A Brown County Christmas

Slats Klug has made a name for himself over the past few years as the fellow who reworked the legends of Brown County into two memorable song cycles. The first, called The Liars Bench, was a collaboration with local architect and storyteller, Stephen Miller. The second, My Brown County Home, was his continuation of that effort.

Both sets of music not only celebrated the life and legends of Brown County but featured many of Brown County's most accomplished musicians.

This season sees the release of a third disk. A Brown County Christmas is less a celebration of the legends of Brown County as it is a celebration of the spirit of Christmas in Brown County. It includes both new songs and many old favorites, some with a distinctly Brown County twist.

Klug was traveling in Europe with Bob Cheevers when the idea came to him. "I liked the idea of the combination of Brown County and Christmas, it's such a big deal. And I liked the idea of doing the Christmas record in the summer when you don't have all the attachments to Christmas music."

So in July he gathered many of the musicians used on the first two Brown County productions at a familiar place, David Weber's Airtime Studios.

"I really only intended to do about a dozen songs but the more I did the more I wanted to do. As we were finishing up the project I kept coming in with more songs. I got a little carried away. It's a bigger record than I intended it to be but that's all right.

"`Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,' I think is a beautiful song. `I'll be Home for Christmas.' The `Gloria in excelsis Deo' thing is a gorgeous song. I wanted to set that as if it was being done in a small Brown County church with a piano player and a couple of female singers. I got a little carried away with the fiddle.

"When I hear records I've made I do hear a certain sound that has a lot to do with the way I write and the players I get to do it. Robbie Bowden, Dave Gore, Bob Cheevers, Gordon Lowry's fiddle, and Jack Helsley's fretless bass has a lot to do with the sound.

"I like the performances, it's very spontaneous sounding to me. I cut down a lot. Things like `Joy to the World': instrumental, one verse, and out. A lot of these songs have been done so often that I wanted to do them a cappella, like `I'll be Home for Christmas.' Real simple.

"I really enjoyed `The Gift' which is a take off of the O. Henry short story, `Gift of the Magi.' Instead of the watch and the hair being sold, in this story it's a guitar and I kept the hair the same. It gave me an opportunity to make an allusion to the Pine Room which is a Brown County fixture. That was fun. I really liked making this record, I had a great time doing it. I put up Christmas lights and Lauren and I would listen to the record as it developed."

Lauren Robert adds her powerful, bluesy vocals to several of the selections. If you are not familiar with her work, her performance alone would be worth the price of the disk. The bonus is that there are many excellent, heartfelt vocal performances throughout, backed by spare and inventive music arrangements and quality instrumentation making this a fine all around effort even for those listeners who tend to look the other way during the Christmas season.

Ray Fellman, a baritone studying opera at Indiana University, featured last year in the IU Musical Arts Center's Barber of Seville, sings a Klug original, "Hearts Arise."

"Another favorite is John Franz doing the `Little Drummer Boy.' I'm such a fan of his vocals. For him to have this big husky voice being a little drummer boy…" Slats laughs with glee, then remembers another song that was fun to make, "The Twelve Days of Brown County Christmas."

Dave Gore's vocal was so funny that "We were crying in the studio." Slats generally made it a rule not to show the musicians his arrangements until they reached the studio. "I gave him a list of all these silly things: ten pecker woodies, nine tater bugs, five bawling hogs, and he was like, `I can't do this.' But he's a gamer and he pushed the button when it was time to go. You can really hear him trying to get it and getting it in a funny, funny way. And we're all hysterical in the background.

"I got to work with Kara Barnard this time. Kara is really a fabulous guitar player. She also plays banjo, dulcimer, and autoharp. She gives the record a very old fashioned sound. I'd like to work with her some more."

Other standout performers include: Doug Harden, Dan Dolan, Beth Lodge-Rigal, Carolyn Dutton, and Jason Wilber.

Slats will be performing as part of a lineup organized by Mike Robertson and Robbie Bowden as a benefit for Chelsey Moore, who is fighting crippling arthritis. Mike's band Smooth Country and many other Brown County musicians will perform at Mike's Music and Dance Barn on SR 46 below Kelley Hill on Sunday, Nov 12, from 3 to 9 p.m. Tickets are ten dollars and available at the Dance Barn. Call 988-8636 for details.

Slats met Mike, who owns, operates, and hand built the Music Barn, one of the most impressive facilities for music in Brown County, when he "came into the Pine Room with his sax one night. Robbie and I were playing as a duo. It was very odd instrumentation, An accordion, 12-string guitar and tenor sax. But it was fun. Mike's a lot of fun."

Slats will be performing his Brown County songs, including many holiday selections from the Christmas CD, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, November 25^th at the Brown County Inn's Town Hall at 8 p.m. "Most of Brown County people will be there. It will be a pretty large cast." Call 988-2291.

Lauren Robert is also performing a Christmas show. This one is at the Nashville Follies Musical Theater on the first three Sundays of December, the 3rd, 10th, and 17th at 4 p.m. Organized by Lauren and Beth Lodge-Rigal, the show includes the Follies' own "Familiar Players." There will be Christmas stories, poems, and songs from A Brown County Christmas. Call 988-9007.

I ask Slats if there is another Brown County record in him. Perhaps a modern song cycle, or at least one not restricted to Hohenberger's stories. Slats admits he's toyed with the idea.

"I did write a song about John Franz," he says. He also sees promise for a song about "a spirit that is supposed to inhabit the Story Inn. Apparently she gets annoyed and things move around." And there's the ballad of Gypsy Moon, a Brown County native who published a book about her adventures as a hobo, riding the rails. "She was a knight of the road," he says.

"I would hate to be doing the same album over and over again," he adds. "It would be boring."