Sing "Greenfields" Tonight

The Brothers Four have had a huge impact on my life and career. While I was not part of the group for much of the 1970’s or the first half of the 1980’s I have been a member of the group for parts of each of the last six decades starting in 1969 including all of the last twenty-six years. As someone who fell in love with folk music as a fourteen year old kid but never really thought about it as a musical career, it is something to ponder the influence of the music and the group and the different people in it on who I was, am, and am becoming.
Through the years people have asked if I get tired of singing “Greenfields.” Although the group sings it at every performance the answer is, no, I never do. One of the reasons is that I try to treat every show as if it were somehow the first or might be my last. On the best of nights the show combines those two ideas in some delightful way. I also respect how important that song has been in peoples’ lives, and each time we sing “Greenfields” is an opportunity for many people to remember or relive a moment or time in their lives. It’s an honor to be able to be part of that.  It hasn’t always been that matter of fact, of course. Here’s a song I wrote that takes a kind of humorous look at singing “Greenfields” through the years.  This is a recording from a performance at Benaroya Hall in Seattle in 1997.