Most of us would immediately identify the Clavinet from Stevie Wonder’s iconic “Superstition” and from the sumptuous grooves of Bob Marley, Herbie Hancock, Funkadelic, George Duke, and John Medeski. With its guitar strings and pickups, the Clavinet is an electro-acoustic instrument that generates overtones and harmonics naturally.
Co-founder of the legendary Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, Hugh Christopher Brown has had an amazing career touring with B.B. King, The Tragically Hip, and Kate Fenner and recording with Ani DiFranco, Barenaked Ladies, Crash Test Dummies, Joan As Police Woman, Tom Jones and many others. He has just released “A Program of Music on Clavinet” under the name Shuggy Brown (a nickname given to him by his Scottish relatives) and it’s one of the most original, soulful, and beautiful albums I have heard in years. “A Program of Music on Clavinet” is warm, joyful, spiritual, and rhythmically alive, and remarkably every sound on it comes from a single Clavinet or Brown’s voice.
Brown’s lifelong love affair with the Clavinet began when he was 16 and bought his first Hohner Clavinet D6 at Richmond’s Trading Post in Toronto. He played Clavinet (alongside Hammond and piano) with the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir and when he and Kate Fenner began touring as a duo, the Clavinet was often the only keyboard he packed.
The sonic richness and breadth of this album is truly astonishing. It has a broad palette of tones and atmospheres: some passages growl with the low end of a bass and others wail like a Stratocaster through a Marshall stack. The album pairs four originals with four covers – each cover was chosen because the song has deeply affected Brown’s life and music. They are “Whole of the Moon” by The Waterboys, “Nautical Disaster” by The Tragically Hip, “Bold as Love” by Jimi Hendrix, and “Broken Heart,” written by William Franklin and recorded by The Sonics, in the spirit of Funkadelic’s interpretation on “Cosmic Slop”. Brown imaginatively breaks these songs down into Clavinet arrangements and his confidence and tenderness are evident in every phrase. Hearing them reimagined for one instrument is a joy because the melodies stand fully revealed and the love behind them is palpable.
The four originals form the emotional core of the album. “Go On 5” continues the “Go On” series that runs through his work with Kate Fenner and his solo albums, and it feels like a processional, a call to arms that is really a call to peace. “Edensong” explores origin stories and apocryphal tales, and the ways they shape who we are. “Time Murder Ballad” was written in his twenties and first appeared on “Other People’s Heavens”, the album he made with Kate Fenner. Brown brought it into the present tense for this recording, in a world where violence is substituting for faith, and the song lands with fresh urgency.
My favorite track is “I Am Sung,” an elegy for Juri Bunetta, the son of Brown’s friend Al Bunetta, who managed John Prine and Steve Goodman. Juri was adopted from Russia and found a home in Tennessee, so Brown wrote the song as bluegrass, and the Clavinet takes the place of an entire bluegrass band. I was astonished and while listening kept wondering, “How is he doing that?”
“A Program of Music on Clavinet” is an unprecedented, deeply human record, and a balm for our troubled times. The warmth and clarity of Brown’s phrasing made me feel that I was hearing this fascinating instrument for the first time. “A Program of Music on Clavinet” is the first in a planned trilogy of solo projects, each dedicated to a single instrument, and after hearing it I eagerly await the next two installments.