Upcoming Shows
August 17th – Mean Eyed Cat – 8PM
August 24th – Saxon Pub – 8PM
September 14 – Saxon Pub – Midnight
September 15 – Uncorked – (Solo/Acoustic) Outside stage – 8PM
September 16 – Antone’s – Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Fundraiser
September 28 – Saxon Pub – Midnight
Mean Eyed Cat show Tuesday, then off to Denver
show at the Mean Eyed Cat Tuesday July 20.. 8 PM.. All shows at the Mean Eyed Cat are free. Don’t miss this one.. After that I’m off to Denver… dig… cb.
Next Up….Saxon PUB
For the last couple of months, I have had Dead Flower Motel up on the web at www.chrisbrecht.com for free download. I realize though that I cannot do this forever. I have also entered into a record contract with the European Record Label, Blue Rose Records. So, I’ll let them handle the sales for a while. But..
Like i drive through the desert all the time… I do see ghosts.
we’ll be at the Saxon Pub Tuesday July 6th.. 10PM .
Click on the image below to dig on the Desert Poster.
Upcoming Shows
A Few Upcoming Shows. We’ll be doing an early set 10PM at the Hole in the Wall this Sunday.. Here’s how the rest of July is looking..
July 6 – Saxon Pub 10PM
July 15 – Scoot Inn – 10PM
July 20 – Mean Eyed Cat 8PM
July 22 – Meadowlark (Denver)
August 5 – Hole in the Wall 10PM
August 27 – The Belmont
one look over the cliff….
Dead Flower Motel will be my latest release. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking over the idea of Dead Flower Motel and what it means. I guess I am talking more about the metaphysical land between our beginning and end. Not the land that we stand on, or the empty highways, or barren deserts, the echoed canyons, starved cliffs, plentiful mountains, or the trails we carve with our boots. The land is in our minds. The thoughts we take with us through our lives. I’ve lost myself plenty and traveled enough to discover what it means to me, and there will likely be more to come. But it is temporary.
I had a friend pass a little over a year and a half ago. Her death has been very very hard on those who knew her best. She was a wonderful young spirit and her life was taken too soon, the result of a very tragic accident. And I fear sometimes that I can’t say more. But death can unexpectedly reveal a void, within our likeness of being, that will extend for an indeterminable stretch of time, inside happiness which we strive to live. We are all precious to someone else. Our lives, though they are very dear and fragile, are too often taken for granted, something that is easily overlooked.
Not long after Lauren’s death, I began to think of dead flowers. And I thought very deeply about how we are not that different from flowers ourselves. We grow. We blossom. And we pass through the beauty of each day, showing our colors, our tenderness, our joys and we look to others to reflect ourselves. After she passed, a friend of mine, who was very close to Lauren, wrote to me, “After all, we are all just renting.” And that is so. How we exist, looking around at ourselves in a world of color, so quickly we are gone. We are all just renting. Our time is quick. And that is how I uncovered the idea of Dead Flower Motel.
I have written this poem for Lauren. I have also written it because art, music or vision is sometimes the only way to communicate. Dead Flower Motel is not a record about death, but about life and how we must embrace the journey through our days. Our love. Our fear. Our forgiveness of that reality we cannot understand. No matter how confusing the days may sometimes be. We get back out on that barren stretch of road and take a look at the depth of our vision, across landscape that decorates the dreams before our eyes, seeing the sunrise, but looking for those who have the courage to lead us through the colors of sunset into tomorrow.
hope you enjoy…
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. - William Wordsworth
One day, I was standing above a cliff looking down at the ocean
where wave after wave crashed on the trembling rocks
and the water climbed with violent memory.
It screamed at the living and turned to mist, bleeding away
into the cracks
and very slowly carving a shape that resembled coastline,
just before another wave came and toppled the crest with violent roar.
My path ended and an endless black wish began…
I saw you standing there in front of me
looking out at the curse that swims
beneath the surface of the dark water,
your cold shoulders and hair blowing back into the drift of sunset
like the trees bowing away from the ocean
afraid to show their courage,
guarding the tiny houses and little campfires where people live.
I fell slowly into my own skin.
***
the miles I drove were no longer there,
no longer in time with one another..
They were just worn paths in the earth
separating me from where I was
and where I now stood,
like empty caverns of canyons
that are laced with rocks and scars.
My time is divided before and after,
who I was and who I am now,
before you and until I see you again, by no fault of my own.
But I was no longer afraid, no longer broken.
And I was again able to regain my footing and brace myself inside my clothes
so I could reach out for you like you were still here.
I saw dead flowers.
I watched the petals grow dark, wilt in joy,
tear from the vine, and then fall slowly to the ground
where they curled against the soil
and crawled back into the womb of the earth
so they could plant seeds for a new and better me.
***
And the night sang blue midnight tears,
that fell onto my blanket,
so the stars,
naked above me,
could decorate the sky and deliver me through today before tomorrow,
where I could reject the dark shadows within my own mind
and again hear echoes ring into new echoes…
My breath is fog against the cold night.
Sometimes I shutter so in my sleep
so I can shake the horror of the day, before my rest,
and let my dreams again gleam like the water in the moonlight.
I hold true to the reflection of the stars
and forgive their desperation to ripple into golden memories,
where you remind me
that it is not a mistake to make our time here beautiful.
Even if soon,
I will be in my bed, where I’ll remember,
you are with me,
and we are flowers.
In memory of Lauren Johnson
Mean Eyed Cat Show
Mean Eyed Cat Show. June 8.
Outdoors under the night sky.
We’ll be doing this show acoustic.
8PM
Click on the link to view the Poster.
Don’t forget…show with the Crooks and Woodsboss May 14th
Chris Brecht and Dead Flowers Friday May 14 with the Crooks and Woodsboss at the Scoot Inn. Do yerself right. Doors at 9PM.
Club DeVille Show May 10th
If you click on the link above you will see a promotional video. You’ll have to bring your own beer money.
Alternative Country – a nation of music
Alternative Country – a nation of music.
Dead Flower Motel
one day standing above a cliff
I was looking down at the ocean, rattled
by the sound of wave after wave after wave crashing ashore
pounding on the trembling rocks
and felt myself
bleeding away into the cracks
and the music carved very slowly a shape
that resembled coastline
where my path ended in endless black
and wish began…
CB & Dead Flowers Show Tuesday
Dead Flowers and life goes on… Alt-Country showcase Tuesday at the Mean Eyed Cat. We’ll start after the clock hits 8.
30 Miles to Mexico
30 miles to Mexico…
by dirt road only
dead in the cab. lost track of the dogs
burn out sunlight dream..
the dogs were happy to be out of the car.
my eyes are burned by the sun.
bought some $3 shades from the
Mexican lady at the gas station…
grew side burns
put on a Cream record
to talk about Ginger Baker.
Colorless eyes all around Javelina territory.
Went to the border and kept on to Terlingua.
And had drinks at the Starlight Theater.
Never saw a Javelina.
Never killed the
anticipation.
Ghost Room April 3rd
Dig.. Chris Brecht and dead flowers.. the lonesome heroes.. and telegraph canyon.. i’ve never met telegraph canyon but i guess i will this night.. or that night..
I love having no free time.. days are made too short. nights are made too long.
2 days into Marfa and the west texas majesty
Sent Dead Flower Motel off to mastering last monday, which means it’s time to move on. Begin a new wander. With a new stride. A new ear. a new eye. so i’ve traveled south west to Marfa for a few days to take photographs, journal, do laundry, walk deep into the hills, drink new wines, eat in new restaurants, then disappear and write. bought 2 pounds of locally roasted coffee. and spent most of yesteday outside. drank wine late. then i woke up early and the hotel room was cold.
We’ve just added some new shows. We’ll be at the Ghost Room with the Lonesome Heroes and Telegraph Canyon April 3 at 10. probably a $5 cover.
And we’ll be at the Mean Eyed Cat April 13 8PM Free.
SX Finale (doors at 6:30)
Rumors have it that you’ll want to get on the guest list by RSVPin’…
Scoot Inn Skeet Out
CB and Dead Flower Motel are doing a set Wednesday with Mike and the Moonpies… or maybe it’s just the Moonpies now.. come and scream all the lyrics while playing skeet ball and drinking wine.
Scoot Inn
East Austin Slow Dive
4th and Navasota
10PM
Skeet out
and you just give yourself away
i sat on my sofa there looking down into this book and began to wonder.. is art is dying a slow death. … maybe. maybe not, but it’s changing. because of how artists and people are living these days. with all these distractions and cellphones and internet and email and all that ….the empty canvas and the open mind have a lot to compete with. this was all just thoughts, but a few hours ago, I got real confused and scared because I started feel real isolated in this world and don’t really understand art at all and the living people wanting it. and i got to thinking about how long it has been that i have seen a piece of art that expresses something true and wasn’t manufactured simply just to be sold. And i missed it. i got sad and wondered how long it has been since i have heard someone sing a song and been affected by how real it was. and how new the ideas were. and how hard it was to understand where that artist was coming from, but i could see the light in there. and i was gone. and still it was easy for me to think that nobody really completely understands art at all anyway. not even the artist, and art isn’t even really created for that purpose anyhow. it’s the mystery that binds us. and then I waited, trying not to be tormented by the thoughts and all the words going around in my head because i can’t breath very well when I’m trying to figure why people have become so insensitive to art, …even the artist themselves.
but I was just sitting there and I got to thinking all this and that i am trying to find that moment when i dull my mind into creation and exist momentarily in breath without the need to check a telephone or answer an email. and I started to think that that’s where art has changed. that need to check, that need for something else. that’s what’s changed. I could only tell myself then,… don’t live in check. check is moments before checkmate. check is the moment of unrighteous holding when your consciousness mind is not working for you because it is working against something else. some other forces of distraction. cause in check you answer someone else’s needs and not your own. and i told myself to not live in check, even though I already know this. but I had to remind myself over and over as I sat there on my sofa, blown away, reading a memoir about the 1960s Greenwich village streets. and I’m lost in it.. and you’re just giving yourself away. goodbye art.
against naked sky
….like a couple of broken bottles in far reaches of the desert, a hollow piano
bleeding against the setting sun.
Where life is..
is where madness is.
everything is woken by morning light
traveled across the open sky in the tethers of the first winks of naked stars
life is not television
and a plate of eggs
sometimes I spend a day looking for one chord…
just so someone can say “once a chord killed a man. Once a man killed a song with sleep.”
don’t forget to touch the sky on the way up.
tracking keys
Matt tracking keys
austin town
the city is split by the river
at dusk the river is divided by the sun
people keep crossing the bridges
in a hurry getting’ things done
some are left behind
standin’ on the side of the road
by nightfall I could see what was happenin’
and in the water the moonlight glowed.
morning thoughts on the great depression
does anyone know when this great depression is gonna end? Yes i do feel like it’s 1920. the sky scrapers look gray and sad over the city. Abandoned cars ready line the highways. “Shit man, sometimes it’s hard to even smile.” if you’ve been lookin’ around at the violent city and getting that naked feeling in your gut that questions what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been hangin’ on so long, I feel your pain. Staring out the cracked view of yer window shield.
So someone wasn’t looking
and you were looking at me.
the morning was full
but my pen was empty.
When is this depression gonna end?
I heard someone ask
I heard another person laugh.
And me… I’m been runnin’ out of gas
and
this is already my second
pass through this town.
I’ve traveled up and now I’m travelin’ down
Still waiting for that good luck to come around
see I got a good pocket full of poems
coat full of laughter
waiting for a night of beers
and it’s rainin’ all over the ground
my boots are muddy and when I walk
I hear this groaning sound in the wind
that is blowing past my ears
the storm is dancing on the hillside
the overflow drains are already making waterfalls
the thunders are all lined up
a steady rain is about to fall.
I’m gonna check out for now.
christmas lights and a pay phone
if I only stay awake a little while longer
I’ll remember how she was tender to me
and sweet
but that our time is done
I might say that love got the best of me
her love is gentle like a flower
but dead petals blow over the cold ground.
I could still make her smile,
that is all that tonight’s gonna take from me
you can have her
just give me a little while.
