By a Mucked Up Lovely River

Album: Greg Brown, Dream Cafe, 1992

Acquired: I taped this off a CD owned by my roommate Toby in 1994. Toby introduced me to several singer-songwriter types. Something about being from Maine must expose you to a lot of music that's excellent but outside the mainstream.

Best Track: "I Don't Know That Guy"

Lasting memory: Toby's brother Chris, who is a professional musician in central Maine, played the song "Spring Wind" from this album during Toby's wedding a couple of years ago. The ceremony was held on a mountaintop just north of San Francisco. Hot as blazes, but the scene and the moment could not have been any more perfect.

Greg Brown is the master of perfectly capturing a moment. His song lyrics don't quite coalesce into the short stories of a Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, or Bill Morrissey, but Brown's lines read like underlined passages from your favorite novels. "Spring Wind" is an excellent example of this:

I lived awhile without you,
Darn near half my life.
I no longer see our unborn children,
Born to you my unwed wife.
But yesterday I had a vision,
Beneath the tree where we once talked,
Of an old couple burning their love letters
So their children won't be shocked.

[Chorus:]
Love calls like the wild birds--it's another day.
A spring wind blew my list of things to do ... away.

My friends are getting older,
So I guess I must be too.
Without their loving kindness,
I don't know what I'd do.
Oh the wine bottle's half empty--the money's all spent.
And we're a cross between our parents
And hippies in a tent.

[Repeat chorus]
In a mucked up lovely river,
I cast my little fly.
I look at that river and smell it
And it makes me wanna cry.
Oh to clean our dirty planet,
Now there's a noble wish,
And I'm putting my shoulder to the wheel
Cause I wanna catch some fish.

[Repeat chorus]
Children go to sleep now--you know it's gettin' late.
I know you don't like to miss nothin'
And school ain't that great.
Oh, I'll dance with you when you're happy,
And hold you when you're sad,
And hope you know how glad I am,
Just to be you're Dad.

[Repeat chorus]
Darlin' it's been a hard go
But I think we'll be okay.
I know I say that all the time
Like everything else I say.
Oh, I've been gone so often,
But every time I miss you,
And I don't really know nothin',
Except I like to kiss you.

[Repeat chorus]

In "Spring Wind," Brown nailed all the elements of what constitutes living a pretty good life. It is remarkably like the life he actually does live now. He has one of the coolest bass/baritone voices this side of Johnny Cash. He is a regular on Prairie Home Companion. He is married to the ethereal and still somehow rooted Iris Dement. They live on Brown's family farm in Iowa, and Brown has three talented and pretty adult daughter, of whom Pieta Brown has made the biggest name for herself.

But Brown knows that he has done plenty of bad stuff along the road to his good life. My favorite track from Dream Cafe shows a man very like Brown trying to put his past behind him by shear denial. Brown's narrator know he's lying, and he knows the people listening know he's lying. Still, there is a spark of hope that he can be the good person he purports to be if everyone -- including himself -- gives him enough tenth, eleventh, and twelfth chances. Check it out:

Me, I'm happy-go-lucky--
Always ready to grin.
I ain't afraid of loving you--
Ain't fascinated with sin.
So who's this fellow in my shoes--
Making you cry?
I don't know that guy.

Who took my suitcase?
Who stole my guitar?
And where's my sense of humor?
What am I doin' in this bar?
This man who's been drinking,
And giving you the eye--
I don't know that guy.

Hey! I've heard him complainin',
'Bout piddly little stuff.
I've watched him do nothin',
And say he can't get enough.
He'll blame his Momma and Daddy,
For the world passin' by.
And I don't know that guy.

There's rain across Kansas,
There's a roadside hotel,
There's a man and a woman,
And things are going well
So why is he leavin',
Without so much as goodbye?
I don't know that guy.

Why can't he come out with it?
Why can't he laugh it off?
Why can't he be a fool like me?
Why can't he be soft?
Why does he run from his lover?
Why doesn't he cry?
I don't know that guy. 'Cause--

[Repeat first verse]

Brown's story does have a happy ending so far, though. Like the minor leaguer in his "Laughing River" who decides to hang up his glove and his spikes after 20 years to settle down in cabin by a trout stream in Minnesota and see about that female friend of his cousin, Brown recognized that life could be simple.

The "so far" in the preceding sentence is the damning note. Brown feels compelled to remind us in "Just by Myself" that too often things just don't work out. If it all should come crashing down, Brown at least has a plan--"And I'll go fishin'/ Get with the flow./ I know a river/ In Idaho./ I'll catch a big trout/ And let him go,/ And I'll be happy/ Just by myself."

Listen to a clip from "I Don't Know That Guy"

Up Next: Buffalo Tom, Big Red Letter Day, 1993

Word Count to Date: 15,181