Greg Brown's music did a lot in getting me through this long funky winter. I edited our conversation very little, wanting to bring to you an honest portrait of a remarkable singer - poet - man.
I’ve always been inside out — offering my guts to the world, expecting nothing back while expecting everything. I’ve been overwhelming at times, working way too hard to expose myself enough to inspire the revelation of what is real in others. I crave an existence without façades, without games and pretense. I guess it is part of why I love the woods and the water so much. There is rot and stink and also sweet smells beyond imagination. There is the decimated remains of a rabbit — really just a few tufts of fur, while the wood thrush sings its amazing song. And there is the owl pellet filled with mice bones laying next to the early blooming crocus. It is why the human body fascinates me. We can dress it up with clothes, fix it up with surgery and hours at the gym, but it still tells the real story of our lives and our place here. The fact that we all pee, occasionally vomit, cough, and sneeze, that we all depend on one muscle in our body for life — the heart — means everything to me. We are just as vulnerable as the next creature and part of the same cycle. The real comforts me and stimulates me. But, it is illusive — slippery and easily lost.
This winter brought an unusually strong craving for the real. And it was no coincidence that I ended up listening to the folk singer’s Greg Brown’s music...a lot. A few weeks ago, I was able to interview him. I was feeling uncomfortably permeable and raw from the news and from some challenges here at Heron Dance. It was a day when I wished I had a hard tack veneer — just for a day. The night before, Rod and I had gone to hear Greg sing. Around us were couples hugging and people grinning. His daughter Pieta opened the show with Bo Ramsey. And then Greg came up to the stage. It is hard to describe Greg, I think mostly because he really would rather not be described. He would rather just sing. It’s something to sit and witness someone do what he loves. We all got lost in it. At one point, the rhythm of the guitar slid by my frontal lobe and I found myself bobbing my head, eyes closed, looking up only once to see both Greg and his bass player grinnin’ like fools — lost themselves.
Greg began the show with a brand new tune about not feeling at home here anymore. As usual, his song got right to the heart of things. And this is why Greg’s music is important to me; he sings of the messy loveliness of life, with all its contradictions and confusions. As a character in his song, “Rexroth’s Daughter” says: “Life is like a thump-ripe melon. So sweet, and such a mess”.
Ann: Do you ever feel any obligation to give a voice to your political views?
Greg: No, I wouldn’t say I do because there’s all kinds of music that can touch people and can be good and useful and healing in all kinds of ways. For example, I would say that a lot of jazz and blues music, which doesn’t have any overt political message, promotes peace, ‘cause music — good music that reaches people’s souls — has the power to cross over all the lines we draw politically. So I think the responsibility of a musician or writer is to make music and write stories as honestly as he or she can. It’s a big world you know and there’s room for a lot of different approaches to this stuff. I think there just needs to be the intention to reach out. I feel an obligation to do that in my music.
Ann: An obligation to reach out across lines?
Greg: Yeah, just lettin’ it out, you know? And lettin’ it out in a positive way, I guess. Very shortly after my father died, which was three years ago now, I felt like I received a very strong message from him. And the message was to use my writing and music the best I could on the positive side of things. And I am still trying to figure out exactly what he meant by that, because I know he didn’t mean for me to write a bunch of Hallmark cards or something. I paid attention to that, and I think he was telling me something very important. But I know something: In these times we do have to pay attention. There’s the love pile and the hate pile, is the way I look at it, and we’ve got to try and put as much stuff as we can in the love pile, however we can do that.
Ann: Tell me about your father.
Greg: My father was from the Ozarks. He was an open Bible preacher until I was about 11. Then he went back to Theological Seminary and became a Methodist minister. We moved up to northern Iowa where he had two churches. He preached out of the Bible. Well, he was approaching the Bible as myth. It’s a beautiful myth and a meaningful myth, but the people in the church did not want to hear Genesis approached as a creation myth. So he lasted just two years in the church and then he got out and counseled juvenile delinquents. He helped start a high school for kids that had dropped out for one reason or another -- a craft school mostly where the kids would learn the basic stuff they needed: electricity and metal working and those kinds of things. Actually, I suppose he did that from the time he was in his forties and got into metal sculpture and making jewelry. He did that kind of work for rest of his life. He was a B’a hai at the end of his life and took up sculpture and jewelry making.
Ann: How did your upbringing affect the way you raised your four daughters?
Greg: I think I was fortunate in that my parents did talk to me about stuff and I was treated as a person. I’ve done that with my own kids. I have always looked at them like they’re their own person. And that’s the way I was pretty much raised up. I was given respect, you know, and I just tried to pass that down onto my own kids.
I came out of my childhood without a lot of resentment about things. And the resentments I did have, I understood. I mean, my dad, you know, he was a hillbilly. He came up out of the Ozarks, and if I did something wrong, I got spanked. And that was that. It was pretty much that way for my generation, and it was not necessarily a bad thing. There was a few times that I got spanked when I didn’t feel like I should have and I had a little bit of resentment about that. But, later on, when I got a little older, I remember my dad saying he had felt bad about it sometimes but that was the way he had been raised up. And I said, “Pa, you know, I don’t hold any stuff about that at all.”
So, yeah. I mean, I didn’t spank my own children. But I certainly yelled at ‘em, you know? I mean, when they did stuff that was wrong or dangerous, I let ‘em know
Ann: Kids learn most from watching the grown ups in their lives, not by listening to them.
Greg: They do. Your kids pick up on how you are more than what you say. It was funny for me because we were Pentecostal when I was little, and just about everything you could think of really in a way was a “no.” So many things were sinful. But I guess because my father and mother were different, our household was not repressive. When I think back on it, kids in a lot of open bible households weren’t able to listen to rock ‘n roll on the radio or dance or anything. And we could listen to any music we wanted to.
When I was little I lived in a small town in Kansas – it was roughly a third Black and a third Mexican-American, and a third White. When you’re a kid, your friends are just your friends, whatever their color. So I had all sorts of friends and they were all welcomed by my parents. I didn’t realize it at the time, but lookin’ back, I’m sure my parents took some grief about that. Because it was a prejudiced town – there is a lot of segregation still. My parents were different -- they were setting a tone.
Ann: It’s interesting then that your dad would be drawn to such a strict religion.
Greg: Yes, well, my father was a much different kind of open-Bible preacher than most of ‘em. That hate and fear stuff was just not him.
It’s true that in the Open Bible churches everything had the potential of being sinful and wrong. Your body’s wrong and dreadful and so on. But I think my father definitely felt called to be a preacher and I think there was something about the Pentecostal faith that really attracted him. There is a core beauty to the Pentecostal, which I tried to express somewhat in a song called “Speaking in Tongues.”
Song Lyrics:
“Speaking in Tongues” from the album Slant Six Mind
A wild high cry flew up out of our brother
He was moaning and shaking, shining like the sun
He fell down like a dead man, Some people helped him up
He was all right, He was just speaking in tongues
When someone was sick we gathered all around them
and lay our hands upon them, all of us, old and young
We prayed that God Almighty would heal them
Our prayer was in English, but we was all just speaking in tongues
When I really feel my way back to that church and them people
the little hairs stand up all over me
and I hope that this nation like that congregation
will give it up and pray for our soul, which is in misery
and that one day we may lay our hands on one another
and seek the healing for ourselves, this earth and our young
and sing that old song of many colors, many rhythms
and listen with our hearts to the speaking in tongues.
I still have powerful memories of it. It was a very direct religion. When people were sick, there’d be the laying on of hands and things. And the speaking in tongues that I witnessed in the church, I found to be very beautiful and rhythmic. I remember listenin’ to it as a child and really being caught up in it. But somehow I went through that experience without coming out at the other end with all the fear and repression usually associated with it. And it was really because of my family. That’s what it was.
Ann: I can see the draw towards that type of religion. It is very primal in a way – the feelings of ecstasy.
Greg: The whole Pentecostal experience goes back – way, way, way back. I think there’s connection that you could make with Native American dancing and going into an altered state, a trance. I think there is a whole part of ourselves –- the Holy Spirit, you can call It whatever you want to — that goes to another place in an expanded state of consciousness and lets in bigger things. There’s a real beauty to that. There can also be a lot of fear and stuff going on with something that powerful. But that beautiful side, I think, can be accessed in many different ways. The rhythmic, almost chant-like preaching can happen in the Pentecostal Church, or in the fundamentalist church, or a black Baptist church or a white church. You get that kind of chant-like preaching going, and you get the really strong, rhythmic, yearning kind of music going, getting drums going and you get all these thing goin’ on, and you know, you’re buildin’ up to this place where you kind of let go. But, you throw in a lot of fear and hatred to that, and you end up with a different soup.
Ann: I wonder which came first the ecstatic religious experience or all the rules and repression that go with it? Maybe humans created so many rules out of fear.
Greg: Yeah, I wonder, too. I wonder what the connection is between that – the repression and then the letting go. It’s like, which came first? I mean, did you let go and then you got afraid of that, and then you made up all these rules? Or did you have all these rules and then just like, “Man, we gotta let go here once in a while.” I don’t know which way. They probably work together somehow.
Ann: Some of your music has the rhythm we are talking about. I saw it last night during one song. It had an intense base beat and your bass player started off with his usual straight face. I closed my eyes and when I opened them I saw him bent down over his bass staring over at your fingers. He was grinning and you were grinning. You both seemed lost in it. And I was too. Thank goodness for your beautiful ballads so we can recover!
Greg: Yeah, I think all that stuff is connected. I know in music when you really get to playing it, often there is what Bo call “lift” — which I think is a good word. I think a lot of musicians would testify to this. When the music really gets rolling, you enter another state where you and the music become one or something. I mean, I don’t want to put too high-falutin’ a term on it, but sometimes you do enter a different state and that’s – that’s part of the power of music.
Ann: Yes. I saw that last night.
Ann: One of my favorite songs of yours is “Happy By Myself” from the album Dream Café.…the one where you’re talking about being alone. Have you always had a good relationship with yourself?
Greg: You know….I don’t like to be by myself. I’ve had a pretty good relationship with myself over the years, but I’m not the type to be happy by myself. I mean, that song was pretty much tongue-in-cheek. I was saying: “I AM going to be happy with myself. I AM going to be happy with myself.” But there is also a lot of humor and sadness in that song. ‘Cause there’s a part of me that would really like to think I could be, not a hermit exactly, but close to it. If I’m writing songs, I’m probably good for three, four, five days by myself, you know. I can do that fine. But after that I am ready to hang out with my friends and family.
Ann: So if you could be more of a hermit, do you think it would add something important to your life?
Greg: I don’t really think so. I’ve had periods where, when I’m really into work, it’s been much easier to be myself. And in terms of relationships, it’s been hard for people – friends and lovers – to understand when I’ve had to go off for a while and do my work. For a long time now, I’ve been very clear with people in my life, explaining what it’s like when I am into writing songs. And they all say, “fine,” you know? But then when it happens, it’s hard for them not to feel like I’ve left. So, you know, part of me probably used to think, “Aw, I’ll just go off and be a hermit, you know?” But, I can’t do that at all. I’m not that kind of person. I’ve met some very, very fine, writers and musicians who pretty much give up just about everything for that. They tend to not have much in the way of relationships. They tend to go through people pretty fast. If it came down to that choice for me – between art and life – it’s not even a choice. I love writing and singing and all the rest of it, but I mean, I love my children, my friends, and all the rest of life more. I’m interested in my songs as a reflection of life, not a replacement for it you know? I can’t imagine a life that was just devoted to my music.
Ann: When are you happiest?
Greg: When am I happiest? Well, I can think of a lot of times. I’d say my deepest happiness would center around my family. To be with my family just doin’ anything. Havin’ supper, sittin’ around. Those are the best times for me. I’m also really happy when I play music — I get into that. I feel good just about doing anything outdoors like gardening or fishing, getting out in the woods. When I get into despair about what’s going on in our world it helps to just get out into the woods or out into the bigger world, you might say. That really helps me maintain my spirit.
Ann: So often, when I am outside and quiet in nature I feel like a speck. Feeling tiny amidst the immensity of the night sky or towering mountains makes me feel some kind of freedom.
Greg: I think there is that, yeah. We are specks for sure, and our lives are specks. There is a real freedom in realizing that. If more people remembered that, it would keep us from going down some of the roads we seem to be going as a society and as a species. We’re just here for a little while, you know? And there’s not – there’s really nothing to “get.” There’s nothing to grab hold of. It seems pretty clear but I guess it’s not.
Ann: We just put out an issue which had an osprey on the front with a bloody fish hanging from its talons. We heard from some subscribers who were upset and thought that during these difficult and violent times we should put something more uplifting on the cover.
Greg: Well, yeah, it’s a danger to think that nature’s cute ‘cause it’s not. I mean, it’s a big compost pile. We’re part of that. But, it all gets cycled around; including us. You know? I think it’s a misunderstanding of nature to think that it’s a cute and pretty place in which to rest. It’s full of violence. But it’s also full of that big cycle of which we’re a part, you know? It reminds us of what we really are – just another species. It’s Biblical but it’s true: we come out of the dirt and go back in there. So…the fish comes out of water and becomes part of the heron and it all just keeps moving.
Ann: What are your thoughts on love?
Greg: Oh….well…that’s an ongoing thing that I do try and express through music and words. And I don’t know how I could really get it down to a few words here. I do know what I think about love is pretty much also what I think about spirituality. It’s a daily thing. The “holy” is the “daily.” The “daily” is the “holy”. Love has to be manifested in the daily things we do every day; how we are with each other, and how we are with people we don’t know. That’s where I find the real meaning and the reality, as well as the conflicts and contradictions in Love. I don’t think it is good to be too much in our heads or in our aloneness - to sit around and think about it. Because Love itself has to come out and move around in our daily lives. It has to be right out here, you know? That’s where it breathes.
Ann: What do you struggle with in your life?
Greg: I think the one thing I struggle with is letting people know about where I go when I write my songs. People that I love and care about. I do go to an inward place, wherever that is. I don’t know how to define where I go, but it’s an unusual place where there is some distance between me and other people. I’ve tried to be as aware of that as I can. I’ve slowly gotten better at it. Most people that love me and know me, know the signs. But still, everybody needs some reassurance like, “Yeah, look I’m still here. I may be a little dreamier for a while, but I’m still here.” It doesn’t happen often; it kind of drifts in and out.
Ann: It can be a gift to the people who are in your life to explain this to them and then go off to that creative place. When I was first getting to know my husband I was head over heels in love and it was very scary for me when he “went away” to that creative place. But now, by way of love and trust and communication I have found that when he goes to that place, it gives me an invitation to find my own creative place
Greg: Yes… it can be a gift I suppose…
Ann: Is there any other talent you’d most like to have?
Greg: Hmmm…yeah, yeah. You know, I was just thinkin’ about that because in Hacklebarney, where I live now, there’s an old barn. Just a little barn – maybe 30 x 20 feet. We fixed it up. I put my books at one end, and my desk and a little stove and stuff – and then the other end, I’ve gradually been fixin’ it up to be a workshop. And right before I came out on this tour, a carpenter and I built a workbench. And I thought, “God, my dad would really like this.” I wish I was better at doin’ stuff with tools because I really enjoy cuttin’ boards and nailin’ them up. I really enjoy it.
Ann: I love the smell of cut wood. I just built my first work bench too! I couldn’t wait to show my dad. Most of us humans don’t know what to do with our hands anymore. Or our bodies….
Greg: Oh, God, yeah, I think so, too. I don’t think we’re meant to live the way so many of us do. It’s not natural.
Ann: What is the quality you like most in a man?
Greg: In a man? Well, when I think of my closest men friends –- Garnet Rogers and Pete – they are men who don’t hold stuff back. We can talk about anything. So, I guess, openness would be the word I would use. Openness, kindness, a sense of humor – an ability to laugh – is somethin’ I can’t really do without. I can’t think of anybody I’m real close to that doesn’t laugh quite a bit.
Of course, my best women friends have that quality of openness, too. But, I do think it’s a little bit rarer in men. You were talking about being intuitive and being able to sense how everybody’s doing around you. A lot of men don’t really have a clue about how anybody else is feeling a lot of the time. Or if they do, they can’t be very expressive or open about it.
Ann: It’s genetic. They had to focus on getting that wooly mammoth…..
Greg: Yeah, uh-huh. I remember something I think my daughter Constie talking about how a woman should talk to a man. It made a lot of sense to me.
If you have a problem with a man, if you have some kind of issue you want to deal with, go to him, tell him what the problem is, tell him what you want to talk about then say, “I’d like to talk about this tomorrow, or eight hours from now, or whatever.” And I thought, “Man, for me, that’s true.” I need a little time to figure out what I’m really feeling and how I want to express that. It’s a lot harder for me if I am asked to respond right away.
Ann: I think women tend to overestimate men’s ability to come up with the language to express their emotions. We tend to throw too much relationship and emotion stuff at them all at once and then we get impatient or hurt when they can’t respond right away or don’t say the right thing. In my experience, men usually respond to that pressure by trying to fix things. These are all generalization of course.
Greg: Men do like to fix things. “What’s the problem? Let’s fix it.”
Ann: I was thinking about your song “You drive me crazy” Where you sing about wanting to camp and fish and make love for two days straight, but she likes to shop and go to cafes. Is this autobiographical?
Greg: It’s a little tricky with my songs to take them too autobiographically because some of my songs have some of me in ‘em and a lot of ‘em are more like characters talking and have very little to do with me.
I wrote a song years ago called, “A Little Place in the Country” which was really kind of a dark picture of a very abusive guy. And I wanted to present that picture because it’s a story and I thought it should be looked at. I was writing a group of songs about that area, so I wrote that song. And then I was at some show and I played that song and a woman after the show said to me, “You know, you’re promoting spousal abuse with this song.” I tried to explain that this was a character and I was trying to show what was going on. But as far as she was concerned, that was me in the song and I was promoting abuse. So, that does happen.
Ann: What I like most about your music Greg is how it speaks to the reality of our condition as humanoids. Like the fact that we are all one species trying to survive and yet we are so defended against each other.
Greg: Yeah, I think that, you know, that’s mostly an American thing, that lonely American individualistic thing. The other day I read an interview with a musician from Maui who was living in Boston for a long time. He plays the cora, a beautiful African instrument – it’s got all these strings – a beautiful instrument. He was obviously a very kind soul, but he kept saying, “America is so hard to understand because in Maui, people don’t have much of anything. Twenty people will live in the space that two people might live here in America, but they’re happy. And the two people here in Boston who have a huge apartment – they’re not happy.” And he said, “People don’t share with their families here. Somebody’s brother can be in trouble and the sister says, ‘Well, you know, it’s your problem.’”
I know all American families are certainly not that way but I knew what he was saying. He said, “When I go home to Maui, I don’t have a lot of money but when I go, I just share what I’ve got with my family.” And I think, you know, that is a much healthier approach than what we’ve got goin’ on here in America, where it’s like that individualistic thing. Here, it’s kind of a dead-end deal, you know? I don’t think it makes people that happy. And it doesn’t work that well. And the thing is, it’s getting more that way.
During my grandparents’ generation – whenever there was major work to be done – time to make hay – neighbors showed up. Everybody did it together. They shared a big meal, played music and danced. After a while, each farmer felt like he had to buy a $100,000 corn picker, go into debt, buy more land. Even at that point, like, five farmers could have gone in together and gotten one corn picker, or one of these huge tractors and shared around. But we didn’t. We won’t do that in America. Everybody’s got to have their own.
Ann: That’s why I love blizzards because people come out of the woodwork to help each other shovel…..
Greg: Well, it makes everybody…it’s just a natural human thing, I think to help each other out more and to do more things together and to feel that – to feel less isolated.
Ann: And people crave that….
Greg: …Yeah, we’re too afraid of these real natural things in life, I think.
Ann: Thank you very much Greg
Greg: My pleasure.
Visit the Greg Brown website to find out his tour schedule, read more interviews
or read the lyrics to his songs at www.gregbrown.org
