MARLIN BRACKETT

(2006)
MUSIC ::: COUNTRY ::: GRAM

Marlin Brackett is the genuine article: a Georgia singer-songwriter whose songs sound lived in because they are. Raised in Marietta in a musical family, Brackett grew up surrounded by his father’s late-night hootenannies and records by Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers. He wore the grooves out listening to Williams’ Luke the Drifter and absorbed the voices of Bob Dylan, John Prine, Doc Watson, Norman Blake, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. His wife, Karen, completed the education by introducing him to the hard truths of Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. “Everyone talks about what Loretta did for women,” Brackett once observed. “Well, she did a lot for me as a man.”

Brackett did not begin taking songwriting seriously until his thirties. A general contractor by trade, he brought his first songs to the open mic at Eddie’s Attic, where he learned how to hold a room and twice advanced to the venue’s celebrated Shootout. His first proper engagement there found him opening for a young John Mayer; elsewhere, he shared a stage with Tyler Childers at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe and opened for Jesse Winchester at Atlanta’s Red Light Café. After hearing him, Winchester told the audience, “I believe Marlin is the genuine article.” Brackett subsequently carried his self-described “original countryrockahillbillybluzegrass” into Smith’s Olde Bar, the Freight Room, Red Clay Foundry, Nashville’s Sutler Saloon and twenty years of gatherings at the Union Grove Fiddlers’ Convention.

That same troubadour spirit made Brackett a natural fixture at the Gram Parsons Guitar Pull in Waycross. He received the festival’s coveted Brass Button Award for his faithfulness to Parsons’ music—not through imitation, but by preserving the emotional honesty at its center. His 2002 album, Down the Line, was produced by Joey Huffman and featured Georgia Satellites guitarist Rick Richards, whose playing proved an ideal companion to Brackett’s warm, woodsmoke delivery. “Jump the Track” earned recognition from the Atlanta Songwriters Association, while “Bosom of Abraham” was selected as the best song entered at the Americana Music Association Festival in Nashville. Brackett belongs to the guitar-pull tradition: thoughtful songs, an open circle and a voice that carries farther than it ever needs to shout.