The Funky Greg Brown Trivia Quiz

Answer: A Prairie Home Companion

Greg Brown (born 1949) grew up with solidly American roots out of the South and Midwest, with family in preaching, mining, teaching and music. Greg learned the banjo at age 12 from his grandmother, and at 18 took a job in New York city, then on to LA to make his own name.

He was a songwriter for Buck Ram, the former lead singer of the Platters. But Brown rejected the "biz of show biz" and returned to the Midwest. He was hired on at Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion", a live music, variety and comedy radio show.

There Brown's quirky, irreverent, and sometimes biting songs about human nature and everyday life found a broad audience. Brown was a regular on the show 1983 to 1987.

Answer: Farmers

"Our Little Town" is an Americana lament for local farms and the tiny towns that grew up within them. The song is found on Greg Brown's, "One More Goodnight Kiss" (1988).

"And I don't have to read the news, or hear it on the radio. I see it in the faces of everyone I know. The cost goes up, what we made comes down. What's gonna happen to our little town?..." A more hopeful and whimsical song about farming is Brown's "Summer Evening": "I get the feeling things may be all right, on a summer evening, before the dark of night..."

Answer: A nice day

"I Don't Want to Have a Nice Day" by baritone Greg Brown appears on his chatty, "The Live One", recorded live in Traverse City, Michigan in 1994.

"I been up, honey, all night long, It felt right, now it feel wrong. I just wanna feed my misery 'The Boston Globe', and some black coffee. I don't wanna have a nice day, And I wish you wouldn't say, That to me..."

Answer: A Poison Tree

William Blake's "A Poison Tree" is from the collection "Songs of Experience", about the dark side of human nature. Greg Brown sings "A Poison Tree" on his "Songs of Innocence and of Experience", produced by Red House Records (1986 and 1992). Brown's deep tones are accompanied on this sometimes despairing, sometimes uplifting album by bass, violin, mandolin, accordion, harmonica, and pan pipes.

In "A Poison Tree" a person harbors deep resentment and fury, growing this hatred into a tree, which bears a poison apple his enemy covets, steals and eats.

The tree grower is glad the apple kills his enemy.

Answer: End

Greg Brown sings the 1789 William Blake poem, "A Poison Tree". Though many have argued the meaning of the poem, Brown's song seems simply to say that shared anger ends. When fury is harbored and fed, it grows into a tree of poison, as the chilling words suggest: "...I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I watered it in fears, Night and morning with my tears, And I sunned it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles...". Brown's album, "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" (1986 and 1992) features other Blake poems about the ugly and the beautiful sides of human nature.

This is a rare album in that Brown sings words he did not write.

Answer: Dreams

"Waiting on You" from the album "Covenant" (2000) is a simple tune about an unkind woman who is never home, and a man who waits for her, though he can't live on "dreams". He tells himself one day he's going to walk out, "Without a why, without a cry, without a kiss", though the threat sounds empty. "Covenant" was named in the "Top 10 of 2000" by "Pop/Matters", an international online pop culture magazine. Curiously, some songs on this album were panned as "mediocre" folk.

Answer: Coffee houses

Greg Brown frequents the intimate coffee houses of Midwestern towns, favoring Iowa City, Iowa, and Minneapolis, though he has filled a concert hall many times. Brown's, "Freak Flag" (2011) was made in Memphis, Tennessee, with bare bones instruments. Music critic Mark Saleski of "No Depression, the Roots Music Authority" wrote of "Freak Flag": "The shelter as metaphor for perseverance through life's trials is an emotional high point" of this album. Actor Jeff Bridges named Greg Brown in his "top five favorite musicians", and sang Brown's "Brand New Angel" in the film "Crazy Heart".

Answer: Wall

"Why We Build the Wall" is copyright protected, so I can't share its words with you. It's a powerful, distressing piece in which children repeat their lessons on building walls, because of fear and greed. The song was recorded on the highly acclaimed 2010 folk opera album "Hadestown", by Anais Mitchell. Greg Brown played Hades, a role well-suited to a baritone voice.

Greg Brown was nominated for a Folk Alliance Award in 1997. His album "The Poet Game" (1994), and "One Big Town" (1989) both won an Indie award. "Friend of Mine" (1993) and "Slant 6 Mind" (1997) each earned a Grammy nomination. "The Iowa Waltz-30th Anniversary Edition" (2013) celebrates thirty years of music.

Answer: Dark

"In The Dark With You" (1985) by Greg Brown is a soulful love song purred out in Brown's craggy style: "Every day every night all over my whole life through, I just want to be in the dark with you...". He's "reaching out", he says, whereas a lot of people in the dark "don't know what to do". Brown is accompanied by Prudence Johnson singing background, and musicians on bass, mandolin, violin, conga, button accordion and pan pipes. Pan pipes are an ancient instrument loosely akin to the flute, and possibly the oldest wind instrument in the world.

Answer: Funky

"Help Me Make It Through This Funky Day" appears on "In the Dark With You" (1985) which offers other wryly humorous songs, including "Who Woulda Thunk It", "All the Money's Gone" and "Who Do You Think You're Fooling".

"I don't want to go out, because I'm tired of the door, I'm tired of everybody actin like it's weirded out 1954...hold on to my shoulders, baby, I'm sinkin so low...oh will ya baby will ya help me...ya gotta help me...make it through this funky day..."