Out In The Big Midwestern Night-The Music Of Folk Singer-Songwriter Greg Brown-A CD Review

CD Review

By Zack James 

Going Driftless: an artist’s tribute to Greg Brown, Red House Records, 2002

Seth Garth, the once well-known music critic for various publications starting back in the mid-1960s with the Folk Gazette now settling into comfortable retirement, often wondered what it was about the Midwest, about the center of the country, you know, the heartland, out there in the great wash that produced most of the better folk singers and songwriters that have come down the pike. His thoughts ran obviously to Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan but also to lesser known folkies. He had been at a lost for an explanation for most of his early years having grown up in a suburb of Boston, Riverdale, so had grown up as more of a city boy and more of Eastern-rooted city boy at that. In those days he had thought that any songwriter or singer outside of the friendly confines of Harvard Square or the Village in New Jack City didn’t count for much, didn’t have the feel for the pulse of what was going on in youth nation, the “nation” that counted.       

As the years passed and as the well-known Eastern folk establishment began to fade from youth nation consciousness Seth noted that many of the up and coming folk singers were not coming like bats out of hell (his expression) from the East but from the Midwest once the “protest” songs that fueled the early folk minute were succeeded by those that dealt with growing up and living in this wide, wide country. Yeah, once the themes turned from “the times changing,” “the answer blowing in the wind,” and “nobody marching to war no more,” to reminisces about Iowa grandmother’s preserve cellars, the economic decimation of small towns, making love in seedy small town hotels, the decline of train travel, and wondering what made all the women sweat when Elvis was “king” rock and roll night. See, heartland dreams stuff.  

Then one night Seth was sitting in the audience of a concert in Madison out in the Wisconsins to hear an even then well-known in heartland folk singer, Greg Brown. And didn’t Brown very unconsciously take up those kind of subjects one after another, stuff about Vincent Black Lightning motor bikes and the bad boys who rode them, fishing in the blank Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the dismal fate of small towns, growing up anxious to move on from small towns, that everlasting tribute to Grandmother Brown’s fruit and vegetable cellar, and the mad man antics of Billy from down in hills, down in the tough Midwestern hills.

While Seth still was not quite sure what to make of such topical songs and his ever present question about the gravity that had descended around Midwestern folkies he bought a CD of songs done by some female folk artists who have been influenced by Greg Brown’s lyrics and had paid what is a high tribute to any artist by participating in a cover album. Seth is still seeking and soliciting answers to his eternal question but if you listen to Brother Brown and his quintessential Midwestern take on love, sorrows, and life you will understand why he is so perplexed. Listen up.