EARL BROOKS songwriter guitar harmonica vocals JERRY LEWIS producer guitar vocals TRISTAN FOX drums BRAD MOORE bass
Featured on the recording "Snowy River": CAROLYN BOYLE vocals ERIC BRAUCH bass MIKE BIERNBAUM keyboards
Influences
Neil, Bob, Lips, Stones, Conway, Hank, Wilco, Austin Kitty Limits, Kinks, Velvet Underground, Soft Boys... When you grow up in the high lonesome the days run fast and slow at the same time. A time flux as irrigation pipes are changed and web sites get watered. Reaching for an outlet to see the world from the safety of dirt town.
I can hear you. I used to be there.
Sounds Like
Four beers before 10 am, a playing card scraped slowly across the face of an old hobo...
October 5, 2008
Sacramento Single: Ghosts of Wyoming' "I Have a Brain"
Earl Brooks only moved to Sacramento five months ago but he's had one toe-tapping foot in the River City for much longer.
Brooks' band, Ghosts of Wyoming, was born in Seattle - his home for 26 years. But, after meeting Sacramento guitarist Jerry Lewis at a gig, the band slowly shifted to include more parts Sac than Seattle.
"I just woke up one day and decided it was time for a chance so I made my girlfriend mad and told her I was moving," he says
The pair still talk on the phone twice daily and her influence is notable in the lyrics Brooks writes for his rollicking country-rock tunes.
Drawing from true life inspiration, he says, is the only way he can write.
"I can't write from anyone else's perspective but my own," he says.
"I can't sit down and say 'I'm going to write about a truck driver -it just comes out sounding like a 17-year-old's essay."
Ghosts of Wyoming
Song: "I Have a Brain"
Style: Bar room brawlin' Americana
Behind the song: "I really like this song because it's got a great opening line, 'I was born in a one stripper town," Brooks says.
"That's a running joke with me and my sweetheart - her dad was an oil executive in Los Angeles ... and I grew up in eastern Idaho and Wyoming so the song is about the dynamics of two very different people coming together."
In addition to Brooks and Lewis the band also includes drummer Tristan Fox, bassist Brad Moore,singer Mary Louise Picerno and keyboardist / lap steel player Brett Lemke.CQ
Much of GOW's music reflects influences such as the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Neil Young but "I Have a Brain" also taps into his love for the Flaming Lips.
"There are these two lap steel parts buried in the mix and they just come in and out of the song," he says. "The Flaming Lips have really tweaked my head as far as emotional content and general weirdness. There's a certain joy to their music that's really powerful."
Good to have you as a friend! So great to see the internet in action this way, shortening distances between people.
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HSB was a madhouse but where else are you gonna be able to see Elvis Costello cover Friend of the Devil. Ralph Stanley, Emmy Lou (sp), and all the others (Steve Earle,Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Dave Alvin etc etc etc).
Earl, Hey you're in Califa?!? Wow man we'll have to get together, you should cruse on down to San Diego. Did you make it over to San Fran for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass?
Hope for the best for you in SF, everywhere and always. Keep me updated on any plans for a SW tour as I just bought a house out here in the Wild, Wild West. Check out this artist: http://www. myspace. com/joerathbone. Great guy, I helped him get booked at Pappy and Harriet's.
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