the hum / By Bob Doran

Looking for Nothing

Greg Brown’s back in town, Cali country from Bartenders Bible

(March 6, 2008)  It’s not hard to imagine Iowan folksinger Greg Brown climbing out of a dusty, battered pick-up truck parked down some lonesome road, pulling an equally battered guitar and canvas bag full of fishing tackle from the back and ambling down an overgrown path looking for a hole where they’re biting.

That’s the picture he paints in a talking blues number called “Eugene” on his latest album, The Evening Call. As longtime sideman Bo Ramsey picks out a guitar pattern reminiscent of a burbling mountain stream, Brown, in his gravelly ramble, works his way through a check list for a fishing trip: bamboo rod, hip boots and a book of flies, “take along my Gibson J-45 made by women during World War II, coffee-stained stack of maps, a little propane stove, a pile of old quilts, can opener, kipper snacks, smoked oysters, gunpowder tea, copper tea pot and a good sharp knife. Sometimes you have to go look for your life.”

Greg Brown. Submitted photo.

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After a brief harmonica interlude he continues with the plan: “You know I’ll park by some rivers, cook up some rice and beans, read Ferlinghetti out loud, talk to the moon, tell her all my love tales — she’s heard them, many times; I’ll make up some new juicier parts — drink cold whiskey from a tin cup, sit in a lawn chair, fiddling with my memories, close my eyes and see. Sometimes you gotta go not look for nothing.”

Before he’s done he’s touched on “the blandification of our whole situation” and world peace while making his way east through Nevada and Utah heading for the Ozarks in search of brook trout and “the sounds old Mother Earth still makes all on her own.” You just know he’ll find that nothing and it will be something. It’s a Zen thing.

Greg Brown and Bo Ramsey are back in town this weekend to play a few songs and tell a few stories on Saturday evening on the stage of the Van Duzer Theater. Expect an opening set from Bo. Sunday morning they hit Hwy. 299, driving on over to Chico. Maybe they’ll stop along the way and see if they’re biting, maybe not.

Call it California country, or alt. country: Bartenders Bible plays cry-in-your-beer music shot through with lap steel and banjo, drawing on twin SoCal traditions: Flying Burrito/Byrds hippie twang rock and Bakersfield outlaw style a la Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. According to B. Bible keyboard player/banjo man Matt Strachota, Gram Parsons and his shrine in Joshua Tree played a role in the band’s latest CD, The Rim Rock Recording Sessions.

“We recorded the album at this place out by Joshua Tree called Pioneertown,” said Strachota, calling from the band’s home base in San Diego. “It was built by Roy Rogers and Gene Autry in the ‘40s. It has these Old West storefronts where they shot films. Behind the storefronts were bowling alleys and bars. It’s still there, but the only thing operational is a restaurant/bar called Pappy and Harriet’s Palace. Our bass player Jim bought a place a mile or so away; technically the area is called Rim Rock. It’s high desert. We wanted to record out there so we basically just took a studio to Rim Rock and set up in his house. We took Paul Jenkins from Blackheart Procession out there to engineer it. Of course we had to take a little trip out to the Gram Parsons memorial, the place where they burned his body.”

The Rim Rocksongs speak of broken hearts, lonely truck drivers, hot dry desert days with vultures circling. And yes, you can sense Gram’s ashes blowing in the wind. This weekend Bartenders Bible takes to the road heading north. Catch them when they stop for a show at the Pearl Saturday on their way to Washington.

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