The Grand Imagineer

Nope, you can't buy it at Hastings, Tower, CDNow, or Hit of the Week. Nope, it ain't a blatantly commercial recording or any attempt to cash in some recent celebration, tragedy, or trend.

"They say that folk music and folk songs can't be clocked and timed, cut nor polished, whetted, whittled, nor ground down to fit into your highly artistic concerts and onto the grooves or our three-minute records for our nickel machines, radios, movies, dances, and keep up the sparks of natural and native fires which burn in the blood of all good folk songs and folks stories set to folk tunes… "

This little 15 song disc (with 3 additional talking cuts including an intro by the heart of Texas, Billy Joe Shaver) is proof that OKOM (our kind of music) still starts with the real people. Storyteller, tour guide, and Diet Dr Pepper aficionado, Gary Greene and friends have created a great set of songs lovingly crafted and offered for our pleasure. The folks on this disc play the local music scene in Rome, Georgia, but the feeling and message of the songs reaches well beyond the city limits. Gary composed 14 songs, and the other cut is the great Original Tunes, co-written with his conspirators Gene Brigham and Ralph Peters.

The songs reflect the influences on the musicians. Echoes of John Prine, Woody Guthrie, Gamble Rodgers, and others appear lyrically and musically. Songs of pleasure, loss, love of heritage and family abound. The opening cut, "Cherokee Names" is a moving tribute and reflection on the plight of Native Americans. "Constant Companion" and "Zachary" evoke true love. "Dead Man's Records", "Invisible Ink", and "Original Tunes" are classic folk/country musings that make you think and laugh at the same time.

All the songs on "The Grand Imagineer" are worth several listens. Instrumentation is mostly acoustic, and sounds from Native American flute, bells, and rainstick add some mood. If you cannot get to the coffeehouses in Rome, GA, this is the next best thing. This is folk music, OKOM, roots, whatever the hell you want to call it. Overall, it is just damn good fun for the makers and the listeners.

"As long as a woman and a man walk off somewhere and fall in love with each other, talk, sing, hum, whistle, and dance around one another, folk songs will be on their way in."

Quotes from Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (Born to Win)

CD available through Gary Greene's website

Written by James Odom, May, 2002

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