The songs of Mike Brewer and Tom Shipley are wound up with the plains and
the farms that lie in the heartland of this country. The land has always
provided inspiration for the finest of American artists, whether Thomas
Wolfe or Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan.
Brewer and Shipley's pure, personal rhythmically exciting, basically
acoustic expression of America and American life has survived the electrical
storm to establish them as a premier songwriting and performing team - with
several albums and hit singles (including "One Toke Over The Line"). A
new album, ST-11261, was released by Capitol in March, 1974.
Mike Brewer was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1944. After high
school, he bummed around the country, working the old coffeehouse circuit.
He went to California and joined a group, it dissolved, but one of the
members, Tom Mastin, remained. They worked for a while as a duo and
recorded for Columbia. Eventually, Mike settled down as a writer for
Good Sam Music. By this time, Tom Shipley was on his way to Los
Angeles.
Born in Mineral Ridge, Ohio in 1942, Tom recalls that the music he heard
around him as a youngster was what they used to call "Cowboy music."
"I always liked that the whole family used to sing, riding in the car,
sitting around the house." He went to college in Ohio, developing an
early interest in ecology. "I studied singing to help my head ... I
also learned guitar, and luckily at that time there were a lot of
hootenannies in clubs where you could go and sing your songs for people.
The hoots became insane and it would be like ego-night at the club.
Great fun." After graduation, he got married, bought his bride a
trailer, put the trailer on the back of a Volkswagen, and headed for
California
Tom arrived in 1968 and ran into Mike. "I already had a publishing
arrangement with Good Sam, but Tom didn't , so he linked with me in my deal
and after writing together for a year we decided to form a total duo and
perform our own material." But they became unhappy with L.A. and what
they were doing. Mike recalls: "Just cranking out songs we began to
feel like a jukebox. And there wasn't anything personal happening with
anyone, it wasn't fun. It wasn't making sense. So .... we
split."
They split with their families to a 20-acre farm in Missouri. "People
like Jesse James and Quantrell used to hide out around here," says Mike.
"We can keep in touch with the cities while we're on tour; that way we don't
have to live in them." "Going back to Kansas City was really
great," adds Tom. "We had forgotten how it used to be .... forgotten
the freedom we had as traveling folksingers. Working in and around
Hollywood sometimes obscures memories of the healthy heartland of America."
Over the next few years, Brewer and Shipley became part of the emerging
Missouri music community. Good Karma Productions (owned and operated
by Stan Plesser and Paul Peterson) became their managers, while Kama Sutra
Records became their first "official" label (not counting an A&M album made
up of old demos).
They recorded four albums for Kama Sutra: Weeds (produced by Nick
Gravenites in San Francisco), Tarkio (featuring "One Toke Over The
Line"), Shake Off The Demon and Rural Space. Each album
has been a reflection of what's going on in their lives and what they are
surrounded with. Brewer and Shipley's debut Capitol LP shows two
mature artists at their best, creating a personal, straight-forward kind of
music.
That music (which has been critically acclaimed, as well as making out
extremely well in "the real world") reflects the life and times of Mike
Brewer and Tom Shipley better than anything we could say. It
represents a commitment to the land, to the natural workings of the creative
process, to a unique vision .... a commitment to the finest currents in
contemporary music and to the heart of America.
