Various Artists – Just One More: A Musical Tribute To Larry Brown

Larry Brown, the renowned southern writer who passed away in November 2004, loved music. Unlike many writers of his stature, he never forgot where he was from and even celebrated that place in his novels, short stories, and memoirs. Brown is remembered as one of the masters at capturing a sense of place, and one way he found that place was in the music of the North Mississippi hill country, and in the larger breadth of Americana music.

His writing is filled not only with references to artists such as Lucinda Williams, Robert Earl Keen, and the Kudzu Kings, but also with a reverence for the dignity of roots music. He listed Leonard Cohen as one of his literary influences, and he found stories in songs. He became friends with musicians, and celebrated them in his writing. In return, many of those same musicians who showed up in his prose — and in his life as his friends — celebrate Brown in this collection of eighteen tracks.

Producer Tim Lee seems to have done this project for all the right reasons: out of love for a friend and writer. Lee’s efforts pay proper homage to Brown and demonstrate how one art form can inspire and inform another.

A perfect example is Caroline Herring’s “Song for Fay”, the best cut on the disc. Herring perfectly captures the loneliness, poetry and heartbreak of one of Brown’s best creations, the title character from his novel Fay. The song even reflects the constant walking of the book’s character with its lilting banjo. Another high point is Scott Miller and the Commonwealth’s “Thirsty Fingers”, inspired by Brown’s Big Bad Love (as is Ben Weaver’s track, “Here’s To My Disgrace”). Miller’s lyrics and delivery are a perfect balance of the tender and the tough, just like Brown’s work and the author himself.

“Song In C”, contributed by Brown’s fellow Mississippian Cary Hudson, captures what it was like to cruise the country backroads with Brown on a hot summer evening, complete with mention of cigarettes, coolers, and stops at the store for beer and ice. Brown also shared regional ties with the North Mississippi Allstars, who deliver the spiritual hymn “Glory” along with Otha Turner and the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band.

T-Model Ford’s “Love Me” feels like a soundtrack to one of Brown’s bar-set tales, while Pieta Brown’s “Another Place In Time” is as soulful and haunting as a Brown short story. Tate Moore, formerly of the Kudzu Kings, whom Brown promoted tirelessly in his own writing, contributes the rousing “Mountain In Mississippi”. Alejandro Escovedo offers his classic “Baby’s Got New Plans”, one of Brown’s favorite songs. Jim Dickinson & Duff Dorrough’s cover of “I’ll Remember You” is among the disc’s most moving tracks.

The only misses are a too-long composition by Brent Best, which is good but not good enough to last nearly seven minutes; and the exclusion of Marshall Chapman, whose absence is glaring because of Brown’s well-known respect for her music and humanity. Other artists who do appear on the disc include Robert Earl Keen, Greg Brown, Bo Ramsey, Vic Chesnutt, and Madison Smartt Bell.

Just One More closes with Brown himself, who performs “Don’t Let The Door”, a song he wrote. “Just last week you said I read too much/Just because I didn’t know how to install your clutch,” he sings. The track ends with Brown’s humble, sneaky laugh — a perfect way to close out a tribute to not only a great American author, but also a great man.