Buddy Magazine review of Cowboy Johnson 
"A Grain of Sand" by Tom Geddie

MoonHouse Records  2004

      I never heard Mickey Newbury perform live, but somehow got on his "call list" in the last year or two of his life. He would call me every six weeks or so and talk, talk, and talk. I would stay with him for as long as I could - often an hour or more - before I had to do something else less important. 

     I still don't really know why he started calling me, although I suspect it was because somebody sent him something I wrote about him and he liked it. Mostly, when he called, I would listen. I couldn't recount the specifics of any one of those calls now, but Newbury was as fine a teacher as he was a writer and singer.

      Sometimes, we want music to comfort us. Sometimes, we want music to challenge us. Within that context, the combination of a newly discovered singer doing classic songs is potent.  Many people have covered Newbury's songs. The most recent is Cowboy Johnson, who just recorded his first CD, A Grain of Sand: A Collection of Mickey Newbury Songs, on the Albert & Gage independent label, MoonHouse Records.  

     This new CD's title comes from the masterful "Wish I Was," which contains these lines: "Wish I was a grain of sand / Playing in a baby's hand / Falling like a diamond chain into the ocean," which poetically summarizes human fears and dreams.

      Johnson, 51, but looking older and weathered in most of the CD photos, sang gospel in his church choir as a child. In 1969, age 16, he left home and spent the 1970s working the mines of South Dakota's Black Hills, honky-tonking, marrying and divorcing four times, making a living as a carpenter, painter, and steel worker, and making music when he could. He moved to Austin in 1996.         

      Newbury, a legendary songwriter, died in 2002 of long, slow consuming illnesses. He grew up in Houston reading Cassidy, Kerouac, Keats, and Wilde. By 15, he read his poetry in Houston coffeehouses and played in bands.        

      Newbury helped reshape country, folk, and even, to a lesser extent, R&B from the mid 1960s through the 1970s with his writing and performing. Ray Charles, B.B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Willie Nelson, and Joan Baez, among others icons, recorded Newbury's songs. His own hits include "San Francisco Mabel Joy," "Cortelia Clark," "'Frisco Depot," "American Trilogy," "Angeline," "Heaven Help the Child," and "Easy Street."        

      Newbury took Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark to Nashville for the first time, and helped Mickey Gilley get his first national recording contract. With old Air Force buddy Kris Kristofferson, Nelson, and others, Newbury turned Tootsie's Orchid Lounge into a tourist attraction and helped build the creative revitalization of country music in Nashville that lasted until cautious corporate types took over the business. 

     During one week in the mid to late 60s, Kenny Rogers had the No. 1 pop song with Newbury's "Just Dropped In (to See What Condition My Condition Was In)," Eddy Arnold had the No. 1 country song with Newbury's "Here Comes the Rain, Baby," Andy Williams had the No. 1 easy-listening song with Newbury's "Sweet Memories," and Solomon Burke had the No. 2 R&B song with Newbury's "Time is a Thief." 

     Nearly 20 years ago, Newbury began exiling himself into the long night of obscurity. People quit asking him for songs, he said.  

     The above is way too much background for this space, but it's necessary because people who know forget, and because people who never knew need to know.

      Most of Newbury's music came out somewhere between country and pop; Johnson turns a dozen songs into real country memories. The performances are so unexpectedly good that they resonate deeply. Johnson almost - without being silly about the thought - channels Newbury on songs including the heartbreak song "She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye," the hopeful "Country Boy Saturday Night," the prayerful "Lead On," the regretful "Makes Me Wonder If I Ever Said Goodbye" and "Sweet Memories," and more.  Right here, I want to write long paragrpahs about hearing artists for the first time - old, familiar names now, but new to me at the time. There are too many who move me to try to name them here. Instead, I'll stop with more of the lyrics from "Wish I Was:"

"Willow trees are strong enough to bend,
never like an oak that lives in fear of the wind,
oh a grain of sand is all I ever wanted to be, lay me down, let the water wash over me, wash over me,

I wish I was an old guitar, I'd be sitting in a beat-up car, hitting every two-bit bar from here to Texas, and I wouldn't be ashamed to look up my old friends, they would be so proud to see me strung up again, now a grain of sand is all I ever wanted to be, lay me down and let the water wash over me, wash over me."

   A grain of sand. Playing in a baby's hand. Falling like a diamond chain into the ocean. What beautiful, meaningful imagery.

 Thank you Mickey Newbury, and thank you Cowboy Johnson.

Tom Geddie