Greg Brown made me nervous with “Joy Tears,” the opening track of 2006’s The Evening Call. He sounded old and tired, and I suddenly became anxious about Brown not being around anymore—hanging it up or fading into incomprehensible mumbles.
Brown isn’t that old, and actually on subsequent listens, “Joy Tears” moves at a dust-in-the-barely-decipheral-breeze pace, but Brown’s guitar flashes alongside Bo Ramsey’s, Brown’s harmonica charging that stale air.
Unlike first impressions, The Evening Call isn’t a curtain call. Brown isn’t going gentle into that good night. Complemented by bass, drums, and piano, Brown and Ramsey are still pushing folk sounds through a deep blues, creating songs of beauty and desperate beauty.
There’s the Gospel blues character in the sound of “Cold & Dark & Wet.” “Bucket” is an uncomfortably honest mixed up love song which seems to be the only kind of song that can actually get at what it means to have a long-term, committed, complicated, beautiful marriage. “Bucket” blends Brown’s speak-sing-chant with more wistful lyrical sections, whereas the live favorite “Kokomo”, now recorded here, is all chant—a crawl through the ditches of life with flashes of Brown’s odd humor that most people normally only think to themselves.
The album closes with the waltzing “Skinny Days” and rootsy mountain ballad “Whippoorwill”—a lighter way to close the album than its opening on “Joy Tears,” setting up the listener for knowing ol’ Greg’ll be back.
However, the closing thought to take away from The Evening Call is “Treat Each Other Right”—a prayer of sorts against the evil in the world.
Peace on earth, when will it ever be in sight?
This old world is everybody’s beautiful home
So why can’t we treat each other right.
If everyone is praying to whatever gods there may be,
I’d say we all better pray to each other for forgiveness before we lose our sanity.
It’s the conundrum we face: how do we enter forgiveness into the equation? Grappling with a question like that may just send you seeking for the intervention of a forgiving God.
Thanks to Greg Brown and Red House Records for the review CD.
