Greg Brown: ‘between the house and pasture’

Click to Enlarge Browse Aspen Times Photos Folk singer Greg Brown performs Friday at Belly Up Aspen. Opening the show is his daughter, singer-songwriter Pieta Brown. (Joel Stonington/The Aspen Times) Get Arts and Entertainment Feeds

Joel Stonington
Aspen, CO Colorado
December 14, 2007

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ASPEN — Friday's show at Belly Up Aspen is unusual for Greg Brown, who is playing with his daughter Pieta Brown for the first time in more a year. During that time, Pieta became a mother, Brown became a grandfather and moved from his longtime home in Kansas City back to Iowa City.

These days Brown usually performs week­ends only, after a flight from Iowa. He said he still performs 50 to 70 gigs a year, a far cry from the 200-plus gigs a year he used to play. “When I started out, I played wherever I could,” said Brown. “I played bars, I played bowling alleys — wherever I could play. Now I’m somewhere between the house and pas­ture. I’ve definitely slowed down on the number of gigs. I don’t think I would go out and play if I didn’t still enjoy it.”

Greg Brown’s sound has changed in the more than 30 years since his first album; many of Brown’s early releases featured a voice that wasn’t quite as deep and were somewhat less bluesy.

Sometimes listening to his latest songs is like sitting on a stoop with grandpa, as his meandering thoughts walk in an area of darkness and truth and emerge into outright wisdom.

“The world we’ve made scares the hell out of me,” sings Brown on “Eugene,” from his latest studio album. “There’s still a little bit of heaven in there, and I want to show it due respect. This looks like a good spot up here. You can try me on the cell but most places I want to be, it doesn’t work. Sometimes you’ve got to listen hard to the sounds old Mother Earth still makes all on her own.”

It was Brown’s deep, rich voice and rootsy, gritty song-writing that grabbed national attention after only two albums and earned him a regular spot on Garrison Killer’s “Prairie Home Companion” in late 1983.

Brown had self-released his first two albums, “44 & 66” and “The Iowa Waltz,” on a label Brown called Red House Records after the old red farmhouse where he was living in Iowa.

It was in those three years of the early ’80s that Brown set the stage for a career that would achieve folk-hero status and laid the foundations for a now-legendary record company representing some of America’s folk greats.

Brown gave up control of Red House Records early on to a fan who was an instructor at a St. Paul high school, Bob Feld­man.

The two remained close friends, and Red House continued to release Brown’s rough­ly two dozen albums up through his 2006 studio release, “The Evening Call.”

But though Brown was instrumental in starting a label, and he put out two fundrais­er albums this year of live shows, Brown said he is returning to grassroots recording.

“I don’t think I’m going to do any more studio stuff, at least not for a while,” Brown said. “I have some simple home recording stuff. My plan is to put out home records. There’s really not much point in labels any­more, they don’t really do much.”

Brown has a digital recorder that burns CDs; he said he will generally be recording new material at his home in Iowa City.

“I just want to do little editions myself,” said Brown. “Sell them at gigs and put them up for sale on a website. For myself, at this point, I want to try things a different way for my own amusement.”

Feldman oversaw the recording of Brown’s 1984 classic album, “In the Dark With You,” and continued to work with Brown until Feldman’s death just before “The Evening Call” was released last year.

Brown wrote a short note in the liner notes that ends, “You were strong and quick to help people in trouble. Life is lonely, we can any of us get too lonely. I feel those who loved you gather round. I hear us singing for you. When we gather round, you are there by the fire. So don’t be so lonesome now. We hold you in the circle. Hunker down. Lean in.”

With Feldman gone, Red House Records is still going strong but there’s less of a reason for Brown to be part of it. Plus, Brown said he wants to mix up the traditional album and have more room to breathe creatively.

“CDs traditionally have been 10 songs or 12 songs,” he said. “I want to mix it up. Spo­ken word, for sure. I want to fool around with it. I want to put a booklet in with writing. I want to loosen it up.”

As for what the future holds, Brown is patient. He just lives. During the interview, Brown was sitting on an old couch in a junk store in Iowa City, where he sat down to take the call while looking for a lampshade.

“I don’t know where the music comes from,” he said, “or where it’s going.”

jstonington@aspentimes.com