Americana is a music of marginal differentiations. Since its practitioners tend to use various blues-folk-country ready-mades to put across their lyrics, production can turn what might have been a pretty good record into a something a little better. That’s the story of Iowa-born singer-songwriter Greg Brown’s 40-year career — I recognize, for example, the craft that went into his 1982 song “Canned Goods,” a tune that prefigures many others about Brown’s relationship with his ancestors and his inclination to make a glutton of himself in the big wide world. But I’m also pleased to note he sounds like an Iowan Bryan Ferry fronting a local version of Roxy Music on some of the tracks on 1989’s proto-Americana full-length One Big Town, which benefits from Bo Ramsey’s production. His creaky, tuneless baritone puts across the songs on 2012’s grim Hymns to What Is Left, a record that will make you think twice about getting old. Ramsey, who has worked with Brown for a quarter-century, opens. EDD HURT
Greg Brown w/Bo Ramsey
