'I'm done,' Iowa folk hero Greg Brown contends ahead of Minneapolis shows

You'd think that now would be the time for Greg Brown to stage a career revival.

One of the biggest stars in Americana music just released a 10-song tribute to him, "Seth Avett Sings Greg Brown." A Wisconsin publisher is readying a first-ever Greg Brown songbook. And Anaïs Mitchell's musical "Hadestown" — the original recording of which featured Brown as Hades — remains a hit on Broadway and on tour.

As Midwest music lovers have long known, Brown doesn't think like a lot of his peers in the music industry.

"I've already been everywhere I want to go," the Iowa folk music hero harumphed last week. "I'm done."

Actually, Brown has been close to done for many years. He issued his last album in 2012. He played his last spate of shows in 2019. He scaled way back on touring well before that.

So the 73-year-old singer/songwriter — who called St. Paul home in the early '80s while a regular on public radio's "A Prairie Home Companion" — is a bit amused and baffled that his pair of concerts Friday and Saturday at the Cedar Cultural Center are being billed as "Twin Cities retirement shows."

"I actually retired about three years ago," he insisted. "And that was before every musician was forced to retire for a year or two."

Talking by phone from Iowa City, where he and his fellow singer/songwriter wife Iris DeMent now live, Brown said the sold-out Cedar gigs were simply planned "on a lark." Same with his two February shows at Iowa City's Englert Theatre, which also are being billed as farewell dates with his longtime guitarist and producer Bo Ramsey.

"I just thought it'd be nice for Bo and I to go do a couple gigs for fun, nothing more than that," he said.

"Next thing I know, somebody came up with the 'retirement' phrase. And it was just going to be the two shows, but then they both sold out so they added one more in each city."

Brown's not complaining, though. For one thing, he said, "It's nice folks still want to come out." Plus, it's still accurate to say he is retiring — even if he's already done so in his mind.

"I really don't plan on playing any more gigs after this," he maintained.

Best of all, he's happy to have actually had a music career to retire from.

Trying to get the famously low-key and unpretentious son of a preacher man to reminisce and brag about the successes of his nearly 50-year run is not easy. But in bits and pieces during our interview he made it clear he's riding off into the sunset carrying a lot of pride.

He's proud of this new tribute album by Avett (of Avett Brothers fame), issued last month with this endorsement from Rolling Stone: "A new generation has discovered the joys of wintry, isolation-fueled ballads, but Greg Brown has been wallowing in them for four decades."

In a statement, Avett said, "When I heard Greg Brown's music, it opened the door to a world of songwriting inspiration. And since then, I've been connecting to the arc of a man's life and his story. It's laid bare the simultaneous nature of the entire human experience in a way."

"I think Seth just did a great job," Brown said of the album. "The guy is a really good singer and guitar player, and really a sweet guy, too."

Avett's record and Mitchell's "Hadestown" are hardly the first time younger musicians have trumpeted their love for Brown.

Ani DiFranco brought him on tour with her during her hitmaking mid-'90s era. She and a dozen other women singers also covered his songs on another all-Brown tribute album, 2002's "Going Driftless," also featuring Lucinda Williams, Shawn Colvin and his future wife DeMent.

"Going Driftless" was one of about 250 albums issued on Red House Records, another highlight for Brown. He pioneered the idea of artist-run labels when he started the St. Paul-based company to self-release his 1981 breakthrough album, "The Iowa Waltz," before handing off operations to his promoter friend Bob Feldman.

"It was way more Bob's accomplishment than mine, but for a small label it did quite well," Brown said of Red House, which still fostered Minnesota acts like the Cactus Blossoms and Chastity Brown up until 2017, when it was sold to Nashville's Compass Music following Feldman's death.

"We were able to give record deals to people like Koerner, Ray & Glover — who didn't have a record deal at that point — and Prudence Johnson and Peter Ostroushko. No question those were good things."

Brown also remains proud being one of the first of innumerable roots-music acts to gain a national audience through Garrison Keillor's endorsement on "A Prairie Home."

"It made it a lot easier for me to go play in Seattle or somewhere in Connecticut because I'd been heard on that show," he said. "It was a big help to me, and would be to many other musicians."

In the decades following his "Prairie Home" stint, Brown put out about 30 more albums, each laced with songs about life in the rural Midwest and a deep voice as hilly and rugged as the southeastern Iowa gravel roads he rode in on. Two of those records earned best traditional folk Grammy nominations: 1993's "Friend of Mine" and 1997's "Slant 6 Mind."

Brown stopped making albums after 2012's "Hymns to What Is Left" — a hiatus brought on by the changing times he so often waxed poetic about in his songs.

"Recording, as you know, has become mostly a losing proposition," he said. "Musicians aren't making any money on them because of streaming, so there's not a whole lot of impetus for them — especially if you're not touring."

As Brown stepped back over the past decade, he said he was happy to stay home more to help his mom, who's now 94; and to focus on raising his youngest of four daughters, Dasha, who he and DeMent adopted from Russia in 2005 at age 6.

The musical spouses are empty nesters now, which would seemingly be another excuse for Brown to get out and play more. He's leaving live gigs to his wife, though — who has a new record coming out next year — and to his oldest daughter, Pieta Brown, also a well-regarded singer/songwriter. (You can catch Pieta at the Turf Club opening for Charlie Parr on Jan. 30.)

Brown said his 70th birthday was a cutoff date in his mind: "I was coming up on 50 years of touring and writing songs, and it just felt like it was enough."

"I know a lot of performers who really like to perform, and they're almost addicted to it. That never really happened to me. I like it, and I enjoyed touring when I did it, but I did it for a long time. And now I'm done."

As for his shot at enjoying a late-career renaissance thanks to younger fans like Avett and Mitchell, he cut down that idea like an October corn crop.

"I never had the longing for fame or stardom, and I think that actually made my life easier in a lot of ways," he said. "I just thought I'd do this enough to make a living and have a pretty good time doing it. That was always my goal, and I made it."

Minneapolis: 8 p.m. Fri. & Sat., Cedar Cultural Center, sold out, thecedar.org.

Iowa City: Feb. 16 & 17, Englert Theatre, $20-$42, englert.org.