Philadelphia Weekly

MUSIC

With Folk Singer Greg Brown, the Past Is Always Present

By Jeffrey Barg

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Jan. 5, 2011

Ain’t got the summer in ’em anymore. (“Canned Goods”)

Brown sang soft and warm about how much better foods taste when you can make them yourself, and offered up slow food as the perfect antidote to a fast-paced world. In between songs, we drank juice from mason jars and she taught me about grains and fruits and veggies—a culinary universe heretofore unexplored.

On the way home from the concert, I confessed my crush, and she confessed that she was more into girls. But if you’d asked me then, I’d have told you I’d never eat processed food again.

A few years later, on another first date, the lyrics to Brown’s “If I Had Known” seemed to be playing themselves out in real time:

She was older than me, I guess, and summer was invented for her to wear that dress/ [which had always struck me as just about the perfect line]

I knew about risk, and she knew about proof, and that night she took me up on the roof/ [It was after dinner near the Art Museum and a walk through the galleries, where I, completely ignorant about any of the artwork, made exceedingly witty comments about the other museum patrons. We ended up back at her place, standing on her roof deck, where the Cira Centre—just about a year old—jumped out of the Schuylkill skyline.]

The shooting stars and meteorites, we went on a ride through the sky that night (“If I Had Known”)

She cooked me dinner one time after that, but it was too late. Sometime between the Art Museum date and the dinner date, I met my wife—who doesn’t really have much interest in folk music anyhow.

Sat., Jan. 9, 8pm. $29.50. Sellersville Theater 1894, 24 W. Temple Ave., Sellersville. 215.257.5808. st94.com

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