Greg
Brown, Paul Jeremiah
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038
8 pm Sunday,
Dec. 10
$17 advance (Fastixx),
$20 door
21-and-over
Greg Brown is outta here. Sort of. For a while.
The singer/songwriter, who has done more than almost anyone
to keep folk's fire burning long after the Industry cast
it aside, plans a 14-month sabbatical from his rigorous
touring schedule. That means that fans accustomed to catching
a glimpse of his grizzled genius every few months should
hasten to this week's show at the Roseland, one of their
last chances to see him between now and 2002.
"I'll play enough that I remember how," says the 51-year-old
Iowa renaissance man. Such cold-turkey treatment from someone
who's been on the road, seemingly without rest, for 20 years
is news; many will suffer sharp withdrawal from his wily
tales of fringe-dwelling and alt-living and from the high-plains
shudder of his voice.
A recent review in The New Yorker likened our hero's
meaty baritone to "beef stew." I say it's more like beef
jerky--country tough, sun-dried and sanctified. Brown's
voice drops like an old hickory bucket into a depthless
well and peels off ragged, timeless melodies like thick
bark from a century-old oak. His bottom-crawling bass recalls
Johnny Cash at his craggiest and, further back, the Folksinger-era,
low-levee moan of Muddy Waters.
Brown's whole career has been a textbook case of slouching
towards Bethlehem to avoid the bright lights of Sodom and
Gomorrah. After rambling through the '70s, he hit on the
itinerant troubadour life for good at the end of the decade,
started ramshackle Red House Records to record himself (it's
now the pride of the folk indie world, though he sold the
label long ago) and even landed a coveted regular slot on
Minnesota neighbor Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion.
Red House stats confirm that each of Brown's 15 discs has
sold progressively better over the years, a sweet sleight-of-hand
in a one-hit-wonder music world and a folk market long ago
declared dead by corporate touts. Like a fine carpenter,
Brown manages to up the ante of his songwriting craft with
each subsequent release as well. His latest, Covenant,
is as close to sage wisdom as music gets these days and
lies far from the rage-of-the-moment pop mainstream.
So why, after his most successful year ever, is he planning
a vacation? The man's got some things to do.
"I don't know how much of this I can do in a year," says
Brown in his silvertip growl. "But I've got some recording
project collaborations I want to do, a spoken-word children's
album, a scrapbook of my songs with drawings and such. Also,
a record of traditional folk songs--'Samson and Delilah,'
'Shady Grove,' 'I Never Will Marry.' I grew up with hill
music and church music in the family. I'd love to get some
of that down."
In between, he'll play a festival or two to keep in touch.
He'll even return to Oregon in April for his annual benefit
show(s) for the Corvallis foster care/adoption organization
In Harmony, a national model program for kids that Brown
says "have seen a lot of life already."
That's a lot of plans for one man in one year. "I'm greedy
for life," says Brown, a man who seems to have hit his middle-age
stride with the worn comfort of a pair of old boots. "I
would've liked four lives. Or five. Or 10, even."
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