In the Hills of California arrived on Sept. 7, 2004 as the first live Greg Brown album that really captured his stripped-down live sound.
For many years leading up to this, Greg has been doing solo shows backed up by the wonderful Bo Ramsey on electric guitar. That particular sound pairing was on full display for In the Hills of California, by Brown also invited other great support guests including Nina Gerber, Garnet Rogers, Pete Heitzman and Karen Savoca and Shawn Colvin in recordings taken from various performances at the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival.
Greg Brown’s midwestern upbringing has given him very strong feelings about the power of family, community, love and faith. Those sentiments continued to shine through on songs like “Wash My Eyes,” “Poet Game” and “Two Little Feet”:
John Muir walked away into the mountains
in his old overcoat a crust of bread in his pocket
we have no knowledge and so we have stuff and stuff
with no knowledge is never enough to get you there
it just won’t get you there
There was also a great rendition of his classic “Slow Food,” a tune about the joys inherent in building a day around the slow and respectful creation of the evening meal. As he put it, food with “all the love cooked in.”
While I’m generally reluctant to bring up politics, there was one song that still begs to be discussed: “I Want My Country Back.”
I went to a Greg Brown show on the evening of the start of the war in Iraq. A rumor had been circulating on his mailing list that Greg had written a song commenting on not just the inevitable war, but on the icy state of our world affairs discourse.
I originally posted the lyrics to “I Want My Country Back” on March 20, 2003. They’d changed slightly since then:
I want my country back
and a good dream to stand up for
Got my hand over my heart,
but I don’t feel at home here anymoreBig, big flag above the big, big mall
and the shake rattle and roll to the core
Things sprawl after they fall, and I don’t feel at home here anymoreHomeland of Sojourner Truth
and Chief Joseph before
Many quiet words of wisdom drowned out by TV
and I don’t feel at home here anymoreBlind engineer, war train on the track
many many a heart is sore
We want our country back; we want to feel at home here once moreI want my country back.
As they say, intelligent people may disagree about the current state of affairs. It’s just kind of sad to see the blind rage and and inner-directed venom poisoning who we are, or who we want to become.
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