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Patrick John Brayer

~ Fieldnotes from Wrongtario

Patrick John Brayer

Tag Archives: Songwriting

Song Eulogy for Chris Darrow (1944-2020)

26 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by patrickjohnbrayer in Profiles

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Chris Darrow, Influential, Local Music, Memories, Obituaries and Memorials, Songwriting

Darrow 70's headshot.jpeg

Photo: Steve Cahill

I wrote the song Empty Cage Behind (SH-V60) to eulogize in my own fashion my long-time friend and mentor, Christopher Lloyd Darrow who passed on January 15, 2020.  First off, I’ll talk a little about my songwriting process in the hopes that it will keep all apologies I might feel I need to spout nestled at bay, ghost grey, confined but peering out witchy between the lines.  For a video of the performance at Chris’s memorial, see the bottom of the page.

The need to avoid early compromise is built right into the process, so as a creator it’s always an ongoing struggle to not let the nagging voice of insecurity, perched on the shoulder, sucker-punch the whole affair.  Literary surgery may work later, but at the start it won’t help, due to the simple fact that you can’t go there if you don’t know what you’re doing as of yet. I started into motion, in this case, with just an overall image of Chris in my head, and then I begin to conjure the paint of language.  As soon as I get going it is crucial that I just get out of the way, side-stepping, and letting the imagery flood in somewhat cinematically on its own accord.  I won’t call it a trance, mainly for the well-deserved fear that Wavy Gravy might appear at my doorstop looking for his lost macramé commune sandals.

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Christopher Lloyd Darrow (1944-2020) Remembrance

17 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by patrickjohnbrayer in Profiles

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Chris Darrow, Influences, Influential, Local Music, Memories, Obituaries and Memorials, Songwriting

63294_451537522763_4414085_n.jpg

(photo: Robert Morrow)

It is with a bound and aching heart that I announce the passing of my dear friend Christopher Lloyd Darrow on January 15, 2020. He stood for me, as he did with many, as a treasured friend, mentor, brother-figure, father-figure, and professorial inspiration as to the inner workings of the artistic lifestyle. He had one of the most original voice stylings I’ve ever witnessed, tone somehow filtered through the jowls. “King of the jowl singers” I like to say. That originality spread over into everything he touched, be it slide guitar, fiddle, photography, or a self-realized philosophy. It was all one thing to him. Continue reading →

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Ray Collins: A World Without Ray Amen

19 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by patrickjohnbrayer in Uncategorized

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Tags

Brayer Writing, Influential, Inland Empire Hall of Fame, Local Music, Songwriting

PBPh Collins-02.jpg

(photo: Patrick Brayer)

Included below is a song I wrote in honor of my friend Ray Collins. As a musician with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention he was legendary. As a humble street personage around the college town of Claremont, California, a Mount Rushmore of Karl Marx, Moses, General Custer, and Santa Claus, he daily gave Birkenstock life lessons to us all, and to me will always stand as a benchmark in zen heroic non-materialism. “You are only as wealthy as you act”, he once told me.  The lyric sort of sketches my feelings and the frozen event in which I found him comatose in his Chevy Astro, in one of those herringbone parking spaces, directly in front of the Claremont City Library. It was amazing how he just seemed to be sitting serenely in perfect balance in the driver’s seat. Some uneaten fruit awaited on the dashboard as, like him, a humble posthumous feast. When I came afterwards to check on him at Pomona Hospital I brought him a statue of General Lee, in hopes to to make him laugh as soon as he regained consciousness. Although that wasn’t meant to be, I said a farewell to him and headed out to Alabama for Christmas. I sat to write the song on Christmas day there just after hearing the news of his death from my friend, and noted columnist, and Collins champion, David Allen, of The Daily Bulletin. When I arrived home we were Rayless. I’ve also include below a link to him singing “Anything” from the Ruben and the Jets LP, which I think establishes him without a doubt as one of the greatest white soul voices of his time.

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Song Backstory: World Trade Sinner

01 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by patrickjohnbrayer in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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Song Back Story, Songwriting

Song Backstory: World Trade Sinner / Patrick Brayer

I thought it might be interesting to offer up some song backstory as part of this ongoing online journal effort. I was at breakfast this morning with my daughter Eleanore. Was that the sound of bacon cooking, or the smell of ship to shore radio static?  I started whistling a song, almost more in an attempt to see if I could even still whistle, than it was entertainment. I don’t know where it came from, as I tried to place its source. First I thought it was an old famous melody, and then it all came back to me, I wrote it. And then the background circumstance behind the behind began to trickle in. I can’t remember the original name of the song, as that shortsightedness is part of the circumstance itself. The song it became I re-titled, World Trade Sinner.

PB Mind Museum sign-1.jpg

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Frizz Fuller: Sitting On the Dock of the Way

06 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by patrickjohnbrayer in Uncategorized

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Brayer Writing, Influences, Inland Empire, Inland Empire Hall of Fame, Local Music, Songwriting

Frizz Fuller: Sitting on the Dock of the Way

By Patrick Brayer 1996

Making the pilgrimage from the mattress to the writing typer, I look back briefly to distinguish a fossil in the sheets in the shape of a coiled man. I greet you with wet hair and only the best intentions, like as if I were jazz bassist Sam Jones distracting a listener, with rodeo clown flourishes, from an unbeknownst outside world. I’ve been to Vegas, stayed at a motel where only colorless fighter pilots stay. Its’ not as if they’re boring, or that they keep CD’s exposed in the blistering heat on the dashboard of their industrial looking muscle cars for no good reason. Perhaps it’s just that the U.F.O. creatures have removed the portion to their brain that buys into a great deal of the adult contemporary acoustic shinola. We can only hope.

Frizz Paint orig copy.jpg(photo: Patrick Brayer)

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Video

The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn

28 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by patrickjohnbrayer in Music

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Tags

Alison Krauss, Song Interpretation, Songwriting, Union Station

This is the song adaptation chronology of my slide guitar version of, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn.

My first experience with the tune was in my teens from the Harry Smith LP box Collection on Folkways Records, a folk goldmine which my brother Mike and I would wrangle from the Fontana Library every chance we could.  The song was originally titled The Lazy Farmer Boy.

Here’s a link to that first influential 78RPM recording, which was recorded for Columbia Records in 1931 by Buster Carter and Preston Young

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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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Discography and Resources

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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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