Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Greg Brown (with Bo Ramsey) performing "If I Had Known".
CD/DVD Review
If I Had Known: Essential Recordings, 1980-1996 , Greg Brown, Red House Records, 2003
The first two paragraphs have been used in other reviews of folk musician/singer/songwriter Greg Brown’s work.
Greg Brown is a particular kind of folk singer who before I listened to his “Greg Brown-The Live One ” album reviewed elsewhere in this space I had not really paid attention to since the days of my early youth when I listened intently to Woody Guthrie whose songs were seemingly forged from the very heart of Americana. As a child of the urban folk revival of the 1960’s I got caught up in listening to the more political message songs provided by the likes of Bob Dylan or Phil Ochs. As a poet/singer/songwriter Greg has come out of the heartland of America, like Woody, in a fury to write and sing his tales of love, remembrance, tragedy, desperation and, on occasion, just pure whimsy. He is thus in very good company, and belongs there.
His songs evoke, under more modern conditions to be sure, the days gone by when the community spirit of small town life meant something. A strong bass voice grainy with the trials and tribulations of life lend authenticity to his words, as does strong guitar playing when necessary. Needless to say the variety of topics covered in his songs speak for themselves from Grandma's food cellars to vanishing Iowa family farms to sweaty nights of lovemaking entwined with the up and down battles of love and, of course, the ubiquitous bouts of fishing that gain more than a nod in his albums.
Outstanding here in this version of a “greatest hits” –style albums are: the title track “If I Had Known”, “Canned Goods”, “The Train Carrying Jimmy Rodgers Home”, Where Is Maria”, and the classic “The Poet Game”. As always Greg is on top when singing about the seamy side of life, love and the mysteries of human existence out in the heartland.
"Boomtown"
Here come the artists with their intense faces,
with their need for money and quiet spaces.
They leave New York, they leave L.A..
Here they are - who knows how long they'll stay -
[chorus:]
It's a Boomtown
got another Boomtown
and it'll boom
just as long as boom has room.
Here come the tourists with their blank stares,
with their fanny packs - they are penny millionaires.
Something interesting happened here long time ago.
Now where people used to live their lives the restless
come and go.
[repeat chorus]
Nice to meet you, nice to see you
in a sheepskin coat made in Korea.
Welcome to the new age, the new century.
Welcome to a town with no real reason to be.
[repeat chorus]
The rich build sensitive houses and pass their staff around.
For the rest of us, it's trailers on the outskirts of town.
We carry them their coffee, wash their shiny cars,
hear all about how lucky we are
to be living in a ...
[repeat chorus]
The guy from California moves in and relaxes.
The natives have to move - they cannot pay the taxes.
Santa Fe has had it. Sedona has, too.
Maybe you'll be lucky - maybe your town will be the new...
[repeat chorus]
"The Poet Game"
Down by the river junior year
walking with my girl,
and we came upon a place
there in the tall grass where a couple
had been making love
and left the mark of their embrace.
I said to her, "Looks like they had some fun."
She said to me, "Let's do the same."
and still I taste her kisses
and her freckles in the sun
when I play the poet game.
A young man down in hill country
in the year of '22
went to see his future bride.
She lived in a rough old shack
that poverty blew through.
She invited him inside.
She'd been cooking, ashamed and feeling sad,
she could only offer him bread and her name -
Grandpa said that it was the best gift
a fella ever had
and he taught me the poet game.
I had a friend who drank too much
and played too much guitar -
and we sure got along.
Reel-to-reels rolled across
the country near and far
with letters poems and songs..
but these days he don't talk to me
and he won't tell me why.
I miss him every time i say his name.
I don't know what he's doing
or why our friendship died
while we played the poet game.
The fall rain was pounding down
on an old New Hampshire mill
and the river wild and high.
I was talking to her while leaves blew down
like a sudden chill -
there was wildness in her eyes.
We made love like we'd been waiting
all of our lives for this -
Strangers know no shame -
But she had to leave at dawn
and with a sticky farewell kiss
left me to play the poet game.
I watched my country turn into
a coast-to-coast strip mall
and I cried out in a song:
if we could do all that in thirty years,
then please tell me you all -
why does good change take so long?
Why does the color of your skin
or who you choose to love
still lead to such anger and pain?
And why do I think it's any help
for me to still dream of
playing the poet game?
Sirens wail above the fields -
another soul gone down -
another Sun about to rise.
I've lost track of my mistakes,
like birds they fly around
and darken half of my skies.
To all of those I've hurt -
I pray you'll forgive me.
I to you will freely do the same.
so many things I didn't see,
with my eyes turned inside,
playing the poet game.
I walk out at night to take a leak
underneath the stars -
oh yeah that's the life for me.
There's Orion and the Pleiades
and I guess that must be Mars -
all as clear as we long to be.
I've sung what I was given -
some was bad and some was good.
I never did know from where it came
and if I had it all to do again
I am not sure I would
play the poet game.
"Ballingall Hotel"
I said I'd never come to this ugly old hotel again.
Baby, here I am.
I said I'd never knock again on # 22
Baby, how are you?
Some nights something grabs you and
you don't even know what it is.
Give me a kiss.
Leave that black slip on and dance just like you
did last time.
I'm so glad your plans for leaving fell through -
just like mine.
Ain't no air conditioning, the ceiling fan don't work
too well.
Guess we'll have to sweat it out again at the
Ballingal Hotel.
One night I knocked on the wrong door
and myself as an old man answered - so drunk
and so poor.
I said I'd never come again to this ugly old hotel -
but what the hell.
"One Wrong Turn"
[chorus:]
One wrong turn is all it takes
and there ain't many signs -
you only get a few breaks.
Some get more. Some get less.
One wrong turn leads to the next.
The days go slow and the years go fast.
The future you look for is soon the past.
You seldom end up where you thought you would.
One wrong turn can change it all for good.
[repeat chorus]
Love ain't a hug. Love ain't a kiss.
Love is every day doing this, that, this.
We put in our time and we put in our heart.
One wrong turn can tear it all apart.
[repeat chorus]
Where's that little house with the porch light on
in a stand of cedar and the highway gone -
Good smells of cooking and the garden loam -
I'd have thought by now I'd have found my home.
[repeat chorus]
"Jesus & Elvis"
Jesus had some water, said "Wine'd be better yet".
Elvis picked up a guitar and made all women wet.
Elvis he died young - Jesus he died younger.
Elvis died of too much - Jesus died of hunger.
Jesus sang down through the ages: "Do like you'd have'em
do you".
Elvis rocked the universe with be-bop-a-lu-la -
Now here they are on black velvet, in a parking lot in
Missouri -
rocking my soul with rock'n'roll, soulful harmony.
Jesus went back to heaven to be the King of Kings,
but I hear the King of Rock'n'Roll is still restlessly
roaming.
Go on home to Jesus, El - he's waiting there you'll find.
You two can jam on old gospel songs - them are the best
kind.
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