Canned goods
I love this Greg Brown song about visiting his grandmother and eating her canned food. The patter in the middle of the song is very funny; Brown could be a stand-up comic. But the song’s poetry, too, particularly these lines:
She got magic in her, you know what I mean
She puts the sun and rain in with the green beans……She cans the pickles, sweet and dill
And the songs of the whip-or-will
and the morning dew and the evening moon
I really gotta go down and see her soon
Cause the canned goods that I buy at the store
Ain’t got the summer in em anymore
You bet Grandma as sure as you’re born
I’ll take some more potatoes and a thunder storm…
Here’s the song, plus the comedy bit in the middle:
When I listen to that song, I sometimes think of this poem by British poet Philip Larkin, addressed to his late father. It couldn’t be more different in tone. As warm and loving and nostalgic as Brown’s song is, that’s how depressed and time-burdened, how despairing, Larkin’s poem is. The last stanza of Larkin’s poem illustrates why the Greg Brown song conjures it up in my mind:
An April Sunday brings the snow
Making the blossom on the plum trees green,
Not white. An hour or two, and it will go.
Strange that I spend that hour moving betweenCupboard and cupboard, shifting the store
Of jam you made of fruit from these same trees:
Five loads ”“ a hundred pounds or more ”“
More than enough for all next summer’s teas.Which now you will not sit and eat.
Behind the glass, underneath the cellophane,
remains your final summer ”“ sweet
And meaningless, and not to come again.
Very poignant. My father was the gardener in our family and also the one who did the canning, which he learned helping his mother in the 1930’s. He’s gone now and this poem made me shed a tear.
Neo,
Have you experienced a GB concert? For years and years he performed several times a year at The Mill in Iowa City and Legion Arts in Cedar Rapids, both are very intimate venues. Unfortunately for his fans he does not perform anywhere near as much as he used to….. mostly benefit gigs for organizations like Seed Savers in Decorah. But in consolation we get plenty of opportunities to hear Iris Dement in flyover country. She is the opposite of GB on stage… she always appears a bit nervous during the opening number.
How lovely and comforting to read the Greg Brown lyrics as the dead leaves blow around the park and the early November darkness closes in. I can just about taste that blackberry jam.
I just wish that when the lyrics are that good you didn’t have to sit all aquiver with your eyes closed and your ears focused like a dog who thinks he may have heard the word walk.
parker:
Actually, I’ve seen Greg Brown in concert maybe 8 or so times. I first became acquainted with him about 25 years ago. For the first ten or fifteen years his concerts were great. Then about ten or so years ago he started phoning it in, I’m afraid. Maybe he’s sick of touring. I don’t know. But I haven’t been going to see him for the last five years or so, because I think he’s lost energy for it.
Maybe marriage to Iris has made him too content 🙂 ?
Speaking of Iris, there’s this.
I’ve never been a big fan of folk music, but how can you not like Greg Brown?
It’s been more than forty years since I first heard him play. (Parker, this was at “The Sanctuary” in Iowa City, but — like you — I also saw him many times at “The Mill.”) About that time, Greg Brown and a bunch of other people in eastern Iowa started making music that mixed a few different genres. It was “Americana” long before that term was coined.
Quite a few of them are still playing, and now some of their children have also become pretty good musicians. Greg Brown’s daughter, Pieta, has been very successful. Before becoming the regular accompanist to Greg Brown and Pieta Brown, Bo Ramsey fronted a series of great bands, and now two of his sons play in a band called “The Pines.” Anyway, I think that eastern Iowa has an underestimated regional music, and it deserves a wider audience.
End of promotional message.
My wife wants Iris’s Let the Mystery Be played at her funeral. I hope to be absent as I told her a few days after our wedding that I get to die first.
Cornflour,
Yes, Eastern Iowa has lots of great folk/folk rock/ country rock music. We (my sweet one and I) are regulars at Legion Arts in CR. One of our favorite performances at LA was GB, Karen Savoca, and Pete Heitzman blending their talents. IMO Savoca/Heitzman are an under rated duo,
I’ve certainly been out of the loop on Greg Brown and Northern Exposure, but I loved that song. It takes me back to my childhood when we picked fruits and canned food. When I was young, Thanksgiving was pig butchering day at mom’s fathers. Springtime was mushroom hunting time, summer was for swimming im creeks, and fall was for making apple butter. This will bring back some memories to be thankful for this year.