The Evening Call wastes no time getting down to the business at hand. Right out of the gate Brown and his band set the tone for the rest of the record�s twelve tracks: a few strums of an acoustic guitar, followed by a pair of downward touches on slide guitar, the wire brushes against a snare drum, a couple piano keys rising and falling, and then comes that voice, deep and quavering, sounding like a Tom Waits country tremolo with half the smoke and twice the moon. �I woke up this morning wishing it would rain / All this heat and dryness is messing with my brain / Want to see some thunderheads rising up above the Great Plains / I woke up this morning kissing the pillow where your head has lain�. That�s how the opener �Joy Tears�, a slow, steady study of love, kicks things off, moving almost like a cowboy sitting low in the saddle, riding into the dying daylight, thinking about the woman that awaits him somewhere far off down the trail.
The slide guitar on �Joy Tears� is provided by Bo Ramsey, a man Greg Brown calls �Brother� in the liner notes and who, in addition to playing electric guitar on all tracks, also co-produced The Evening Call along with Brown. The two have been together now for almost a decade and a half, with Ramsey first joining Greg Brown on 1992�s stellar Dream Cafe, an album that moved away from the acoustic, hootenanny feel of Brown�s earlier records and introduced a tighter, more blues oriented approach that is evident throughout The Evening Call. Steve Hayes handles the drumming duties, Ricky Peterson tickles the ivories on piano and organ, and Rico Cialo rounds out the band on bass.
When it comes down to it, The Evening Call could almost be called a blues album, having more in common musically with an artist like Ray Wylie Hubbard and his recent work with Gurf Morlix than say, Nanci Griffith or some other luminary from the world of folk. You can hear it in moments on any number of tunes, but on no song does the comparison stand out more than on the pounding drums, filthy guitar, and half-spoken delivery of �Kokomo�. It�s a song about the places deep in the woods or deep in the hearts of men, a journey into landscape full of shifty characters and desperate desires, and it growls like a caged beast. It�s dark in this place and when you put it in song it goes something like this: �Dig my grave with a Bobcat, and throw in a couple of spuds / Asses to asses, butts to butts, red blood to red mud / Pass around a bottle of Jim Beam, play something on the banjo / If anybody asks you where I�ve gone, just tell �em to Kokomo�. Maybe it�s not a tune for those who may be light of heart, but damn when you get down to it, you can�t ignore those places, because for some of us they�re real � and for my money that�s the key to Greg Brown. Make it real � and when he does, very few do it better.
As he has on albums past, Greg Brown also paints a study of life with all its simple pleasures and beauties. Songs like �Mighty Sweet Watermelon� and �Conneville Slough� move the kitchen window curtains with a slight breeze, bringing with them the pictures of dancing sunflowers, old dogs lying beside pick up trucks, and kids eating watermelon and spitting out the seeds. And somehow, through it all, Greg Brown manages to save the best for last. Of all the songs on The Evening Call none is more touching or poignant than �Whipporwill�. The guitar picking is light and rolling and it comes off almost sounding like a child�s lullaby set to the sounds of a grandmother�s antique music box. �You are dearer to me than the birds or the stars / Sweeter to me than the hills and the flowers / Long as I have you I can take anything / So let love be home, and let the whippoorwill sing.� I remember hearing the whippoorwill�s call when I was a child. You always heard it in those hours just on the other side of the setting sun. You don�t hear them that much anymore. Maybe we�ve run them all off or cut down all their homes to make room for our own, but if I never hear that call again in my life it�s a sound I will never forget � it will always remain close to my heart. Or maybe � just maybe, they�re saving their voices for finer moments. Either way, thanks Greg.
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