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Patrick John Brayer

~ Fieldnotes from Wrongtario

Patrick John Brayer

Tag Archives: Fontana

You Gotta Start a Trinity Somewhere

03 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by patrickjohnbrayer in Music, My Journal

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Brayer Writing, Childhood, Fontana, Memories

One electrifying set of childhoodish memory came rushing back to me today as I sat to watch a documentary film celebrating the career of record producer Ahmet Ertegun. The 1969 memory in question was presented to me via an old stand up, spring-motor driven, hand cranked, rosewood cabinet victrola that was stored in my grandfather’s house. I was fifteen years of age and just noticing, frightened by the stillness, how lonely it was in his empty house after his passing. I then happened across the player, and a clumsy black stack of musty shellac discs. It became my secret place of solace, and I hid in the listening, and it became the soundtrack of my life because nobody else wanted it. When you have three other siblings, and no money, you acquire your power where ye may. It was there that I stumbled across one particular 78RPM recording of one Big Joe Turner doing, Shake, Rattle and Roll on Atlantic Records.

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Move to Fontana, 1958

28 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by patrickjohnbrayer in My Journal, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Brayer Family History, Brayer Writing, Brayers, Fontana, Hardmans, John Brayer, Nutters

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Our family moved to Fontana, California in 1958. We came behind to join my grandfather John Brayer Sr. (1876-1969) already hunkered there. He moved into the valley region freeing himself from the past snow and cheese life of Marshfield Wisconsin. And this was where my father Ralph William Brayer (1921-1999) was subsistence-farm raised before his own WWII exodus into the Italian theater and purple-heartdom. In the 1950’s Fontana had a substantial population of Slovenians at the time, egg ranches, citrus orchard, and the Kaiser Steelmill was in full swing glory, later making our skies literally cough up iron. Slovenean polka music always swung hard at either the Slovene Hall, the KSKJ Hall, or at Mlakar’s Elbow Room on the main drag. It was also the nativity birthplace of the mythical real Hell’ s Angels motorcycle group, filling the taverns that embellished the mother road with smoke and threat, then later coming into prominence in print form by Hunter S. Thompson. My grandfather, upon migration from Yugoslavia, found himself in Calumet Michigan working as a copper miner, and there it was that himself, his wife, and two of their daughters were present in the tragic event which would lead to the Woody Guthrie ballad, The 1913 Massacre. It was amazingly a song which was already in my brother and I’s suburban hobo repertoire. When we finally learned or our grandparents involvement we were already barking it out on stage regularly at a coffee house plopped down in the barrio of Mt. Vernon St., San Bernardino, called The Penny University.

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Online Music Store

https://patrickbrayer.bandcamp.com/music

Pages

  • Brayerian Blog Introduction
  • Patrick Brayer : The Father of Dank Country
  • Short Chronological Trip to the Attribute Farm
  • Patrick Brayer Song History
  • Patrick Brayer Song Adaptation and Sessionography
  • The Secret Hits of Patrick Brayer Discography
  • Brayer Interview: Valley Daily Bulletin Sept. 2008
  • Patrick Brayer Acoustic Guitar Magazine Oct. 2001
  • Patrick Brayer: Video and Music Samples
  • New 2022 CD Available / Cabbage and Kings
  • Brayer Photos: Heroes in My Camp
  • Patrick Brayer Blog: Fieldnotes from Wrongtario

Recent Posts

  • Mike Davis (1946-2022) Fontana’s Own
  • Patrick Brayer: Unhinged and Unmistakable
  • Brayer: Cabbage and Kings / quotes and testimony
  • Patrick Brayer: Cabbage and Kings Lyrics and Commentary
  • Dick Barnes: Creosote Speaks
  • The Starvation Cafe Posters
  • Tim Weed: Calfskin Wonder
  • Saving the Dust for Last / Song analysis January 2021

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Recent Comments

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Recent Posts

  • Mike Davis (1946-2022) Fontana’s Own
  • Patrick Brayer: Unhinged and Unmistakable
  • Brayer: Cabbage and Kings / quotes and testimony
  • Patrick Brayer: Cabbage and Kings Lyrics and Commentary
  • Dick Barnes: Creosote Speaks
  • The Starvation Cafe Posters
  • Tim Weed: Calfskin Wonder
  • Saving the Dust for Last / Song analysis January 2021

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