MUSIC

Revering friends

Bruton 'could express musically what I couldn't,' Kristofferson says

By Brian T. Atkinson
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Guitarist Stephen Bruton, whose weekly Sunday night gigs with the Resentments at the Saxon Pub helped make him a fixture of the Austin music scene, died May 9 at age 60. He backed Kris Kristofferson for nearly 40 years.

"Stephen was unlike anybody I've ever known," Kristofferson says. "I had the good fortune of working with him for many years since when he was the baby of the group, maybe in his early 20s. Stephen was probably my favorite guitar player that I ever played with because he could express musically what I couldn't but needed on my song. He did it on this last record, which I think was the last record he did. He knew just the things that I would want. He was a great rhythm and lead guitar player.

"Personally, he was one of the funniest human beings I've ever known, but he could also break your heart. He was a good songwriter. Powerful songs. Austin was a perfect city for Stephen because it's soulful here. I hope it's still that way, a lot of people just doing it for the music.

"Stephen was fighting (cancer) right to the end. He didn't want to go, and he never talked about dying. I was lucky because I was doing a film in Carolina and got out early and came back to see him. It was just a couple hours before he died. I think he was hanging on to see me. I didn't want to believe he was going to die, and he didn't want to and he wasn't ready to go. I said, 'I'll see you down the road, sooner rather than later,' and he smiled. He said, 'Well, I gotta go to sleep now.'

"I guess he'd been afraid to go to sleep because he didn't think he was gonna wake up. They called me a couple hours later and said he had died."

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Kris Kristofferson's eyes twinkle. Laughter ribbons like Palo Duro thunder. Now, he recalls his great friend's quotation from unwritten history. '(Late Austin guitarist) Stephen Bruton said, "If you take freedom and sidewalks out of your show, you'd be speechless," ' Kristofferson says, unhinging. 'He was so funny.'

As he talks, the Brownsville native fills the Four Seasons' Little Colony room with unholy magnetism. He's relaxed, inviting, fully engaging. Smiles broadly.

Both hands massage tissues as though they were worry stones, but fists never firm. Like finest art, Kristofferson's straight black outfit unbuttons precisely midway between last night's sin and Sunday morning salvation. Underfoot, willfully mistreated cowboy boots personify his most repeated declaration: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

"Freedom can be a scary thing because you don't have anything to keep you in control, to keep you safe," he says. "Of course, nobody's totally free, but it's something to aim for. I think I've tried to live my life that way since I got out of the Army. I had the freedom to fall on my (expletive) on my own." At 73, only silvery hair and an occasionally faulty memory expose his years chasing personal sovereignty.

Undoubtedly, you know the man's r?sum?, and military veteran only begins its roll. Repeat along: Rhodes scholar, long-ago lothario (Janis Joplin, Barbra Streisand), accomplished actor ("A Star is Born," "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid") and literate lyrical craftsman ("Me and Bobby McGee," "Sunday Morning Coming Down"). "Closer to the Bone," his sharp, sparse and unflinchingly intimate collection out today , fortifies past achievements.

Careful listeners discover that Kristofferson's passions rooted early. "I want you to hear I ain't crying in my beer, this is how it goes with me," he growls on "I Hate Your Ugly Face," the album's cheeky 96-second bonus track. "The happiest day of my unhappy life was when you set me free." Lyrically, its clarity, if not dexterity, nearly matches high watermarks new ("Closer to the Bone," "Starlight and Stone") and old ("To Beat the Devil," "The Pilgrim, Chapter 33"). The brief kiss-off's equally witty and whimsical, heady and heartbreaking.

Guess Kristofferson's age when those words poured forth.

Eleven. He'd lived exactly that many years when he started writing about freedom.

"I hadn't even thought about that," Kristofferson says, looking skyward. "I made that song up while I was raking up horse (manure) in the corral. We had a couple horses, and that was one of my jobs. I can remember that's when I started writing, and I'd be singing into the rake like it was a microphone. I never thought I was actually going to make a living as a singer-songwriter for a long time after that."

A quarter century later, Kristofferson's classic 1970 albums "Kristofferson" and "The Silver Tongued Devil and I" had established him as a top-tier country songwriter on par with Tom T. Hall and Johnny Cash. Plainspoken poetry forever united the kindred spirits.

"Forty years ago, Kris single-handedly changed the way people write songs," says Don Was, who produced "Closer to the Bone" and 2006's equally skeletal "This Old Road." "He combined the simplicity and directness of Hank Williams with the emotional intelligence of a Rhodes scholar! There isn't a songwriter out there today who hasn't been influenced by Kris. He's a giant. Today, his artistry and eloquence remain as strong as ever."

Indeed, few modern songwriters as fluidly convey human kinetics, as well as potential energy gained and lost. On "Closer to the Bone," Kristofferson brings horizons home to his children ("From Here to Forever"), wife Lisa ("Holy Woman") and his dearest friend ("Good Morning John"). "I love you, John," he sings nakedly on the latter. "In the cold and holy darkness, you were always shining brighter than a star. God bless you, John, for the love and joy you've given and the living inspiration that you are."

By close, Kristofferson's singular mastery blueprints our sweetest marrow: Purposeful vulnerability.

"I think it's a better song than I realized," he says. "I wrote it for (Johnny Cash) right when he had successfully completed a rehab, and it was the last one he had to go to. John was larger than life. He had an intensity and power that was scary at some times, and you thought he might explode onstage. He was electric. I don't think I could ever be like him, but what impressed me about him was integrity. People believed what John was saying."