Greg Brown (folk musician)
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- For other people by this name, see Greg Brown.
Greg Brown is a folk musician from Iowa, USA. His "Iowa Waltz" has been (unsuccessfully) proposed to replace the state song of Iowa.
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[edit] Early life
Brown's first professional singing job came at age 18, running hootenannies (folksinger get-togethers) at the legendary Gerdes Folk City in New York City. A year later, Brown moved west to Portland and then Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where he was a ghostwriter for Buck Ram, founder of the Platters. Brown then traveled with a band for a few years, and then quit playing for a while before he moved back to Iowa and began writing songs and playing in clubs and coffeehouses.
[edit] Career
During the 1980s, his reputation was established through frequent touring and recurring performances on A Prairie Home Companion. Subsequently, his work has been nominated for Grammy awards. He also founded his own record label and named it Red House Records after a home in which he lived in Iowa.
He has recorded more than a dozen albums, including his 1986 release, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, when he put aside his own songwriting to set poems of William Blake to music. One Big Town, recorded in 1989, earned Brown three and a half stars in Rolling Stone, chart-topping status in AAA and The Gavin Report's Americana rankings and Brown's first Indie Award from NAIRD (National Association of Independent Record Distributors).
The Poet Game, his 1994 CD, received another Indie award from NAIRD. His critically acclaimed 1996 release, Further In, was a finalist for the same award. Rolling Stone's 4-star review of Further In called Brown "a wickedly sharp observer of the human condition." 1997's Slant 6 Mind earned Brown his second Grammy nomination. His latest CD, One Night, is a re-release of a 1983 live performance originally on Minneapolis' Coffeehouse Extemporé Records.
Brown's songwriting has been lauded by many, and his songs have been performed by Willie Nelson, Carlos Santana, Michael Johnson, Shawn Colvin, and Mary Chapin Carpenter.
His work has been recorded by others, most notably Joan Baez, who covered his song "Rexroth's Daughter" on Dark Chords on a Big Guitar.
[edit] Family
Brown's mother played electric guitar, his grandfather played banjo, and his father was a Holy Roller preacher in the Hacklebarney section of Iowa.
On November 21, 2002 he married the singer-songwriter Iris DeMent. His daughters (from a previous marriage) are also musicians.
[edit] Discography
- Hacklebarney (1974) (with Dick Pinney)
- 44 & 66 (1980)
- Iowa Waltz (1981)
- One Night... (1983)
- In the Dark with You (1985)
- Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1986)
- One More Goodnight Kiss (1988)
- One Big Town (1989)
- Down in There (1990)
- Dream Café (1992)
- Friend of Mine (1993) (with Bill Morrissey)
- Bathtub Blues (1993)
- The Poet Game (1994)
- The Live One (1995)
- Further In (1996)
- Slant Six Mind (1997)
- Solid Heart (1999) (benefit CD)
- Covenant (2000)
- Over and Under (2000)
- Down in the Valley: Barn Aid Benefit Concert (2001)
- Milk of the Moon (2002)
- Live at the Black Sheep (2003)
- If I Had Known: Essential Recordings, 1980-96 (2003)
- Honey in the Lion's Head (2004)
- In the Hills of California: Live from the Kate Wolf Music Festival 1997-2003 (2004)
- The Evening Call (2006)
