Bozeman Magazine

Vootie Productions presents an evening with Greg Brown on Friday, November 14th at 8pm in Bozeman’s Emerson Center. Tickets are $30 in advance and on sale now at Cactus Records and online at www.vootie.com.

One of American folk music’s most prolific and profound singer/songwriters of the past three decades, Greg Brown has earned respect from his peers and a far-flung, passionately-devoted fan-base via a burnished, intimate baritone, a seemingly effortless gift for swinging, organic melody and–perhaps most of all–a humble, unvarnished poetic grace that can imbue even the most mundane, everyday human endeavors and emotions with quiet dignity, startling insight and gently twisted humor.

Freak Flag (the Iowa native’s 24th studio album and first on Yep Roc) was recorded–for the most part–in Memphis, Tennessee’s time-tested rock’n'soul incubator Ardent Studios with the artist’s longtime sidekick/guitarist Bo Ramsey producing; it features nine Brown originals plus a gorgeous pair of cuts ‘borrowed’ from his mega-talented family–wife Iris Dement’s “Let the Mystery Be” and daughter Pieta Brown’s “Remember the Sun.”

Additionally–in an embarrassment of six-string riches–Ramsey’s trademark atmospheric soundscapes and stinging blues licks are augmented on a half-dozen tracks by studio legend Richard Bennett (Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, Billy Joel, Dire Straits, etc.) plus–on the evocative, haunting “Flat Stuff”–an elegant cameo solo by Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler.

The four year gap since Brown’s last studio effort (2007′sYellow Dog) is by far the longest since his 1981 Red House Records debut, and, with Greg weighing considerations of a new addition to the family in 2005, the accumulated wear-and-tear of touring and the uncertainties of a record industry in upheaval, the new album very nearly didn’t happen at all.

“I wasn’t sure for a while that I would do any more recording,” Greg confessed. “I had done a fair amount, and the business is in a shambles. But I thought well, hey–maybe it would be good to put another one out–tender songs for these harsh times.”

The resulting sessions captured another kind of lightning in a bottle: a seamless Americana quilt of country, blues, folk and old-time balladry delving into the singer/songwriter’s recurring themes of the challenges, pitfalls and rewards of marriage and family pitted against grimmer, outward-looking explorations of such crushing socio/political issues as wanton materialism, superficial celebrity and a blind, headlong surrender to modernization at all costs.

Dedicated to Iris, Freak Flag takes its place alongside Greg Brown’s most enduring long-players dimensions to the mix.

At a still-youthful 61, Greg Brown certainly has little left to conquer in the music world, what with multiple Grammy nominations and an astonishingly deep songbook that’s been covered by dozens of artists (including Willie Nelson & Carlos Santana, Ani DiFranco, Gillian Welch, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Joan Baez, Victoria Williams, Robert Earl Keen, Nina Gerber, Shawn Colvin, Richie Havens, Rainer Ptacek, Tim & Mollie O’Brien, Maria Muldaur, Lucy Kaplansky, Eliza Gilkyson, and The Nashville Bluegrass Band).

The founder of exemplary indie folk label Red House Records (with more than 200 titles to date), he’s also been a tireless champion for numerous humanitarian causes, routinely making his time, talent and music available for charitable fundraisers, and he’s been a ‘go-to’ guy for myriad artist tribute/compilation projects.

At the personal request of copacetic, eclectic and abiding film star Jeff Bridges, Brown contributed two songs (including “Brand New Angel”) which were recorded by Bridges for his Oscar-winning role as rugged, faded country star ‘Bad Blake’ in the Oscar-nominated “Crazy Heart.”

Without a doubt, it’s been quite a run, but–thankfully–Freak Flag has reenergized Brown: “I enjoyed it; even though it was a bitch–what with the lightning, mixing problems, etc., ” he admitted, ” it got me interested in recording again, and I hope to put out a few more low-key, small pressings.

“Smaller and smaller is my goal,” he continued. “Some poet said, years ago, ‘You find if you just step to the side, the whole machine rolls on by you’…
“It is getting harder and harder to find the side of the road, but music is on the bright side.”

More to the point, the music on Freak Flag IS the bright side…