Greg Brown (folk musician)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other people by this name, see Greg Brown.

Greg Brown
Greg Brown at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in 2004
Background information
Born	July 2, 1949 (1949-07-02) (age 58) Fairfield, IA, United States
Genre(s)	Folk
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Instrument(s)	Vocals, guitar,harmonica
Years active	1967-present
Label(s)	Red House Records
Associated acts	Iris Dement, Bo Ramsey
Website	http://www.gregbrown.org/

Greg Brown (born July 2, 1949) is a folk musician from Fairfield, IA, USA. His "Iowa Waltz" was unsuccessfully proposed to replace the state song of Iowa.^{[citation needed]}

1 Early life
2 Career
3 Family
4 Discography
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Early life

Brown's first professional singing job came at age 18, running hootenannies (folksinger get-togethers) at the legendary Gerde's 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.^[1]

[edit] Career

During the 1980s, his reputation was established through frequent touring and recurring performances on A Prairie Home Companion.^[1] Subsequently, his work has been nominated for Grammy awards. He also founded his own record label. He named it Red House Records after a home in which he lived in Iowa.^[2] To date, over 200 recordings have been released on Red House by artists such as Pat Donohue, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka, Lucy Kaplansky, John McCutcheon any many more.

He has recorded more than two dozen albums, including his 1986 release, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, when he put aside his own lyric writing 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. In 1999, Red House re-released, One Night, a 1983 live performance originally on Minneapolis' Coffeehouse Extemporé Records.

Brown has an established history for allowing his music to be used to raise funds and awareness for environmental and social causes. The Solid Heart CD and accompanying video were recorded in 1999 during a two-night benefit for In Harmony, an organization that supports foster children and their families. Solid Heart also features Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer and Kate MacKenzie. In 2001, Charlie Parr & Mikkel Beckmen and Jeff White & The Front contributed to Down in the Valley: Barn Aid Benefit Concert. In 2002, Going Driftless: An Artist’s Tribute to Greg Brown, with selections by a number of female singer including Ani DiFranco, Gillian Welch, and Shawn Colvin, as well as Brown's three daughters, saw proceeds from its sale go to benefit The Breast Cancer Fund. In 2005, a live benefit for Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve was recorded and released in 2007 as Yellow Dog on the EarthWorks Music label.

Known for his personal and intimate concerts, Brown's most revealing recordings are live. In addition to One Night and several of his benefit CDs, 1995's The Live One (recorded in Traverse City, MI), 2003's Live at the Black Sheep, In the Hills of California: Live from the Kate Wolf Music Festival 1997-2003 (released in 2004), and 2007's Live from the Big Top, recorded at the Big Top Chautauqua in Bayfield, WI bring a glimpse of the power of Brown's live shows. In 2007, he was nominated for a Folk Alliance Award in the category of Contemporary Artist of the Year.

Brown's songwriting has been lauded by many, and his songs have been performed by Willie Nelson, Jack Johnson, Carlos Santana, Michael Johnson, Ani DiFranco, Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenterand Joan Baez, who covered his song "Rexroth's Daughter" on Dark Chords on a Big Guitar. .^[3]

[edit] Family

Brown's mother played electric guitar, his grandfather played banjo, and his father was an electrician who became a Pentecostal minister in Earlville, Iowa, and later converted to the Baha'i Faith .^[4]

On November 21, 2002 he married the singer-songwriter Iris DeMent. His daughters (from a previous marriage) are also musicians. One of his daughters, Pieta Brown, has released several albums of her own and tours actively as of 2007. In 2005, Brown and DeMent adopted another daughter from Russia.^[1]