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The Brown Brothers release debut album
by Rachel Turiel Hinds
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| The Brown Brothers, Greg Oldson,
Glenn Keefe, Robert Lawrence and Eric Hopper, visit
with a Durango relic. This Friday, the band will release
its first album at the Abbey Theatre./Courtesy photo |
Like lovers in this bursting, small town, musicians
often join together and fall apart in recycled variations,
new arrangements, and old, familiar chords. The Brown
Brothers, who’ve just released their first CD, is
a group compiled from some of Durango’s favorite
bands: The Lawn Chair Kings, Broke Mountain Bluegrass
Band and Stoney Creek Ramblers.
Who can say when it all began? Six years ago Rob Lawrence,
who plays table steel guitar and Greg Oldson, crazy poet
songwriter, began making music together. Others came and
went in the Durango Twister game of musicians until two
years ago when Oldson connected with Eric Hopper, who
offered his low-tech recording studio in Ticolote, (where
the CD was made), and his drumming skills. When Hopper
and Lawrence first heard each other play, the feeling
was mutual – they both thought: “ I want to
play music with that guy.”
Americana folk is what Greg Oldson, songwriter and lead
singer for the band, calls the Brown Brothers’ sound,
with the love songs, (or “not-so-love” songs,
as it may be), leading to a little country.
Sitting at a downtown bar, his trademark blue, low-top
Converse sneakers wrapped around the bar stool, Oldson
is already into his first beer. Oldson is unpretentious,
content with a plastic mug brimming with Folgers and a
cold can of Busch despite this town of sophisticated espressos
and microbreweries. He has no use for cell phones or combs,
straight blonde hair falling in his eyes as he bends to
sip on his beer or pluck mournful melodies on his guitar.
It’s a dark album, some would say, of the band’s
debut, “Songs From the Lost Generation.”
 “Writing
music is a way for me to recognize the darkness within,
we all have it,” Oldson says. “You can’t
hide from your own shadow.” This musical collection
of short stories and narratives of American people, places
and events touches on the quiet, ordinary suffering of
everyday Americans. There’s the homeless speed addict
who laments to the bellman of the hotel he sits outside
of day after day; the senseless, inexplicable murder of
a rich man by one less fortunate; lost loves; and the
oft-mentioned American pastime of chasing women and numbing
pain with alcohol.
Whether I am fast and flying, juiced and running high/Settled
back and bowed down to the worries in my mind/For good
or bad there’s always liquor settled on my tongue/And
women on the hard track I’m keeping on the run.
“Songs From the Lost Generation” is not a
CD of catchy choruses that quickly go stale, but rather
one of involved storytelling where, for instance, the
band goes on a 12-verse journey into the motivations and
experiences of American defector to the Taliban, John
Walker Lindh. Oldson’s lyrics are gritty, steeped
in simple truths.
Play this game while listening to the CD: Count how many
times Oldson says the word “sin,” and even
where it’s not uttered, count how often it’s
implied. And there are the mysteries 4 that deserve unraveling.
In “Took One for the Old Man,” Oldson sings:
Took one for the old man/ (Drinking again)/Blamed him
for the deal he left me/Held my hands above my head/And
all along I was free.
Who’s the old man, one may wonder. Is it Oldson’s
own father? Or perhaps Oldson’s concept of God?
Listen on. In the same song, is he not talking about the
Holy Trinity when he sings: Looked back for the old man,
for the savior and the beggar/Each time they were coming
on, I just grabbed on to some other.
This could be the album for the generation whose parents
used to make an event out of passing joints and dissecting
Bob Dylan lyrics 30 years ago.
And yet, the album is catchy. Don’t be surprised
to find lyrics from “The Murder Song” echoing
endlessly, and somewhat disturbingly, in your head while
you’re hiking alone. While cleaning thick, Colorado
dust off surfaces of your home, listen to “Songs
From the Lost Generation,” it’s the songs
of boozing and hopeless relationships that you’ll
most often find yourself happily whistling along to. And
as Oldson says, you can’t have the light without
the dark; it is the rise out of suffering that brings
happiness.
The words are propped up by the bending, twangy sound
of Lawrence on the table steel guitar, a relic for which
parts can no longer be ordered. In a stroke of fateful
luck, the instrument was found in an East Coast dump,
and without lessons, Lawrence mastered two of the three
guitar necks that still work. The third serves as space
for a drink, cigarettes and ashtray. On the drums, Hopper
paces a steady backbone to the songs and on the CD, his
brothers Matthew and Jeff play upright bass and piano,
respectively. Live shows will feature Glenn Keefe on electric
bass. Hopper, who has toured professionally, appreciates
the communal, non-ego driven vibe of the band. Though
the words and melodies have been written by Oldson, each
band member writes his own part, and Lawrence says “it
all equals one, unified part.”
Oldson plays guitar, banjo and harmonica, and his melodic
voice ties up the whole package with just enough calluses
and cracks to keep it real.
Despite a compulsion to expose the somber underbelly
of our country, Oldson is cheerful, upbeat, and quick
to belt out knee-slapping laughter. His CD is dedicated
to the two babies that have been born to band members
in the past year, who he can’t talk about without
grinning and shaking his head. Though he calls some of
his (unreleased) love songs corny, he recently spent three
days straight in a Pittsburgh hospital, playing guitar
and singing to his dying grandmother, who loved the band’s
CD.
Oldson’s musical subject is human life, but nature
keeps him “on the level.” The first thing
he says after marveling at the sun’s persistence
at the late hour of 8 p.m., is how he’s eager to
get up to the Falls Creek area this spring to check out
the wildflowers.
“There’s a distinct microclimate where the
desert meets the mountains and there are specific wildflowers
that only grow there,” he says as he pushes a slip
of blond hair out of excited eyes.
Oldson, who’s lived in Durango for 11 years, knows
he could move to a city, where live music is revered the
way mountain biking is here. But for now he’s sticking
around in this place he loves, where the wild land beckons,
the local musicians support each other and he sees the
artistic scene growing. In the summer, he works at San
Juan Mountain Nursery where he learned to yodel by practicing
while driving alone out to jobs in the company truck.
His biggest aspiration is to write one good song a month,
and put out one good album a year for the rest of his
life. Though right now, he says, “the satisfaction
of sharing ideas is better than profit.”
Simple and humble, like the well-worn Converses, 32 ounces
of Folgers, and a spring pilgrimage to the wildflowers.
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