Tom Brosseau - Biography
Originally hailing from the hinterlands of Grand Forks, North Dakota, singer/songwriter Tom Brosseau is a folk music raconteur who now lives in Los Angeles, California. Perhaps best known for his intimate performances at Largo, his disarming sincerity and wavering high-pitched delivery—Brosseau has said he modeled his voice after female performers Mahalia Jackson and jazz singer Sarah Vaughan—he emphasizes the lyrical side of music, the words taken from personal terrain, and as such has carved out a niche in the indie folk world—though he is more than adept at playing guitar, banjo and violin. Since first recording as a solo artist in 2002, Brosseau has released half a dozen full-length albums and toured extensively up and down the West Coast, all over the United States and in Europe. He has said in interviews that, over time, he thinks of himself less as a musician than as a writer—and as such, his music defies easy classification.
Brosseau got his start in music at an early age in North Dakota, inspired by his grandfather Dean and his bluegrass-playing grandmother, Lill—both of whom encouraged him to play guitar. Having listened and registered with the Laurel Canyon scene of the late-1960s, as well as Bob Dylan, Marty Robbins, Leadbelly and—aesthetically at least—Rick Springfield, Brosseau took on the scaffolding of a story-teller from a young age. He attended (and graduated) college at the University of North Dakota, mostly to appease his parents, before enrolling at a small Catholic school in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he began performing at open mic nights. Seeing Nashville as the hub of singer/songwriters who took their craft seriously, he relocated to the Music City armed with a chest of Cole Porter-styled songs and old country ideas, and was immediately humbled by the stalwart judges out there.
Rethinking his approach to music, Brosseau began incorporating poetry and literature into his songcraft, inspired by the likes of Alan Sillitoe and Edgar Lee Masters early on, and later Albert Camus and Flannery O’Connor. He moved west to San Diego, where he met Greg Page—who would become a friend and longtime collaborator—and began recording material. Much of his early self-released output was centered on his growing up in Grand Forks—his debut album North Dakota (2002) used sparse arrangements and his fragile, emotive voice to paint the picture. He later put out Late Night at Largo (2004 Unabridged), recorded at the famed venue in Los Angeles with no audience. The album featured a version of the track “How to Grow a Woman From the Ground,” which was subsequently covered and used as an album title by Chris Thile.
After coming on board of Seattle-based Loveless Records, Brosseau next put out What I Meant to Say Was Goodbye (2005), which featured cameos by Largo mainstay Jon Brion and Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins on fiddle. A year later, on the UK-based label Fat Cat Records, his 10-song Empty Houses Are Lonely (2006) delivered his gentle falsetto to other parts of the globe, and Brosseau played European dates as well. Empty Houses contained the aforementioned “How to Grow a Woman From the Ground” as well as his harmonica-driven track, “Dark Garage.”
He returned in 2007 with Grand Forks (Loveless), a collection of passing frames with slightly more filled out instrumentation (drums, pedal steel), centered on the distant theme of his former hometown of Grand Forks. One of the songs, the bleak number “97 Flood,” remembers the flood that wreaked havoc on the area from Brosseau’s own contemplative vantage point, which is set up by the foreboding song “Here Comes the Water Now.”
Brosseau put out a highly narrative and particularly sparse album called Cavalier (2007 FTC Records), which was his most personal effort to date, and followed that up with Posthumous Success (2009 FatCat Records). The latter signaled a shift in Brosseau’s craft, as he graduated from the minimalist acoustic/voice presentation for a bigger, more momentous sound. Having split time recording with Adam Pierce in New York and Ethan Rose in Portland, Oregon, there are swells of fuzzy guitar and synthesizers to backdrop his bittersweet storytelling. As Brosseau himself conceded in the liner notes, it was time to “put clothes on the skeleton.” The title of the album was inspired from Albert Camus's unfinished novel, The First Man—which came out posthumously in 1995 and garnered a resurgence in attention—and conceptually examines the phenomena.
In addition to touring and recording, Brosseau has taken to posting journals on his web site, candidly detailing the daily events in his life much in the same manner that he writes his songs—that is, with his heart on his sleeve.
