Upcoming Shows in Austin, TX
September 28 - The Saxon Pub @ Midnight
Because Myspace has made a mess their mess of a website and cannot make the calendar work properly or conveniently, Chris Brecht and Dead Flower shows will no longer be updated or posted on this myspace page. For current show listings, please leave myspace and visit our web page www.deadflowermotel.com - Thank you.
Drunk as a hoot owl,
writing letters
by thunderstorm.
~Jack Kerouac
Dead Flower MotelChris Brecht and dead flowers
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From the SEATTLE WEEKLY:
In a lazy drawl that sounds like a hybrid cross between Ryan Adams' soulful North Carolina slur and Bob Dylan's off-pitch, nasal mutterings, Austin songwriter Chris Brecht croons about trains, lost love and the nomadic life with the same passion and timeless appeal of greats from Woody Guthrie to Willie Nelson. And his devotion to all things retro extends to his songwriting and recording techniques: not only does he use a typewriter to put his poetic travelin' songs to paper, his debut album, The Great Ride, was recorded entirely to 2" tape. "I don't think I'll ever make a digital record, anymore," Brecht says. "I don't think that tape really makes [music] sound old or vintage; I just think that tape adds such a warmth and beauty that digital can't quite capture." This will be Brecht's very first Northwest tour, and though he's flying solo this time, he hopes to return by car soon with his full band, including organist Matt Mollica and his Hammond B3 (because Mollica refuses to play an electronic keyboard, ever.) Let's hope gas prices don't make that tour impossible, because the full band complete with B3 will be a sight to behold. If Bumbershoot and its country-heavy lineup isn't in the cards for you this weekend, checking out Chris Brecht should be.
www.seattleweekly.com
Willamette Weekly - Portland, Oregon- It’s always nice to run across something suprising in the mail. Such was the case with Austin troubadour Chris Brecht’s 2008 release The Great Ride. The album is lyrically desperate, funny and poetic—something there’s plenty of time to consider given the sparse production. Brecht sounds somewhere between Loudon Wanwright, Alex Chilton and Slow Train Coming-era Bob Dylan. And despite the name drops here, Brecht is unique: His delivery is resigned and but not dispassionate, his songs homespun but not overly sentimental. And slide guitar just kicks my ass. CASEY JARMAN.
Have Guitar, Will Travel - the Santa Fe Reporter
There are an infinite number of young, aspiring musicians armed with nothing more than a guitar and a ravenous appetite for success. But only a few ever make it as professional musicians. Austin-based singer-songwriter Chris Brecht is one artist who managed to crawl out of the masses to begin an impressive alt.country career that brims with promise.
~the Santa Fe Reporter
The music world is changing. We're all jumping on that train. This is where you click to buy a copy of the Great Ride
~If you were disappointed by Adams’ Cardinology get this instead and you’ll be happy. - Marquee Magazine, Denver, Colorado.
Reviews for "The Great Ride"
Eugene Weekly: Recording to Tape
Chris Brecht writes country music for the ages - by Sara Brickner If Austin alt-country songwriter Chris Brecht’s debut record The Great Ride seems born of another era, that might be because Brecht himself is a little old-fashioned. He writes his songs on a typewriter. He doesn’t own a TV. And though digital recording is standard, Brecht committed The Great Ride to two-inch tape rather than computer memory.
“I don’t think I’ll ever make a digital record, anymore,” Brecht says. “I don’t think that tape really makes [music] sound old or vintage; I just think that tape adds such a warmth and beauty that digital can’t quite capture.” Brecht sings songs about traveling by rail (trains show up in about half of his songs, something he attributes to living near them for a good portion of his life) and love lost. You know, the same stuff that Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan sang about. But while these themes could seem gimmicky or contrived in the wrong hands, Brecht’s songs feel genuine, his lazy drawl a cross between the soulful North Carolina slur of Ryan Adams’ early work and Dylan’s nasal, off-pitch utterings. But in his processes as well as his day to day existence, Brecht prefers the old school to the new
READ MORE AT www.eugeneweekly.com
the Austin Chronicle: "It's testament to the Austin songwriter's talent that The Great Ride is a trip worth retracing." - Doug Freeman,
The Austin Chronicle
8 out of 10. Brecht is a troubadour in the Dylan sense. Wordy, poetic (with nods to the Beats) and existing in a space between Blonde on Blonde and the Basement Tapes. This is a collection of ten songs which, while rooted in Dylan’s late sixties sound, stand up on their own two feet and demand to be heard.
songs for: newspapermen, magazine women, and children, fog train brakemen, underwater sea captains,
country air mamas, barbed wire papas, for the delicate and afraid to communicate, always irritable
fair trade coffee lovers, jet pilots and jack rabbits, cocktails and cottontails, robe people, sandal
people, boot people, immigrants, natives, country folk, city folk, ramblers, gamblers, bluesers and
boozers, behind the curtain never gonna say hello kind of people, slick under the hood people, dirty
hand to clean hand people, somewhere in the moonlight i think i saw a church steple, i'm gonna make
it look like i'm happy all the time kinda people, the worlds always against me people, morning
cigarette and coffee people, one last drink before the night falls people, phonies, cops, leftover
garbage handlers, pan handlers, ginners, tricksters, hipsters, up all nightsleepalldaylivers, people
you never want to see again people, people you know you'll never see again people, southern bells,
poker sticks handlers, knife fight alley hunters, shakespeares, hemmingways, oates, goats, chickens,
pens, pencils, farmers, maids, ribbons and bows, xs and os, fishermen, postcard senders, love let
hers, quiet types, sellfish, shelfish, one road leading to the next, it's all a blind turn people,
wake up in the morning one town to the next people, i always got somewhere to go people, always never
sleeps people.
work in progres
