In March 2013 I finally, and belatedly, discovered the music of Greg Brown and through his albums, also that of Bo Ramsey, his long-term musical partner, and not only in my opinion I guess, guitar genius. How fond I have grown of either artist should come as now surprise if you have browsed through this blog before. I posted raving reviews of Greg Brown’s album If I Had Known  and Bo Ramsey’s very fine album Fragile and have been listening to both artists a hell of a lot of time last spring and summer (and still do, actually). When planning last year’s trip through the Midwest which lead me, only partly coincidentally, through Iowa, I was looking to find out if Greg Brown was playing any shows in the 2 weeks I was there – without too much hope that would actually be the case. So I guess you can imagine that I was more then overjoyed to discover that both were playing a show in the central Iowa town of Ames which I could easily fit into my schedule. After spending about 10 exciting and interesting days on the road travelling through Nebraska and Iowa their show on the 27th of September was ideally timed towards the end of my trip so the timing was right too.

Unfortunately I neglected to take notes about the songs they played but it was, naturally, an excellent show. I was especially surprised and delighted about Bo Ramsey’s brief 7 or so song set in the beginning. He sounded quite different compared with his album Fragile, which was the only album of his I currently know (a fact I plan on rectifying soon). He sounded very energetic, slightly rough, with songs, as far as I could follow the lyrics, mainly about travelling on dirt roads, trains and other similarly rustic subject matter, which was of course much to my liking.

Their set together was also splendid, but as I wrote above I can’t really remember exactly which songs they played. As Greg Brown has released about 25 studio albums throughout his career, they have obviously got a wide variety of brilliant songs to choose from. Unfortunately I wasn’t really able to take good quality photos as the show was packed and I was a bit locked in the middle of the audience, so the photos on here are rather poor, sorry about that. But just being there was a dream come true and most probably a chance to catch them playing a show together I won’t have again, so I am absolutely happy with how things went.

Pretty much the only song I do remember hearing is Here In The Going Going Gone.  As I didn’t possess The Poet Game at the time, it was brand new to my ears. It immediately became one of my favorite Greg Brown songs, in my opinion it’s one of his finest compositions, both musically, but especially lyrically. It was also immediately stuck in my head, so back in my hotel I tried to find a video of it on YouTube, I didn’t find one of his versions but I found this absolute gem of a cover version. I must have watched the video about 10 times that night (and many more since). The guys playing this seem to be only gigging in the Seattle area and I could find very little information about their work, and, sadly, no recording. I was a little bit sceptical about the singer’s voice at first, but have become quite fond of it in the meantime. And that violin is just wonderful. A cover version doing a great song more than justice.