Greg Brown: Yellow Dog

Greg Brown has always enjoyed a reputation as a charismatic live musician and a sucker for a good cause. This disc packages both of these traits as the recording of a benefit show from back in 2005 for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan’s Yellow Dog Watershed in an eco-friendly case made out of recycled materials. It’s a typical Brown show. His low, rumbling voice exudes cool as he offers personal, matter-of-fact observations about life. When Brown sings about thunderstorms, as in “Conesville Slough”, you understand the natural ones described mirror the ones going on in his heart. Brown makes fun of his lack of subtlety, but the truth is he always means more than what he says whether he’s talking about the bullshit of corporate American politics and the war for oil or how life in the past may be better than today. He leads with his heart and lets his head follow. The profits from the sale of the album aid the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve.