PIETA BROWN
BIO: Brown is the daughter of singer-songwriter Greg Brown.
ALBUM: "In the Cool"
LABEL: Valley Entertainment
RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2005
PRODUCERS: Brown, Bo Ramsey
GUESTS: Greg Brown, Iris Dement.
TRACKS: "#807," "Fourth of July," "In the Cool," "This Old Dress," "Ring of Gold," "Tears Won't Do Any Good," "Precious Game," "Still Around," "How Many Times," "Lonesome Songs," "I Don't Wanna Come Down," "Far Away."
HEAR HERE
ALBUM DISCOGRAPHY: "Pieta Brown" (Trailer, 2002); "I Never Told" EP (T, 2003); "In the Cool" (Valley Entertainment, 2005).
TOUR DATES HERE
WEB SITE: www.pietabrown.com
PAUSE & PLAY: What does the album title mean?
BROWN: "It's that kind of place where things aren't moving so fast. It's a safe place where you feel good and exciting at the same time. I wrote a poem about 'In the Cool,' up on my Web site."
P&P: I saw it as analogy to your own career. When you first started out, was it hard to live up to everyone's expectations because you're Greg's daughter?
BROWN: "The hardest thing was living up to my own expectations, more than anyone else's. I grew up apart from my dad for a long time. When I was a young kid, my dad wasn't well-known. He played in town. I watched his career, so I had some perspective."
P&P: No doubt, you saw firsthand the pitfalls of the business - constant touring, struggling for money.
BROWN: "Definitely. I came from a pretty broken home, and things were not some kind of peachy, dreamy folk world. I guess I saw a lot of the ugly side of the music business. I didn't have a positive outlook about any of it for a long time."
P&P: Now that you've had some time under your belt, how does it feel?
BROWN: "It's good. Ultimately, I think the power of music is so big and strong, and that's what I love about it. I just the old-fashioned idea of music bringing people together."
P&P: Starting out in the 21st century, you have a chance for exposure in ways your father didn't have. Does he see the difference?
BROWN: "He always says it's way harder now and he doesn't envy anybody trying to start in the music business, especially in the last 10 years. Glamour can certainly be seductive, and I've liked parts of that, and I'm easily seduced myself, but I think it can mess you up. There's so many people; everyone has a fuckin' record out. In some ways, it's great, but in other ways, it seems washed-out and mediocre."
P&P: When you got into the studio for "In the Cool," did you have a goal you wanted to achieve?
BROWN: "One, I just wanted to have fun. The first record I made, I'm like, 'What the hell am I doing?' I hadn't been playing guitar very long and was just overwhelmed by all of it. Getting more experience playing live really helped me. I wanted to make a live record, with everyone in there. Working with Bo (Ramsey), who was my co-producer, was great. He's all about just getting a good performance. That's the only way I've made records so far. 'In the Cool,' I think we recorded it in four days. There was some background vocal overdubs and some guitar overdubs, but that was it."
P&P: A lot of the characters in your songs are hard-luck people. Is this speaking from personal experience?
BROWN: "I think so. It's personal experience and family experience. I think maybe I'm drawn to those people, since I can remember."
P&P: It must have been nice to have your father involved in this one.
BROWN: "As I've gotten older, he's really just a great friend, and we connect musically, and you never know if you will with anybody, whether or not they're in your family."
P&P: What's the first record you ever bought?
BROWN: "Prince and The Revolution's 'Purple Rain,' with my own money. That's a bad-ass record."
P&P: What's the first concert you ever went to?
BROWN: "I sat on a lot of barstools during my dad's shows, but I think the first concert I went to ... I went out with some older friends to see the Beach Boys. It was really cheesy, kind of bad actually, if I can be brutally honest. It was a weird outdoor concert, and everybody was smoking a lot of pot. I was really young and didn't know what the hell was going on. I remember being excited about it being my first concert, but it was very anticlimatic. Then one of the next ones I went to was Tom Petty, and that's about as good as it gets as concert goes."
P&P: What's the worst job you've ever had?
BROWN: "One of the worst was a job I had in Midtown Manhattan. I was temping, and I had to enter people's names into the computer who hadn't paid their bills. It was a bad one."
|
