Singer Chuck Brodsky brings sunshine and pixie dust to SLO County

I remember the phone interview I did with Chuck Brodsky about five years ago. Introducing myself, I told the Asheville, N.C., singer-songwriter how I learned of his music.

I was searching the used CD bins at Boo Boo Records looking for material for a mix tape of radio songs. The title “Radio” caught my eye. I gave it a quick listen — it also had tunes about Christmas and an obscure baseball player-turned-OSS spy — and took it home.

“So you took a chance,” Brodsky observed.

Castoro Cellars gig
The events room at North County’s Castoro Cellars was filled with about 100 people on Saturday night for a SLO Folks-hosted concert featuring Brodsky, who was making his first visit to the county. It’s a comfy and low-key spot for a show as exemplified by the gray tabby cat that likes to sleep on stage, and the coffee and cookies that the concert promoters serve at intermission.

Steve Key, master of ceremonies for the show, asked for a show of hands of those who had never heard of Brodsky before, and nearly half the room raised them. By the end of the 2-1/2 hour show, however, most would agree that they were glad that they also “took a chance” on his music.

Brodsky is a talented songwriter who can craft tunes as comfortable on first listening as a well-worn flannel shirt. His tunes combine a love of history and wry (“nudge nudge, wink wink”) observations about life with infectious melodies. In 15 years on the folk-music circuit, he’s honed his craft and gained a reputation for his wit, political irony as well as insightful baseball tunes about obscure aspects of the game assuring that they are not lost to the ages.

A political opener
He opened the show with the timely “He Came to Our Town,” a song off 2000’s “Last of the Old Time” album about a political candidate’s visit:

“He came to our town
For maybe an hour
The streets all got swept
And they planted some flowers
Babies he kissed
To the people he waved
And he stopped
At a Civil War General’s grave

“And after an hour
They whisked him away
Things went back to normal
Over two or three days
The homeless returned
To living outside
And the flowers that got planted
All wilted and died”

The song drew laughs and nods of approval from the crowd peppered liberally with knowing gray-hairs and aging boomers.

He followed up with the first of three baseball tunes. “Dock Ellis’ No-No” is a true story about the Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher’s no-hitter against the San Diego Padres on June 12, 1970. That was a noteworthy event made special by the fact that Ellis, today a drug rehab counselor, was high on LSD.

And the admitted “unabashed Philadelphia sports fan” continued the sports theme with “The Great Santa Snowball Debacle of 1968,” a song that revisits the infamous Dec. 15, 1968, football game where the Eagles hosted the Minnesota Vikings. The incident remains an embarrassment to the City of Brotherly Love because angry fans, upset at yet-another losing (2-12) season, booed and pelted a man dressed as Santa Claus with snowballs during the halftime show.

“He gave the crowd the finger
And stood there like a giant
‘You'll all get nothing for Christmas’
He yelled out in defiance.”

And just as quickly as he had people giggling and tapping their toes, the tone turned serious as he quieted the audience, including many who were consuming bottles of Castoro’s “Dam Fine Wine,” with a new tune that will be a part of an album he’s working on to commemorate the Holocaust. By the conclusion of that song the room was absolutely silent.

A winning combination
And that was his M.O. all night, setting up listeners with a smile — a tune about garbage (“Take It Out Back”), litigation (“Talk to My Lawyer”) or “carrot nibblers and hicks” (“The Come Heres & The Been Heres”), and then knocking them out with something poignant about the mundane, a tune guaranteed to turn on the waterworks: From a simple story about playing ping pong with his dad and the evolution of the father-son relationship (“The Point”) to another about a developmentally disabled black man (“Radio”) who became a hero in his South Carolina community after being adopted by a white high school football coach. (This song made the soundtrack of the 2003 Cuba Gooding Jr. film of the same name, in which Brodsky has a cameo.)

One-two. Wham-bam. Set 'em up and take 'em down — an emotional roller coaster that left the audience smiling and longing for one more round ... yeah, Chuck. Yeah!

All night long, Brodsky remained in charge, a wry smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes while standing on stage, with nothing but a microphone and a bar stool topped with cups of water. He carried his six-string as well as a gossamer bag of deftly constructed songs and the stories behind them — music that warmed the audience on an otherwise wet, chilly and uninviting evening.

A 2 1/2 hour show
He played 21 songs from his seven albums. The set list included a half-dozen tracks from his latest, 2006’s “Tulips for Lunch, ” a pair of new songs, as well as one of his earliest songwriting efforts: 1981’s “We Are Each Other’s Angels.”


“I hope I see you later — ’cause it’s time for me to go,” he sang as he surveyed the crowd, looking some members in the eye to underscore the point as the show wound down.

“That’s my ride that just pulled over — and it sure was good to know you
“So go answer your calling — go and fill somebody’s cup
And if you see an angel falling — won’t you stop and help them up?
“We are each other’s angels — we meet when it is time
“We keep each other going — and we show each other signs”

Brodsky thanked everyone for turning out, adding “I do hope to come back,” to which the audience applauded in hearty agreement.

He returned for an encore of what may be his best-known tune, which was written during the 15 years he lived in the Bay Area. It came to Brodsky one day while idling in traffic upon the Bay Bridge, a burning frustration in search of a target. The result was “Blow ’em Away,” a 1985 road-rage classic popular with Doctor Demento, which has been covered by David Wilcox, among others.

It was a fitting end to this performer’s stellar arrival, because on his first visit to SLO County, Chuck Brodsky blew us all away.

• • •

Chuck Brodsky has plans for several new CDs.

He hopes to release an as-yet untitled double live album within the next couple of months. It will feature a few new tracks. He is also working on a disc of Holocaust-related material that was inspired by a visit to the Holocaust History Museum at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem memorial, a facility that focuses on the personal tragedies of the Nazi genocide.

In addition, he is working on a follow-up to his critically acclaimed “Baseball Ballads” of 2002, which features 10 tracks of baseball music.

For more details visit Brodsky’s Web site at www.chuckbrodsky.com or www.myspace.com/chuckbrodsky.

— Jay Thompson

Photos by Jay Thompson.

"Who's going to want to hear a song about baseball?"

Singer-songwriter Chuck Brodsky is playing two gigs this week — the first at Coalesce Bookstore in Morro Bay on Friday, and another on Saturday night at Castoro Cellars on Highway 46 West. It’s his first visit to SLO County.

Brodsky’s tunes have been covered by Kathy Mattea, David Wilcox, Sara Hickman, Chuck Pyle and others. Brodsky released his critically acclaimed debut album, “A Fingerpainter's Murals,” in 1995.

“Chuck Brodsky is the grandson of Dylan and the son of John Prine,” writes Moshe Benarroch in a review for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange. “He is a storyteller, but if you are looking for a sensitive confessional singer-songwriter you better look elsewhere. Nowhere on his CDs will you find anything personal in his songs.

“You will find stories of all kinds of people though, stories of Jews on Christmas, stories of baseball and stories of basketball.”

‘Radio’ finds a fan
I became a fan when I stumbled across a a CD titled "Radio." (That song would be used in the 2003 movie of the same name starring Ed Harris and Cuba Gooding Jr.) The disc also had a Christmas tune and a baseball tune on the CD — two genres of music I collect.



During the summer of 2003, I was working on a story about baseball music.

A new compilation had been released just in time for the baseball playoffs. Brodsky had a track on “Diamond Cuts: Top of the Sixth.” I later learned he had an entire CD devoted to baseball, which prompted Tim Wiles, director of research at the Baseball Hall of Fame, to describe him as “baseball’s troubadour poet laureate.”

Like Norman Rockwell
“Chuck’s an amazing guy,” Wiles told me in a phone interview that summer.

"He's very talented. Whenever I talk about Chuck to people I say, 'Don’t forget to check out Chuck’s nonbaseball music because much of it is tremendous.' He’s a gifted melodist and lyricist and performer, singer.”

Wiles compared the Asheville, N.C., singer to American illustrator Norman Rockwell, who did several well-received baseball-themed works over the years.

"I think that is an apt comparison because I can’t think of another artist — besides those two — who ranges very broadly across subject matter in their medium but returns that often to the same theme," Wiles said.

A 'Giant' fan
Another fan is Tim Flannery, who was a player, coach and broadcaster for the San Diego Padres for nearly a quarter century.

Flannery is currently the third-base coach for the San Francisco Giants. He's also a singer-songwriter, who has released eight CDs and performed with Jimmy Buffett, Willie Nelson, Jackson Browne and Brodsky.

“Chuck is an icon on all the folk circuits, some of the great folk festivals around the country and even parts of the world,” Flannery said in a phone interview from his home in Encinitas. “He actually goes and sings baseball songs. He’s an historian of the game and studies it.”

Brodsky told me he never intended to become the guy known for baseball music. It just ended up that way.

Batter up
"The first song was 'Lefty.' I wrote that somewhere around 1990 or 1991," Brodsky told me in a 2003 interview. "I was a little shy about playing it for anybody. It's about sports. I thought that's probably trite to most people. Who's going to want to hear a song about baseball?"

He added: "I played it at the Kernville folk festival around a campfire for a friend of mine. I was just amazed that a serious songwriter — a very accomplished songwriter — was really taken by the song. I started to play it more often and got kind of the same reaction from everybody, so it just became part of my repertoire."

Then he got another idea for a song. And another. And another.

"People started to refer to me as a guy who writes baseball songs when I only had two," he said. "I thought this was kind of fun. What if I had three or four? And I think by the time I did have three or four it became clear that, hey, I could really do this (produce a CD of original baseball tunes), and this is something that hasn’t been done by anybody."

The quest became more fun. He contacted the Hall of Fame for help researching the stories that inspired his songs.

The result was 2002's "The Baseball Ballads," a self-produced 10-track disc. Tunes range from the true story of the player shot in the film “The Natural,” to a salute to Max Patkin, baseball’s clown prince (who had a cameo in the film “Bull Durham”).

There are also songs about Fred Merkle, whose bonehead move made “"to Merkle" a verb; Moe Berg, the Ivy League catcher with 15 pro years who was an OSS spy during World War II; and Dock Ellis' no-hitter against the Padres while high on LSD during the 1970 season.

The Ellis tune is Flannery's favorite.

"That's a true story," he said. "I know people who were there that day. (Chuck) got it right on. Dock Ellis thought it was an off day."

Baseball is a big part of Brodsky’s life and his music, but the bulk of the more than 70 songs on seven CDs are less about sports and more about odd and interesting characters. Some just happen to wear ball caps and have their names sewn on the backs of their shirts.

Odd characters
Baseball as a subject is a challenge for a songwriter, Brodsky said.

“For one thing, it’s very colorful as subject matter,” he said. “There’s been some great characters in the game. And I’m interested in characters and portraying them.

"Another reason," Brodsky said, "is that it’s about as pure a form of Americana as there is. I wasn’t even thinking in those terms when I first started to write these songs, but it is, I’ve come to realize.

He added, "It seemed like a way I might be able to reach my dad. Like any other father-son relationship we had a period of time when things got a little strained. My dad’s always been really into baseball. It seemed like a way to bridge the gap a little bit and it turned out to be the case.”

So over the years Brodsky's fans have come to expect a baseball tune or two during the 120 to 130 gigs he plays each year.

“What I’ve learned ... is a lot of people tend to look at these more as story songs first about interesting characters that happen to be from the world of baseball,” he said. “When I think about it in those terms I really do agree because I write a lot of story songs in that vain.

“My baseball songs really aren’t that different from the other true, story songs I’ve written. They take the same kind of research, the same process for writing the song. They’re very similar.”

— Jay Thompson

• • •

If you go ...
Singer-songwriter Chuck Brodsky will perform at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 25, at Coalesce Bookstore, 845 Main St. in Morro Bay, and at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 26, at Castoro Cellars, 1315 N. Bethel Road west of Paso Robles.
Tickets for each show are $15.
For details visit www.slofolks.org.

Check out two songs by baseball troubadour Chuck Brodsky.

Here's "Lefty":



Here's "Radio," from the 2003 film of the same name: