Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne showed up on the scene about 50 years ago with his debut album of exquisitely crafted songs.  Jackson's songs are always distinctly his own composition, simple, melodic, lyrically masterful and insightful.  He can be rowdy and raunchy in a light-hearted way as well.

I drove three hours south of the farm on which I reside, through the rolling wheatfields and rangeland of the Columbia Plateau.  This region was shaped in part by massive lava flows 17 to 9 million years ago.  The flows were so vast and extensive that they actually bent the mantle of the earth into a kind of bowl shape and the entire region from the upper Columbia River slopes gently downwards towards the confluence of the Snake River with the lower Columbia and the hundred mile gorge that leads to the sea.

Down near the bottom of this slope, nestled up against the Blue Mountains, you have the town of Walla Walla.  I always remember that refrain from Bugs Bunny cartoons as a kid -- I think it was the character of Elmer Fudd who would repeat in his inimitable accent, "Walla Walla Washington!"  Well, it's really there, after all.

My cousin Dave lives down there.  We grew up together on our mutual family farms, lived together in college.  Dave really is my oldest friend, two years younger, happily chosen by the fates.  We grew up listening to the music of the Sixties on AM radio.  It was our constant companion on the farm.  Wherever we were working, we would lug along a battery powered radio so we could groove on the airwaves while we worked, so to speak.  It was a happy way to be.

Anyway, Dave had scored a couple of tickets to see an artist we both have long admired, the aforesaid Jackson Browne.  I'd seen him solo in Seattle maybe 30-35 years ago and remember that he played all his songs note for note from the album cuts.

This was a different Jackson, with his remarkable band, loose, spontaneous, enjoying his repartee with the audience.  The venue was the kind you only find in America: a driving range with no golf course nearby.  Jackson said it was the best-sounding driving range he'd ever played on.  We took our lawn chairs and set up maybe 150 feet directly from center stage.  It was a low-key event.  On the perimeter of the range were stalls for food and drink.  People were relaxed and laid-back, and all older.  Not many young people in the audience.  We dreaded boomers, reliving our youth before heading for the grave, en masse.

Jackson was quite funny.  He sang what he said were the saddest and second saddest songs he ever wrote.  He said they were the same song: well, the same circumstances if not the same song.  His songs delineate the painful twists or ridiculous turns relationships take, non-allied political observations, songs of life, love, ideals lost or dearly held onto.  He broke away from his set list on three or four occasions and played songs suggested by the audience.  You have to be on your toes if you play in Jackson's band, it seems.

There was an intimate feeling to the whole occasion, partly because of the ambience of the setting, and a warmth to the whole evening despite the chill in the autumn air.

I looked for but didn't find videos posted from this concert.  There were a few others from concerts on this same tour, preceding ours by a few days.  But the sound was muddy and dim and it didn't do the dynamism of their performance justice.

So I've culled a small home performance of Jackson's recorded last year with the guitarist who is currently touring with him.  It's quite a typical Jackson Browne song, almost quintessentially so, in structure, sound, and lyric, and it has the intimate quality of the performance I attended, so I'm including it as an accurate sample of my experience.  Jackson played it during his concert encore/coda medley.  Enjoy.