2 result(s) tagged “Junior Brown”

In part three of my River Roots Live trilogy, I present the September 22, 2006, performance of guitar hero Junior Brown. Junior was a bad boy, using an encore to go over his allotted 60 minutes. You might not be able to tell by listening, but Brown and his guitar did a mean train imitation when a locomotive threatened his set.

This recording is a little funky. Although a single file, the concert is in three distinct sections: the first song followed by a fade; the rest of the set followed by a fade again; and the encore. There is no good reason for this except that in my first attempt at bootlegging, I had a stupid notion about separating songs while recording. Basically, you lose a bit of the second song.

Junior Brown is about as matter-of-fact as people get. On record and in interview, he sounds as excitable as a corpse. About his upcoming live record, due in September? He says it’s “just to answer some requests. ” About his role as narrator in the new Dukes of Hazzard movie, taking over where Waylon Jennings left off on the TV series? “They just offered it to me.” About the instrument he invented, the double-necked guit-steel? “I’d been thinking about something like that.”

And based on his publicity photos, he appears to be someone incapable of a smile; his eyes are squinty, his lips are twisted into a grimace, and the expression is as welcoming as most people’s snarls.

I imagined Brown could tell me that his cat died, his wife left him, and the bank took his house and car, all without a trace of emotion or trouble in his voice.

But don’t mistake his cool for dull or pedestrian. Junior Brown is one of country music’s finest wits and instrumentalists, a man who fuses country motifs with rock-star skills.