Muisc Review: Fontaine Brown Tales From The Fence Line

You have to wonder about some people's stamina, sticking with being pop musicians for over forty years. I'm not talking about folk like Mick and Keith either. They have been stars for longer then most of you reading have been alive. No, I'm talking about the guys (and women) who have somehow or other managed to make their livings in popular music since the early sixties. Think about what it must involve to do that if you don't have a record contract with a major label to pay the bills. It means you're dependent on the cash you make from any gigs you can scrounge.

After some success in the early 1960s playing the Detroit rock and roll scene with the likes of Bob Seger, some collaborative work with Del Shannon, and bouncing around he industry producing and performing, Fontaine Brown spent five years living what he called the life of a man with no fixed address. He played crappy little clubs and made just enough to get by. There's only so long though that a man can do that. So, he pulled his van over to the side of the road, set up a home studio, and through his industry contacts settled into a comfortable career as a songwriter. For the last twenty years he's supplied the likes of Emmylou Harris, Persy Sledge, Dave Edmunds, and John Mayall with tunes.

Now two hundred songs later, Fontaine has stepped back into the studio for the first time in close to thirty years to record his own music. If you couldn't tell by the diversity of the folk who have recorded his songs over the last few years, Tales From The Fence Line is a collection of tunes that ranges from country flavoured pop to some of the raunchiest and low-downiest blues you'll have heard outside of a swamp. Fontaine has been out right to the extreme edges of pop-music, where it's dirty and nasty and bar owners stiff you for a night's work, what he calls "the Fence Line", but instead of becoming bitter and resentful over lack of success like others might have, it seems to have only made his love for the music he plays stronger.

Some performers who spend their lives doing a little of this and a little of that end up being only mildly proficient in a variety of styles; basically only good enough to satisfy the not so discerning audiences of drunks they play for in bars. Judging by the evidence presented on Tales From The Fence Line that's not the case with Fontaine Brown. It doesn't seem to matter what style of song he's singing or playing, he's not only as comfortable playing it as someone whose dedicated their whole career to that genre, he writes tunes that reflect its best aspects.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the recently published What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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