Pieta Brown :: I Never Told
A few of country music’s most talented and interesting women have found a following in the wider music listening world: Gillian Welch, Lucinda Williams, Neko Case. In my (admittedly humble) opinion, Pieta Brown deserves to join their ranks.
I first saw her in the town of Homer, Alaska, playing a high school auditorium (the largest venue in town). She was opening for her father Greg Brown, but a friend of mine was driving four hours from Anchorage in order to see the opening act. That convinced me to go. The black stage was bare—just Pieta and Bo Ramsey and some spotlight. If there was a drummer, even, I don’t recall. I do recall that Pieta did this strange and wonderful thing while singing and playing guitar. She’d slowly lift one leg through a phrase of the song only to put it down again, then slowly raise it through the next phrase, all the time putting me in mind of a crane. Graceful, eerie, messenger-like.
It was hard for me to choose one song of hers, as, in the best possible way, they all blend into one. Not one song, exactly, but all evoke in me the feeling of rural summer. A day that’s humid, green and buggy, full of waiting. On a stretch of dirt road, one solitary house, its door too swollen to close.
I Never Told
Pieta Brown (homepage)