Ram’s Head Tavern, March 24, 2003

Background: Called the “Poet Laureate of Iowa” in Sing Out Magazine’s recent cover story on him, Greg Brown is a highly acclaimed songwriter in the folk world. He has received Grammy nominations and won Indie Awards. A tribute album, Going Driftless, includes Lucinda Williams, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Ani DeFranco, and others singing Greg’s songs. His own CD’s include “The Poet Game” and “Further In.” Paul Harrison and Mary Madison had the privledge of interviewing Greg before his recent performance in Annapolis.

PH: Given our audience, we would like to focus primarily on songwriting, so can you tell us about your writing process? For instance, do you have a regimen that you normally follow?

GB: No I don’t. I’ve really been plugged into it since I was a little boy. I popped out and I started writing poems. I was surrounded by music and storytelling. My father was a wonderful storyteller and my grandparents were storytellers and poets so I just grew up in it. There was never any point where things changed all that much, ya’ know? I just grew up lovin’ it and I still do.

I work all the time. I work at getting better on the guitar and better at singing and I love all this shit. I listen to stuff all the time. Writing kind of comes along when it does…during the course of my life. I never feel like… “I have to write a song”…I just write them when they come along and I try to be ready. The closest model that I’ve read about that is like how I do it is the old Japanese haiku poet who spent the energy preparing the instrument of reception, you might say. They prepared themselves to be receptive so when inspiration, or whatever you want to call it, comes along, they’re ready to go. So that’s what I try to do…I try to be ready.

PH: How do you prepare?

JB: Well, mostly by being open and by learning…learning all you can about music and words. That’s what you’re working with…music and words. A lot of times, I don’t even make much of a distinction there. Most of the time we’re talking, we’re singing really. It’s a little more intense when you sing a song, but it’s just by being open to the world and paying attention to what’s going on. Then trying to get better at using the tools of the job, whatever they may be, whether it’s playing the guitar or cello or singing…whatever your tools are. Just try to get good with them.

PH: With regard to guitar, do you study on your own or do you learn from other musicians?

JB: At this point and for a long time now, I just work on my own but I’m picking up stuff from people all the time. Or from writing, too. I learn technique as I need it for something I’m writing. If I can hear something but I don’t know how to do it yet, I figure out how to do it.

MM: Do you have certain writers or musicians that have influenced you?

GB: My family was the biggest one – my immediate family -- the stories that were told and the music that was played. My grandmother sang a lot of old Irish ballads and my grandpa played five-string banjo and sang all these old hill-tunes. Southern Iowa, where I was born, and the Ozark Mountains, where my Dad was from – those are two real rich areas in terms of music and storytelling. A lot of folklorists came through and recorded music from the hills, so it was a rich area musically. Art Rosenbaum, a folklorist, banjo player and musician himself, was visiting with me and my family and when we were riding back, he said, “Ya’ know, Greg, a lot of folk players would give their left nut for your roots!” I just grew up with all this stuff. I didn’t have to go looking for it. I was just immersed in it, you might say.

MM: When I took your songwriting workshop at the Kate Wolf Festival, you said something that I’ve remembered. Someone asked you, do the lyrics come first or does the music come first, and you said “I just look for the heartbeat of the song.” Can you elaborate on that?

GB: I don’t know if I can elaborate much on that. The heartbeat, the pulse…that’s what I feel first and that’s where I work out from…from that place. Something just kind of stops me and I hear that, I feel that and I try to figure out whatever it is. The main thing is I really think of songs as living things – they do have a pulse and a heartbeat to them and that’s what you want to get with and express.

MM: For me, your music has always gone to the simplest but most powerful level. It’s very visceral. I think that’s what makes it so real, from the trailer to dealing with drinking or bills or life, with words like “Summer was made for you to wear that dress.” You just take the simplest things and…

GB: Yeah, that’s where I find the real stuff of life and the meaning of life – in ordinary, everyday things. That harkens back to the haiku poets because that’s what they wrote about…the moon is coming up… the things of life. I also think that if you’re trying to write a real meaningful song you can chase it away because if you bring too much stuff to the energy, if you’re too eager you might say… you kind of have to let these things express themselves. I’ve never felt that I could really say much but I can allow things to express themselves through me. You don’t want to get in the way too much…I think a lot of people get in the way when it comes to writing.

One thing I would say for songwriters, though – the most important thing – is do you love to do it? That’s the question you need to ask yourself and just keep asking that every once in a while. So many people would like to write and sing and so forth but they’ll stop themselves. They’ll start comparing themselves to other people. A lot of people have that built-in censor guy or gal on their shoulder saying, “You’ve got to stop. You’re terrible. Stop it.” You’ve got to knock that deal off there and just love it. I think its like any other kind of work in life, the more you give to it, the more you get back.

PH: Has Pieta [Greg’s songwriting daughter, who opened the show] picked up on that approach?

GB: Yeah, she has her own deal. I love her songs. She’s a songwriter where the spoken kind of surrounds the unspoken. When I hear songs, there’s a lot of unspoken stuff that you just feel. She has a real gift at doing that.

I like a lot of different songwriters. I love songs that can use a very few words. Randy Newman, he can use like five words but they’re really good words and they fit the music exactly. Somebody else, like Bob Dylan, has like a bunch of weeds growin’ in the field -- there are just words everywhere -- and yet he really communicates with a lot of heart, too, so it not so much your method as bringing that heart to it.

PH: What other songwriters do you admire?

GB: I love Jesse Winchester a lot.

PH: I haven’t heard much about him lately.

GB: Yeah, he’s still puttin’ out records on Sugar Hill and writing great songs. Jesse’s got a lot of great models, early country music like Hank Williams, but also a lot of soul music – they’re soul tunes. I love Jesse.

One thing that gets lost a lot of times in songwriting -- I can’t remember who said this, it might have been Randy Newman – he was talking about music journalists and he said, when people write about songs, they just write about the words. They don’t know anything about music so they don’t know what to say. I think that was a very good criticism of the critics of American music because people who try to write about songs just don’t know enough about music. So, they just concentrate on the word part of it. That’s a dire mistake. There’s so much more going on.

PH: You’ve got a number of humorous songs. Do you approach them differently?

GB: Not really. I like it when those come along ‘cause they’re fun to write. I laugh a lot in my life so I laugh a lot in my songs, too. But they’re all enjoyable to write…the really thorny, thick hard ones to write are enjoyable too. But I’m the kind of person who has always enjoyed writing. I have friends…songwriters…who struggle with it. If they’re not writing they worry about, and if they are writing, it’s real painful. But for me, I’ve just always gotten a kick out of it. I remember when I wrote the songs on “The Poet Game” -- a lot of those were kind of turgid songs, darker stuff, but they were fun to wrestle with.

MM: Do you write in cycles? I’ve noticed over the years that you occasionally tend to go very deep and deal with somber topics…

GB: Yeah, that’s true and then I think, that’s enough of that…lighten up a little bit. That’s just the way the songs come to me. There have been periods where I just write a bunch of dark songs and I enjoy it and would like to write a bunch more and I try and they’re just crap. So if I just shut up and listen and see what’s really in there, a lot of times they are a different kind of song. I find I can’t force it at all. I can’t sit down to write a certain type of song…I just can’t do that. I mean, I CAN do it, and any songwriter should be able to whip out a song and I can do that, you should have that craft to put together a song like you put together a toaster. But in terms of real songwriting, I feel like I’m following it, not really leading it.

There are long periods where I don’t write at all and it’s never bothered me. I’ve never felt like I had to write a song. It’s intriguing. It feels to me like a gift that was given to me from so much music and stuff from before, and then comes down to us who are living now and we do what we can to pass it along to the next group coming along. That’s what I love about the whole deal…it connects you back to people way back who felt the same urge. And it connects you to people way down in the future. I’m just open to it…I never feel like I’m in any sort of control of it.

On the other hand, the danger with that approach is thinking what whatever comes out is great. You do have to do your homework in terms of being able to be self-critical and also have some trusted friends who will tell you if you write a piece of crap, which I often do. You need people, and you need to know that sometimes you’re going to write junk and that’s part of it. You’ve got to be willing to write junk. When I start in on a batch of songs, sometimes I’ll write 5 or 6 that are absolute crap. I know it’s going to happen, and I keep writing them…then you get past it and get down to what you were really trying to get at.

PH: I know a painter who says she’s happy if she gets one good one out of ten.

GB: Yeah, that’s about it. That’s a pretty good batting average.

PH: Most of your writing has been on your own, right?

GB: I did some co-writing when I worked with [unclear] and knocked out some fun stuff for the show, and Bo and I did some co-writing when Bo had a band—more rock and roll kind of songs. That’s about it. I haven’t done a lot of co-writing. I’ve never really approached songwriting as a project. Sometimes I think of co-writing as some guys in Nashville going out to the golf course to put together a song for Jim Bob whoever. It can become that sort of approach where you’re trying to create commercial units. I have nothin’ against that…more power to them… but I don’t have much to do with that myself. If I met just the right person, maybe I would really get into it but it would have to be a different approach than just “let’s knock something together.”

MM: What kind of guitar are you playing now?

GB: It’s an old J-45 Gibson from the 1940s. Garnet Rogers told me all about how the Gibsons made during the war were made by women. All the men were gone and women were working at the Gibson factory. I think mine is a 1943.

PH: We really appreciate your time, Greg.

GB: You bet. My pleasure.