Got a message the other day: “WPR tonight had your intro to Greg Brown, would love the transcript of that.”
The transcript is below. I was introducing Mr. Brown for his final appearance at the Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua. If some of my words sound familiar it’s because they drew upon what I wrote about him in Truck: A Love Story and in a profile I wrote of him included in Danger: Man Working.
If you’d like to hear the intro delivered live as well as Part One of the concert, click here. Part Two is here.
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TRANSCRIPT OF INTRO:
Sometime in 2006 a magazine called No Depression sent me to Iowa City, Iowa, to interview Greg Brown. And I met Greg Brown in downtown Iowa City, we sat on a park bench, that’s where I conducted the interview.
For the first five minutes of the interview I kept gettin’ distracted because every once in a while this strange vibration would pass through the park bench. It felt like when you’re in New York City and a subway car goes underneath. And I thought, I know there’s been a lotta changes in Iowa City, but I don’t think they put in a subway.
And then I realized about ten minutes into the conversation that it was every time Greg spoke the bench vibrated.
So about a year later I was out on book tour. One of those 29 cities in 30 days book tours, high glamour situation, me in the van stayin’ at the Motel 6, and I was probably a little fuzzy and worn out when I stopped to sign books at a little independent bookstore in Kansas City called Rainy Day Books.
There was not an event, I was not appearing, I wasn’t speaking, I just stopped to sign whatever books of mine they had in stock. And I’m signing a books and I look over and I see a fella standin’ over there, and I thought to myself, that looks like Greg Brown. I’m pretty sure that is Greg Brown.
And then I looked again, and saw he was readin’ Dostoevsky, and I said, Yeah. That’s Greg Brown.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t wanna be that guy. I just wanted to leave him be with his Dostoevsky. But he looked up at me, and all of a sudden I could see in his eyes he recognized me.
And he said, “Dude.”
And I got back in the van, and I admit at that point I fan-boyed. I thought, “Oh my gosh, Greg Brown knew me!” And then I looked down, and I realized I was wearing the exact same t-shirt I was wearin’ a year earlier when I interviewed him in Iowa City!
So he was probably just thinking, “Man, times are tough for that kid.”
Pause
I am a Midwest boy, I am a big dumb man. I was raised in strictness and scripture. I was raised on the thee and the thou, the shalt and the wilt. I was, in short, a clodhopper with religious overtones who did a whole lot of yearning. And I didn’t really know what to do with that yearning. With those artistic predilections.
And then along came Greg Brown.
Greg Brown taught me you can like dirt and fishin’ and slant sixes and John Deere B tractors…and also yearn. And read poetry. And listen to Dylan Thomas Caedmon CDs in your pickup truck. Read Dostoevsky in your deer stand. And no matter where you wound up on the thee and though and the shalt and the wilt, you can wake up any country morning day and say, “Hallelujah, hallelujah anyway.”
Greg Brown’s voice sounds as if it was aged in a whiskey cask cured in an Ozarks smokehouse, dropped down a stone well, pulled out damp, and kept moist in the palm of a wicked woman’s hands.
I think if he says “G’mornin’” across his coffee cup, it raises ripples.
The voice is a perfect match to his lyrics. Biblical and barstool and garden-loamy as they are, all Rexrothian and as easy-rollin’ true as a brand-new ’64 Dodge. A Greg Brown song doesn’t make me wanna whoop and holler, it makes me wanna sift barehanded through the dirt for repentance, and then go lookin’ for a woman who doesn’t mind a few chickens.
And I found her, Mister Brown!
And one of the first dates I ever took her to was here in the Big Top Chautauqua for a Greg Brown concert.
Folks, I don’t really get to introduce Greg Brown. He’s introduced himself to each and every one of you for years and years now. We all owe him in our own private, deep-flowing ways for the art that he’s created. And no words, no matter how hard I scribble, can thank him in a manner commensurate to all that he’s given us.
There’s really only one way to thank him. And that is to receive him with our ears and the love of all our beating hearts.
Ladies and Gentlemen, one more time under the Big Top canvas, Greg Brown.
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