Brown, Greg

His mother played the electric guitar, his grandfather played the banjo, his grandmother was a poet, and his father was a Pentecostal preacher. He was born in the Hacklebarney section of southeastern Iowa where music is a way of life. His seasoned songwriting, storytelling, and music are soulful and deeply rooted in that place. As Bruce Springsteen is to New Jersey and William Faulkner is to Mississippi, Greg Brown is to Iowa. He is a powerful, compelling, and often humorous performer who moves his audiences with the warmth of his dark, rich voice and the unpretentious clarity of his musical vision.

The preaching life took Greg's family from small town to small town, and his youth is spread across a map of the central Midwest. Music was always a staple. At church there was gospel and hymns, at home there was classical, hillbilly, early rock and roll, country, and blues. (Greg found a Big Bill Broonzy album in Kansas when he was ten, and he was sold). Greg studied classical voice and piano as a kid and sang with choirs and in state competitions. When he was six or seven, he picked up the pump organ. At twelve he learned the basics of guitar from his mother. She was also a teacher, so great books were always around the house and great poetry was just a part of life.

At 18, Greg decided to try New York. He had won a contest to play an opening set for singer Eric Anderson in Iowa City, and Anderson encouraged him to head East. Greg landed a job at Gerdes Folk City in the Village, running hootenannies. Next he tried Portland, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where he was a ghostwriter for Buck Ram, founder of the Platters. After few years he moved back to Iowa — still writing songs and playing the occasional Midwest club or coffeehouse. He recorded a couple of albums on his own — 44&66 and The Iowa Waltz — landed a job on National Public Radio's A Prairie Home Companion, and began touring nationally. While in St. Paul, he passed the reins of his record company to Bob Feldman. Red House Records reissued Greg's first two albums and gradually developed into one of the country's premiere independent labels.

Greg's music is an intricate mix. His insightful lyrics paint powerful and often deceptively simple images on a canvas of gospel, blues, country, rock, and jazz. Other performers have discovered the magic of his songwriting, including Willie Nelson, Carlos Santana, Michael Johnson, Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

His 1985 release, In the Dark With You, is an acoustic classic. In 1986, he set poems of William Blake to music in the critically acclaimed Songs of Innocence and of Experience. One Big Town, recorded in 1989, earned Greg his first NAIRD (National Association of Independent Record Distributors) Indie Award for Adult Contemporary Album of the Year, as well as three and a half stars in Rolling Stone. Dream Cafe, (1992) was also a huge critical success. The Washington Post called it an "unassuming triumph," and in the opinion of Z Magazine, it rivaled Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks.

Following Dream Cafe, Brown recorded Friend of Mine with Bill Morrissey, and earned his first GRAMMY nomination. That year he also made a foray in to kids' music with Bath Tub Blues. 1994's The Poet Game brought him the national attention his fans had expected for years — seeing significant radio play (charting on AAA and topping The Gavin Report Americana chart.) It also earned raves in the pages of national publications, and won a NAIRD Indie as Singer-Songwriter Album of the Year. Greg followed this with 1995's The Live One, an album for which his fans had clamored for years and which captured the humor, warmth, insights, and spirit of his nearly legendary live shows. His 1996 release, Further In, topped them all. Critics called it a masterpiece and it received a four-star review in Rolling Stone. Greg's 1997 release, Slant 6 Mind, received more of the same and earned Greg his second GRAMMY nomination. It is clear that his inspiration and gift for writing is as strong as ever.

You can learn more at this site: www.gregbrown.org