Drunk as a hoot owl,
writing letters
by thunderstorm.
~Jack Kerouac
Chris Brecht moved to Austin 2006 with a girlfriend from Boulder, Colorado. After a series of misfortunes, including break-up with the girl, Brecht quickly found himself with nowhere to live. In the middle of the night, he moved his belongings into a room he rented a room at the St. Elmo Motel, a cheap complex on the south side of Austin notorious for drug-addicts, vagrants, and drunks. It was the dead of winter and the next night the pipes burst and flooded the room.
The Great Ride is a collection of ten folk country songs filled with edgy guitar playing, beat-poet lyricism, and Brecht’s off-pitch Dylan-esque drawl. The reviews were great. Chris Brecht earned comparison to Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Ryan Adams. Seattle Weekly: “In a lazy drawl that sounds like a hybrid cross between Ryan Adam’s soulful North Carolina slur and Bob Dylan’s off-pitch nasal mutterings, Austin songwriter Chris Brecht croons about trains, lost love and the nomadic life with the same passion and timeless appeal of greats from Woody Guthrie to Willie Nelson…” the Seattle Weekly.
The Great Ride is anything but contrived. From the subject matter to production, the album reeks of authenticity. The record was cut “Basement Tapes” style in three days. With everyone in one room, the band recorded the entire album in the studio live on 2” tape-the way records used to be made. According to Brecht, analog tape “...adds a warmth and beauty that digital recording has a hard time capturing. The whole process is different. ” He even goes a step further and writes all of his song by hand or on his typewriter. Sitting on the floor of his apartment thumping away into the dead of the night, Brecht stays up until 2,3,4 o’clock in the morning piecing his songs together. “When the world gets silent, I can hear, ” Brecht explains. In an age where everything is run by computers, it’s refreshing and comforting to come across music with such honesty and depth.
Chris Brecht’s poetic songs retrace his journey through the many emotions of love, loneliness, confusion, the struggle and sensation of letting go, and the freedom and exhilaration of embracing the new. Heavily influenced by the writings of Hemmingway, Kerouac, and Gary Snyder, Brecht’s songwriting takes on a very literate evocative quality with subject matter that shifts from personal confessions to allusive stories. The songs he writes are evidence to his nomadic life, relationships, and the people he encounters. “They’re about living life and having no excuses for how you’ve done it.” Chris Brecht lives life by embracing every experience for what its worth, holding nothing back, traveling hard distances, taking chances, and living with no regrets.
“All that stuff happens on its own,” says Brecht describing his life. “Just like livin' when you're really livin'. Travelin' is travelin', it's not just sight seein'. When you're livin', things just happen on their own. Meeting people. Being in places you never thought you'd be. You can't do too much looking around. You just gotta keep your senses sharp and make sure you keep movin'.”
In the year and a half since the release of The Great Ride, Brecht has toured the country, grabbed remarkable radio play, and formed a steadily growing fan-base across the nation. Within the past year, Chris Brecht has restructured his band The Dead Flowers Earlier this summer, Chris spent two weeks touring solo across northern Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, sleeping on sofas and driving endlessly through the night. Now, Chris Brecht has returned to Austin with a new batch of songs, experiences, and a wealth of new stories to tell.
Currently, Chris Brecht and the Dead Flowers are recording the follow-up to The Great Ride. The poet-troubadour and his edgy new alt-country get-up, the Dead Flowers are making music that is entirely unique and unlike any of the traditional alternative country music coming out of Austin. Updates are posted at www.deadflowermotel.com The songs are chic and soulful, like the sunset strip in the 1970s, with a fearless mix of bright guitar tones, swooping organ, jagged electric leads and a landscape of poetry. With his traditional folk roots far off in the distance, the new material possesses an air of L.A. chic country. The songs are faster with new influences that re-define the boundaries of alt-country genre.
....
Nowhere Tejas....
by chris brecht....
....
....
Even the nights are too hot to breathe....
the
air sticks and hangs around the edges of the door frames....
coming through the cracks like a fog or some horror movie
disease ....
that attacks your skin, face and lungs.. ....
....
I wake up in the middle of the
night, humming tune. I sleep hard after a few drinks. But like tonight, with no
drinks, I’m fertile and woken often by thoughts that are not subconscious. And there is stress too. You know the
think air of stress. But you can’t
worry too much these days about being behind in your bills. It’s not really
your fault. and me, I just pretend like I don’t have any. But we don’t eat very
much. The kitchen is bare. The refrigerator drips condensation onto the floor.
The seal is broken. The light flickers when I look inside to the
emptiness. No condiments.. just a
couple sticks of butter, some red pepper sauce, a bag of coffee.
Song.
....
I spilled this one the other day. … when the colors of a man they just bleed away….even the
crow has got nothing to say.. don’t matter how hard it was for me to get here..
I’m with you. I’m with you. I’m with you now. ....
....
It
is Sunday morning.. I just saw a car accident on Highway 35.. a block from my
house on the central eastside.. A highway that is full of cars. The accident
must have backed up traffic from here to san Antonio.. Big black dodge pickup
hit a minivan. The minivan hit a red Toyota sedan.
I think, because it is Sunday,
sunny and only about 92 degrees, no one is agitated. People stand around like pioneers. migrating north. More concerned is the police car. The accident front to rear on about 3
cars didn’t hurt anyone, but it looked bad enough to scare the piss out of
them.. and probably anyone else who saw it close up.. There is a coffee shop on
that corner. It isn’t open. Owl Roast Coffee. They started this remodel of an
old gas station, which at one point was also a Scuba shop.. but it has now been
well over a year and they haven’t sold a single cup of coffee, far as I can
tell. So unless this is some front to a business, or some fine folks with a
good idea and not enough money,, I think all they got now is front row seats to
a very congested highway.. I drink my coffee black.
I
drink my coffee black. I wake up and I write. the hot air from tejas, a state
that I don’t understand, clings at my windows. I am open about tejas. It is
open to me. we have a relationship… probably pretty similar to Jesus and the
Devil. Except we don’t know who is
who. I can say this… The inferno
is not of my creation.. The inferno is very clear about it’s intentions, trust,
and passersby.. Clearly.. tejas is a borderland.. a spirit as much as a
territory.. a land before destination.
I am here… Finding peace it its swimming holes only rarely. The green branches and vines that reach
over the ivy and trails..
College girls run. Women run. Dogs Run. Fat men walk. Homeless sit.. That is the timing of
trails.. Hour hand. Second
hand. Culture exists here. More
than most places in America. Mostly because of the mix of influences. People
come to tejas. Tejas does not go to people. It staples its stamp on everything.
Cars, Trucks, License Plates. Businesses. There is a culture wanting here.
There is a working culture. Labor workers. There are business men who will
build over a piece of creek, garden or an old home in a blink because they see
$$. There are people who will buy despite this injustice to “tejas” even though
they are proud to be here. Proud to cultivate. Proud to invest. Proud to share.
Proud to drink local coffee. Proud to buy local vegetables. Proud to walk in
the parks. Proud to drink beer in their front yards. Proud to garden. Proud to
compost. Proud to sleep.. Proud to
tear down and build up again. I
saw 50 three hundred year old oak trees cut down to build a condo. The locals
complain. They turn in their stomachs. They bitch. They drink coffee and get
tattoos. We all bitch about things here. Sometimes it’s too hot to live.
A mural along 5th
streets back alleys by the rail road tracks reminds me of Austin’s Mexican
culture. It stretches a full city block.. Bright reds and greens and yellows on
the faces of people and their clothes. The air between me and the mural
swelters like the air above a fire.. All the images dance in stillness through
the air.
Remember me and don’t forget me. It
says. It’s the middle of the night
when the train passes on the tracks that are covered by the long grass. A man
comes up to me selling jumper cables. I don’t want any. I have my own. This makes him angry. And I laugh and get into my truck.
Time will tell me
why I’m here
and you tell me
what you’re needing to hear.
I’m back.. Wherever I came from.
Music is up and down. I sing songs.
I have busked for extra dollars. I
have travel to Conroe, San Antonio, Amarillo, Lubbock, Denton. Towns where
people love you and you don’t know why. But they don’t wait. They don’t
whisper. People in Tejas whisper and dust falls from their lips. They cry and mud forms on their
cheeks. They laugh and their skin
shines in the sun. I travel north.. Towns like Durango, Telluride, Ouray, Ft
Collins. Boulder. I know them.
They are covered with trees.. and Microbreweries. People drink early. They go
to be early. Filled with plump beer.. Those towns are fun. They don’t spit.
They don’t burn. I have not yet been to Terlingua. I’m looking at October like it is a friend I will meet. That
is the charm of keeping a calendar.
White Stone. White Stone. White
Stone.
The man who lives across the street
from me died. He was old. His dog
was older. They were partners. He would sit in his pickup all night and drink
beer. The back of his pickup was filled with at least 500 empty cans of
Icehouse. He would sit. And stare down the road. The dog sat on the grass
outside the door to his pickup.. Rusted brown dog. Rusted blue truck. He died. And now a no trespassing sign
hangs on the gate acting more like an invitation to an empty house. The fence
is tilted, worn gray, and broken slats tilt into one another. The man was charming because he was as
reliable as an oak tree or a neighborhood stray cat that sits on the roof of
cars. His ghost is still there…with an Icehouse in hand.
Dead grass. Dead Leaves. Dead
Flowers.
Tejas … a Dead Flower Motel...
a place.. for being everywhere
....
For Rent… I now have a band in Taos.. The music is much
different from the full torque alt-country music that my band makes in
Austin. We formed without
planning, and more like a poker game.
I know of a gig. You know of a gig. Let’s play the gig. Now we
have a game. Let’s go to Durango. ....
It was February. Hard rain all over the adobe surface of
City. I was in Santa Fe, lost in a
mess of hard rain, bad directions and traffic. In the Safeway grocery store parking lot, a girl young in
her twenties, wearing skins and a coon skin hat, asks me for a smile. I give it
to her. gladly.
Taos is just up the hill. Follow
the road yer on. Rain turned to snow, and
snow fell hard. Like a million birds swooping from the sky. Not like heavy deep and quiet mountain
snow, but New Mexico frozen rain that turned white and lightning continued to
flash behind the curtain of lace snowfall.. Lightning out of the snow clouds. A
complete white out on my windshield.
Cars pulled off the road. Traffic moved at walking speed. Light. Dark.
Water. Road. White line. Hills. Casino lights. Gas Stations. This stretch of highway is just an
accomplice to an outlawed memory of travel.
Up hills. Highway splits.. Cuts the
adobe. And turns down into the valley. Pass the river. 6 inches have fallen
since Santa Fe.
Up a mountain. Down a mountain.
Welcome to Taos.
In a gas station, the indigenous
laborers are inside buying coffee, sodas,
cupcakes and cigarettes.
The work day is done. I need a few more dollars of gas to finish the
trip.
The world is beautiful as white is
movement. People are cult. Culture
is art. Think heavy banks of white snow line the road. Traffic lights flash
yellow. Red at times. Pick up truck slips out the gas station. I buy gas. And
stand in the slush water of gas station rainbows at my feet. My boots soak. My
jeans soak to the shins.
Welcome. 6pm. 35 degrees. I need
an extra layer of skin.....
The Adobe Bar at the Taos Inn.
Firelight. Margarita. Adobe walls. Native Art. 2 feet of snow. And tortilla
soup. Where am I not? This music is still as a chicken coup. Frozen like water
in a gutter. Skilled. Like snow decorating the sky over an empty sidewalk. I see pavement. Cactus in desert.
Yellow glow. Turn table. Travelers drink. Rich ones. Poor Ones. Tourists in
Taos stick out like bright pink and white flags. Mothers and daughters wear
matching snowsuits. Locals locale. Our three piece siloouettes the crow.
Lapsteel and Mandolin.
....
Black light is the shadows twin.
One more drink..
Midnight comes quickly.
We load gear in the alley. Flashers on.
Snow 6 inches high on the roof top.
Hope the
stars see this. Foxtrot lives forever. Black Rodeo.
Streetlight yellow against snow.
Midnight. Empty streets.
Midnight. Broken fence.
Frozen Puddle Midnight. Ice is quick here.
Midnight.
....
Let’s get a drink at the bar in
town. After that, follow me, I have a sofa for you to sleep on. It’s at my friend Sarah’s house. She’s
cool. We’re going to ski in the morning. You can sleep late…
I don’t sleep that much. The morning is bright as the sun
reflecting on snow.
Snow covers the town. I have to leave. Gotta get back to
Santa Fe. Snow becomes slush. Dirt roads become mud. I remember you.
Morning is for lovers and
travelers. Today, I am the latter.
Going out. Going out. Going out.
Chris Brecht and the Dead Flowers at the Gibson Showroom
This is about the best bio I've got right now. It was written by Laurie Gallardo at KUT 90.5 FM Austin. She runs this program called "Texas Music Matters." I always thought that according to Texans everything in Texas Matters. I'm from Colorado. So i get to look at Texas from the outside in, even though I'm living here right now... Here's what Laurie has to say:
Chris Brecht isn’t exactly sure why he moved from Boulder, CO to Austin about three years ago, but it proved to be a fruitful decision. He released Night Highway 99 Sessions, a 2-song project formatted like an old 45 record, and started making the rounds about town.
There’s nothing really restricting a songwriter like Brecht to the “alt.-country” label. He digs more deeply into traditional roots and Americana, inspired by influences like Dylan but not imitating them. He’s even gone a step further by casting aside digital recording in favor of capturing his sound on a 2-inch reel-to-reel. That’s how he recorded his 2008 release, The Great Ride. ~ Laurie Gallardo KUT 90.5 FM
From the SEATTLE WEEKLY:
In a lazy drawl that sounds like a hybrid cross between Ryan Adams' soulful North Carolina slur and Bob Dylan's off-pitch, nasal mutterings, Austin songwriter Chris Brecht croons about trains, lost love and the nomadic life with the same passion and timeless appeal of greats from Woody Guthrie to Willie Nelson. And his devotion to all things retro extends to his songwriting and recording techniques: not only does he use a typewriter to put his poetic travelin' songs to paper, his debut album, The Great Ride, was recorded entirely to 2" tape. "I don't think I'll ever make a digital record, anymore," Brecht says. "I don't think that tape really makes [music] sound old or vintage; I just think that tape adds such a warmth and beauty that digital can't quite capture." This will be Brecht's very first Northwest tour, and though he's flying solo this time, he hopes to return by car soon with his full band, including organist Matt Mollica and his Hammond B3 (because Mollica refuses to play an electronic keyboard, ever.) Let's hope gas prices don't make that tour impossible, because the full band complete with B3 will be a sight to behold. If Bumbershoot and its country-heavy lineup isn't in the cards for you this weekend, checking out Chris Brecht should be.
www.seattleweekly.com
Willamette Weekly - Portland, Oregon- It’s always nice to run across something suprising in the mail. Such was the case with Austin troubadour Chris Brecht’s 2008 release The Great Ride. The album is lyrically desperate, funny and poetic—something there’s plenty of time to consider given the sparse production. Brecht sounds somewhere between Loudon Wanwright, Alex Chilton and Slow Train Coming-era Bob Dylan. And despite the name drops here, Brecht is unique: His delivery is resigned and but not dispassionate, his songs homespun but not overly sentimental. And slide guitar just kicks my ass. CASEY JARMAN.
Have Guitar, Will Travel - the Santa Fe Reporter
There are an infinite number of young, aspiring musicians armed with nothing more than a guitar and a ravenous appetite for success. But only a few ever make it as professional musicians. Austin-based singer-songwriter Chris Brecht is one artist who managed to crawl out of the masses to begin an impressive alt.country career that brims with promise.
~the Santa Fe Reporter
Wrote a song for these fine folks. They make the best blue cheeses in the world. I shoulda wrote a blues song..ha.ha.....
....from across the ocean
Medeproducer Brad Rice, bekend om zijn ‘leven en laten leven’ reputatie, speelt elektrische gitaar. Op het wrange ‘A Song About Fightbulbs’ intensifiëren Jackson’s pedalsteel en Brecht’s harmonica de desolate sfeer. De Nomadische singer-songwriter lijkt in zijn ‘Great Ride’ al over een privé-paspoort te beschikken dat hem ongetwijfeld naar grootse muzikale einders zal voeren. Zijn natuurtalent staat daar borg voor.
Marcie
www.rootstime.be
The music world is changing. We're all jumping on that train. This is where you click to buy a copy of the Great Ride
~If you were disappointed by Adams’ Cardinology get this instead and you’ll be happy. - Marquee Magazine, Denver, Colorado.
Past Reviews for "The Great Ride"
Eugene Weekly: Recording to Tape
Chris Brecht writes country music for the ages - by Sara Brickner
If Austin alt-country songwriter Chris Brecht’s debut record The Great Ride seems born of another era, that might be because Brecht himself is a little old-fashioned. He writes his songs on a typewriter. He doesn’t own a TV. And though digital recording is standard, Brecht committed The Great Ride to two-inch tape rather than computer memory.
“I don’t think I’ll ever make a digital record, anymore,” Brecht says. “I don’t think that tape really makes [music] sound old or vintage; I just think that tape adds such a warmth and beauty that digital can’t quite capture.” Brecht sings songs about traveling by rail (trains show up in about half of his songs, something he attributes to living near them for a good portion of his life) and love lost. You know, the same stuff that Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan sang about. But while these themes could seem gimmicky or contrived in the wrong hands, Brecht’s songs feel genuine, his lazy drawl a cross between the soulful North Carolina slur of Ryan Adams’ early work and Dylan’s nasal, off-pitch utterings. But in his processes as well as his day to day existence, Brecht prefers the old school to the new....
READ MORE AT www.eugeneweekly.com
the Austin Chronicle: "It's testament to the Austin songwriter's talent that The Great Ride is a trip worth retracing..." - Doug Freeman,
The Austin Chronicle
8 out of 10. Brecht is a troubadour in the Dylan sense. Wordy, poetic (with nods to the Beats) and existing in a space between Blonde on Blonde and the Basement Tapes. This is a collection of ten songs which, while rooted in Dylan’s late sixties sound, stand up on their own two feet and demand to be heard.
....this is an excellent debut. ... I reckon Brecht has the potential to go places if he continues in this vein. - Paul Kerr Americana UK
Brecht brings alt-folk-country to Austin with scruffiness, Woody Guthrie and beat poet lyrical undertones that make you feel like you are sitting shotgun with Kerouac at the wheel. The Great Ride, Brecht’s first full-length studio album release on Dead Leaf Records, hit the airwaves earlier this year and combines a nasal folkiness with guitar strums and lines of unfeigned poetry while sliding in harmonica, fiddle, Hammond B3 organ, and background harmony. The album has a freedom and restlessness with a folksy, bluesy, rock backbone. - Kathryn-Terese Haik
Austin Sound
5 stars.... ***** -
www.altcountry.nl
5 Stars.... ***** -
www.ctrlaltcountry.be
Belgium: Zijn schitterende verhaaltjes en dat typische nasaal stemgeluidje gaan Chris Brecht
ongetwijfeld opzadelen met het "Dylan" syndroom maar hij zal er heus niet van sterven. Brecht houdt
alles perfect onder controle, de diagnose van je moet en kan er mee leven is hem en ons op het lijf
geschreven ...dit schijfje is een must - have, misschien een kleine stap voor de mensheid maar een
grote stap voor Chris Brecht (SWA) -
www.rootsville.be
USA: We always seem to think that musicians who are in Austin today will be here forever -- and Chris
seems comfortable in his skin here, true, but how can we deny that this guy just might (just might!)
be swept along down the road only to play here once or twice a year before long- FlanFire www.myspace.com/flanfire
songs for: newspapermen, magazine women, and children, fog train brakemen, underwater sea captains,
country air mamas, barbed wire papas, for the delicate and afraid to communicate, always irritable
fair trade coffee lovers, jet pilots and jack rabbits, cocktails and cottontails, robe people, sandal
people, boot people, immigrants, natives, country folk, city folk, ramblers, gamblers, bluesers and
boozers, behind the curtain never gonna say hello kind of people, slick under the hood people, dirty
hand to clean hand people, somewhere in the moonlight i think i saw a church steple, i'm gonna make
it look like i'm happy all the time kinda people, the worlds always against me people, morning
cigarette and coffee people, one last drink before the night falls people, phonies, cops, leftover
garbage handlers, pan handlers, ginners, tricksters, hipsters, up all nightsleepalldaylivers, people
you never want to see again people, people you know you'll never see again people, southern bells,
poker sticks handlers, knife fight alley hunters, shakespeares, hemmingways, oates, goats, chickens,
pens, pencils, farmers, maids, ribbons and bows, xs and os, fishermen, postcard senders, love let
hers, quiet types, sellfish, shelfish, one road leading to the next, it's all a blind turn people,
wake up in the morning one town to the next people, i always got somewhere to go people, always never
sleeps people.
work in progress
Oregon Tour By Train
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