For some years, there has been no shortage of curiosity among the Cleveland music in crowd around “when will Brian Straw finish his record?” This asked in amused but respectful tones, a la Tom Waits’s query, what’s he building in there, anyway?
Baby Stars/Dead Languages is, then, a “long awaited” album, one Straw has spent a good portion of his life making, and his first proper release in 15 years. What took him so long?
Straw’s hiatus didn’t seem particularly weird, per se, given his measured approach. The pause that Straw takes before answering your question hints at this. He’d been working on this batch of songs for years, and for all we knew, a new record sat as far away in the future as the years we’d already waited. Unrushed, the record would simply take as long as it took.
But as it turns out, there was something else at work.
“I was drunk for a decade,” Straw readily admits. He started building a career in the early 2000s with touring in the U.S. and Europe, but this early momentum stalled due to the booze. “Life gets in the way,” he muses. Despite his spiraling appetite for alcohol, the Indiana-born songwriter managed to release three LPs, Once You’re Lost You’re Encouraged to Stay Lost (2000), Backfeed Pools (2001), and Bleeding Sun (2006), all now out of print.
Straw is aware of the curiosity around his recent lack of recorded output. “I feel like there should be some explanation for this huge lapse in time from when I was active,” Straw said.
This is not to say that he’s been out of sight, out of mind. Straw’s an artistic mainstay in Cleveland, operating the recording studio he built in a warehouse on the city’s west side, with a busy schedule of live-sound engineering gigs for diverse music scenes.
Mostly working solo on the stage, Straw is a spellbinding performer, commanding the room with simple, resonant strumming along with an accomplished finger-picking technique, his take on American primitive.
Those of us lucky enough to see him play over the years know several of these songs well. Noting a growing assuredness in his playing and singing, we were well prepared, and the new record is every bit as grand, detailed, and generous as we expected.
Straw had his last drink in 2017 and resumed his live performances, further refining that handful of great songs and perfecting his recordings of them. Baby Stars/Dead Languages is his victory lap, the record we were waiting for, after all.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the standout “Needle in the Creek,” a track that evokes Bruce Springsteen at his wild-hearted best. With a true Heartland sound that comes from a rough and tumble string section and the occasional stroke of electric guitar, the song presents a portrait of young lovers waiting on a quiet street in the Midwest. Straw drew from one of his darkest yet beautiful memories to craft a song that is a poignant example of folk-rock storytelling.
Straw describes the inspiration behind the song:
“This song is about a very dark and mysterious friend who both fascinated and scared me. Our time spent together was brief and intense, beautiful and strange. She died of a heroin overdose. The song was written before the OD. I found myself attracted to someone with really dark tendencies and this song tackles how I dealt with it. There was a beauty I found in her scars. This song is my attempt at explaining that beauty. You could say she served as my muse and my study.”
LISTEN:
Photo credit: Pete Larson
One Response
Wonderful song , great vocals and instrumentation. I look forward to hearing the whole album.