Reviews

Where to begin with my appreciation for the music, and especially the lyrics, of Sam Broussard? Broussard plays guitar as a member of a Grammy-nominated Cajun band, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, a band that I like well enough. But it's Broussard's solo effort as a singer/songwriter that I most enjoy. All of the songs I refer to below are on the album Geeks.

What I like best about Broussard's lyrics is their moral complexity and honesty. A great example of this is "Angel of Mercy," a song in the voice of a cop who has had a bad day and has just pulled over a drunk driver who is just as full of piss and vinegar as he is soaked in alcohol. A listener hearing the song for the first time might easily hear in it only one side of its story. Here in Eugene, the brick-and-rock-throwing anarchist crowd would likely cheer "Angel of Mercy" and say, "Yeah, that's what the cops are like!" And I suspect that if I played this song for my brother, a police sergeant, he'd say, "Yeah, that's what it's like sometimes to be a cop." And on a second listen, I'm guessing that the anarchists might squirm a little and start thinking that this song was actually pro-police, while my brother might squirm a little for the opposite reason.

"Angel of Mercy" is morally complex. It tells its story from both sides, the story of what it is to be a well-intentioned and imperfect human being invested by the state with the power to use force. The story doesn't resolve one way or the other. It ends with the cop balanced on the edge of his own warring impulses, and the final verse is probably a good one to hum next time you're pulled over. Not that humming the song will keep you from getting a ticket.

Another song of moral complexity is "Servant of the People." The song is satire, the self-congratulating autobiography of a politician, but the song is as much the politician's accusation of the electorate as it is his confession of hypocrisy. If the politician has a flexible relationship with the truth, who made him that way but an electorate that will damn him as much for truths they don't want to hear as for lies? How can the politician honorably serve a dishonorable electorate? "If you could pack all your troubles in a box, you would float them downstream. Don't lie to me."

"Screws, Pins and Bolts," with its title taken from the surgical implants that aren't consumed during cremation, is, believe it or not, a happy song in the voice of a mortician. We are, the song reminds us, only here for a brief time. Carpe diem. Try finding a song like that on the radio!

"T-Neg" is a ballad, a life's story in song. A love story, as it turns out. It's happy, upbeat, and my affection for it surely disproves the assumption that I only like dark things.

But I do like dark things. Sam Broussard does dark very well. He's not the Stephen King of song, but let's say he's the song version of Joyce Carol Oates in one of her bleak moods. "Ira Visits His Dad" is a song sung by the aged father of a drug dealer. He's not happy with the life his son has made for himself, but he's dying, in pain, and his son can bring him pain relief that the nursing home won't administer.

I said in the previous post that some of John K. Samson's prose lyrics could stand alone as poems, and the same is true for Broussard's free verse. However, poetry for the page is not the same as song lyrics. As good as the words of these writers are, they are enhanced by the emotional color of melody and instrumental rhythm. The Robber Baron in "I Don't Care Where You Bury Me," singing about his indestructibility, has these lines: "Send your foulest demon, I'll choke him with his tongue. Send all your cutthroat lawyers, man. I'll make them eat their young. Yum Yum." The near-rhyme of young and yum yum is funny on the page, but it's funnier when sung than it could ever be on the page or in recitation.

And speaking of funny, one of these songs has one of the funniest (and uncomfortably true) lines that I've ever heard. The line is in "Her Comb and Her Perfume," and ends with the word "enough." More than that, I should not say. You can listen to this part of "Her Comb and Her Perfume" on Broussard's web site. You'll find all of his lyrics and samples of the songs on the site ...

- Bruce Holland Rogers

An ornery, rough-hewn, swamp-breed firecracker, or so you might have thought, had you listened to him play on Jay Ungar and Molly Mason's NPR showcase, "Dancing on the Air." He opened with a dramatically raging song of piss and vinegar, screaming defiance into the wind and denying the limitations of earthly existence for an everlasting legacy of deeds. His piquant voice crackling with fury on the chorus "I don't care where you bury me 'cause I will never die"; his open-tuned guitar popping and snaking with equal wrath, Sam Broussard used a fearsome flow of vivid images to etch an impression of the kind of bulgingly forceful, damn-the-second-thoughts rebellion you'd expect from devoutly angry and incautiously confident youth.

Although he followed that tune with a lullingly romantic ballad, an imprint of venom remained to be reinforced by the expression of insolent challenge gazing out from the back cover of his 15-song debut CD, "Geeks."

- Gary Alexander, The Woodstock Journal

Combine Broussard's lyrical thoughts with his exceptional guitar stylings and it's a powerful tandem. A guitar player's guitar player, Broussard never lacks for intricate finger-picking patterns, harmonics or any other unpretentious string wizardry. Yet, as awe-inspiring as this is, none of this overshadows the lyrics.

"Geeks" is one of those records where every second counts. Geeks

- Dan Willging, Offbeat Magazine

Many songwriters claim to sing of the human heart, few dare to reach in and touch the beating muscle in search of its innate power and majesty. Singer-songwriter Sam Broussard has no fear when it comes to seeking that inner pulse that provides more than life.

- Todd Dawson, The Easton Express-Times

As the new lead guitarist for Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, Lafayette-LA based Sam Broussard adds some virtuoso guitar-playing and sweet harmonies to this Cajun band's performances. In his debut solo album, which won the Offbeat 2000 award for best Country/Folk CD, Broussard has created one of the most intelligent CDs I've heard in a long time, albeit not in the Cajun genre. Broussard is a masterful guitar player and can write haunting melodies that stick in your brain. However, the strength of "Geeks" is in his characters and his storytelling.He is an articulate lyricist with a unique and adult perspective. Few artists concern themselves with grown-up issues. His cast of characters include the elderly, politicians, lawyers, cops and priests all caught & struggling with their individual ambiguous, thought-provoking situations. Even his love songs have this unique perspective. The CD works as pure music but then, once you have sat down with the lyric sheet, you can't get the songs out of your mind.His lyrics can be both brutally direct and then wonderfully lyrical. Broussard brings to mind, and is in the same class with such other great, dark, self-aware, wordy and thoughtful singer/songwriters, as: Tom Waits, Richard Thompson, and Graham Parker.. Highly recommended.

- Andrea Rubinstein, www.sfbayou.com

... you'll discover an entirely different world inhabited by geeks, invalids, the down-and-out, and other such characters, all sketched out in an honest and unglamorized fashion. Broussard has a gift describing what people really feel ... His well-constructed and polished (without being slick) arrangements feature strong melodies and guitar work. Every track has a different sound, despite Broussard playing almost every instrument. It might have taken him 25 years to produce his first solo recording, but it was well worth the wait.

- Jim Lee, Dirty Linen Magazine

"...Sam is immensely talented and eloquent, and equally outspoken..."

- Frank Goodman, Puremusic.com