band was being washed out.
Farlow and his group, The Last Real Circus, were scheduled as openers for The Band of Heathens as part of The Bullpen’s first summer concert series, but rain and lightning bombarded the area for more than an hour, overwhelming the venue’s drainage system. The storm was so bad that, three miles away, two people were killed and two seriously injured in a lightning strike in Lafayette Plaza across from the White House.
After the storm passed, the small crowd — a handful of mostly Heathens devotees that follow the Austin-based band —hoped some semblance of a show could still be held. The Last Real Circus, second on the bill, gave up its slot so New York’s Alex Cano and his band could play a truncated set after driving several hours to the nation’s capital.
As a crew tried to move the water out, Farlow jumped on a wooden table with his acoustic guitar and said, “Well, we might as well play while you wait.”
With a couple of bandmates joining him on acoustic instruments, Farlow busked through a handful of original songs while brooms moved the water nearby. Despite the seeming chaos that surrounded him, Farlow performed like nothing was astray. In a life filled with “crazy crazy things” — some self-inflicted, some not — it was a minor speed bump in the road for the ringmaster of his own band.
A Showman’s Life
In some respects, Farlow’s story comes straight out of the handbook for the itinerant songwriter, ladled with memories of a dysfunctional childhood, dropping out of college after a bad breakup, becoming the father of a child — now a teenager — with a woman he barely knew, and joining the Army for a decade-long stint that included two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq.
“Sometimes I feel like there is a weird aura following me around,” says Farlow, who started writing music in high school and then returned to it in the Army. “I haven’t had a typical upbringing, and music and songwriting is how I’m able to get out what has happened to me in the best way possible.”
The youngest of four boys, Farlow was born in Accomack County on Virginia’s Eastern Shore near Tanger Island. His parents divorced when he was 13, and he split his time between the Manteo, N.C., and the Richmond/Chesterfield area.
“My mom is agoraphobic. She sleeps on the couch in a 4x4 room and rarely leaves the house. My dad worked every kind of job that he could trying to make ends meet for all of us, so he pushed going into sports or the corporate world. He wanted me to get a job right out of the gate.”
Farlow, a self-described “hellion,” naturally rebelled. An acting major in college, he dropped out in his final semester after a “really bad breakup.” He joined the Army and it “just clicked, the notion that you keep your head down and do this and do that.”
“I spent my entire 20s in the Army, much of it in the Delta Zone and Green Zone,” he says. “I was injured by an IED (improvised explosive device) and had to have a couple of teeth replaced. I still have the shrapnel marks on my arm and back.”
Following a medical discharge, Farlow formed The Last Real Circus in 2015. With a rotating cast of band members, the group has become a regular presence in the fertile live music scene around Richmond. A three-song EP featuring original compositions “Nottoway,” “Chaplain’s Life,” and “Diana (Ooh La La)” was released digitally in 2021 and received some local airplay.
Farlow still deals with PTSD — mostly vertigo and shellshock — from his Army days and continues to fight for disability payments long after leaving the service. Koala, an emotional support animal and medical service dog, stays by his side most of the time and often can be seen on stage when he performs. But he says he intentionally has not put his military service at the forefront of his story.
“When someone who was in the military is on a show like ‘The Voice’ or ‘American Idol,’ that becomes the story — the soldier coming home,” he says. “I want people to know me for my music and my story overall. Warts and all.”
Making Music
On March 3, seven months to the day of The Bullpen show, the skies have opened up again, this time in Richmond. Thankfully the show is indoors; The Last Real Circus is recording a live album at The Reveler, an immersive art space and venue in the heart of Carytown.
“I’m excited,” Farlow says. “It’s going to be a good show. A lot different from the one you saw in D.C.”
Farlow has sold 100 tickets to help fund the cost of recording and videotaping the night. Since the band is not signed to a label, the album is crowdfunded, with packages ranging from $10 to $2,500. Family members, including Farlow’s father and two of his three brothers, are in the audience along with his partner Amie and the couple’s infant daughter. They are sharing slices of pizza. Farlow’s father videotapes much of the performance on his iPhone.
The crowd is enthusiastic, cheering the opener Buenas, a duo featuring sisters Amaya and Selma, former neighbors of Farlow’s. The band’s current lineup, with Chris Liebenthal on bass, John Geiner on lead guitar, and David Johnson on drums, is in a steady groove. Farlow, who earlier performed a three-song acoustic set with Tara Dillard from The Mighty Good Times (another top-notch Richmond band), is on fire throughout.
“When I’m on stage, I don’t think about what I look like. I used to be focused on, ‘Is my voice there? Am I going to hit the right chords.’ Now I’m starting to think about the impact the songs have on the audience,” he says. “Am I connecting with the audience? Over the past year, I’ve really started to dive into that — connecting.”
At the end of the night, Farlow walks out into the audience, performing a cover of “With a Little Help from My Friends” in the style of Joe Cocker. The audience joins in enthusiastically. The connection is there, just as it was at The Bullpen several months earlier.
Building on a New Foundation
The day of our long-delayed interview, Farlow is calling on FaceTime Audio from his RV, which has become a semi-permanent home/tour bus when he’s not staying in Richmond with Amie and their baby, now four months old. His older daughter lives nearby with her mom.
“I’m down in Tennessee, doing some writing and working on some band stuff,” Farlow says. “It’s time to regroup a little bit and figure out some of the next steps.”
As a self-described “work in progress,” regrouping is something Farlow does periodically. Late last year, he and Amie decided to “unplug from the world” and go on a road trip, traveling from Virginia to Texas to Colorado to Nebraska and Dodge City. While working remotely, they focused “on the present with each other as two parents to be.”
Like most musicians in small to midsize markets, Farlow hasn’t been able to give up his day jobs. He works as director of touring and festival operations for SHOWX and runs his own company, BoxCar Entertainment Productions. He’s currently recruiting bands the first annual HeartStrings Festival, a three-day event scheduled for Sept. 29-Oct. 1 to raise money and create awareness around mental health issues and the homeless in Richmond. Jon Russell of The Head and the Heart, which has ties to the city, is headlining the first night.
Farlow hopes the live album, which will be released July 11, is the start of something big for The Last Real CIrcus, which played nine shows in seven days at South by Southwest in March. The band also has 15 shows lined up this season at The Bullpen — rain or shine — and Farlow is working to get the group into the Austin City Limits Festival and AmericanaFest in September.
“We’ve definitely been revamped a lot,” Farlow says of the band. “But the guys here now are very much in it to win it. They’re looking to be part of a project as band members and not as front people, and that hasn’t always been the case for this band. I think that’s why we’re meshing so well right now.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. No one does,” he says. “Right now, I have a teenager and an infant and a partner that I support and who supports me. I have a foundation now.”
Thanks for reading Ellen! I appreciate it!
Soooooo good! As a Virginian (Norfolk to be exact) I am thrilled to have a fellow statesman featured. I just downloaded Nottoway, Diana & Chaplin's Life! Great Stuff!