AMP Concerts - Greg Brown

Friday, November 7, 2008
Greg Brown
KiMo Theatre
423 Central Ave NW
8 PM

How To Buy Tickets To This Show

Greg Brown's mother played electric guitar, his grandfather played banjo, and his father was a Holy Roller preacher in the Hacklebarney section of Iowa, where the Gospel and music are a way of life. Brown's first professional singing job came at age 18 in New York City, running hootenannies (folksinger get-togethers) at the legendary Gerdes Folk City. After a year, Brown moved west to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where he was a ghostwriter for Buck Ram, founder of the Platters. Tired of the fast-paced life, Brown traveled with a band for a few years, and even quit playing for a while before he moved back to Iowa and began writing songs and playing in midwestern clubs and coffeehouses.

Brown's songwriting has been lauded by many, and his songs have been performed by Willie Nelson, Carlos Santana, Michael Johnson, Shawn Colvin, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. He has also recorded more than a dozen albums, including his 1986 release, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, when he put aside his own songwriting 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). His critically acclaimed 1996 release, Further In, received a four-star review from Rolling Stone, which called Brown "a wickedly sharp observer of the human condition." 1997's Slant 6 Mind (Red House Records) earned Brown his second Grammy nomination. His latest release, Live from the Big Top, documents one of Greg's live performances at the Big Top Chautauqua in Bayfield, Wisconsin.

"Brown is just your ordinary itinerant Iowa Zen beatnik folkie, with a voice so deep, rutted and dark it seems as if it's slithered up out of some primordial ooze... Brown's music provides a stark, unself-consciously literary tour of off-road Americana ('Clouds rollin' from Nebraska/ Dark chords on a big guitar'). His musical terrain includes both love songs and affecting remembrances of family and home and an America of drive-by shootings in Lake Wobegon, chemical fields with 'ammonia light' and lonely people hooking up when they can." - New York Times

Tickets are $25, $30 and $35. Tickets will be available at the KiMo Box Office and all Ticketmaster outlets starting on Friday, March 28.