Biography:

When Stephen Bruton was a wee lad growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, his mother took him to a big band jazz concert. "Do you see anything up there that interests you?" she asked. "Yeah, that!" exclaimed little Stephen, pointing straight at the guitar.

From that moment on, it was as if Bruton's destiny had been preordained. He went on to become, as he puts it, "sideman to the world." He's played every kind of music from acoustic bluegrass and hardcore honky-tonk to bare-knuckle blues and rowdy roadhouse rock and roll, and he's played it all the way it's supposed to be played.

"A good sideman is a hallowed thing," he says. "A guy who can serve the song behind the singer without ego, he's always gonna have a job."

Bruton's resume

...includes a 17-year, on-and-off stint as Kris Kristofferson's lead guitarist, and two multi-platinum recordings and subsequent world tours as a member of Bonnie Raitt's band in the early 1990s. He's also got a sleeve's-length list of credits as a producer, including such critically-acclaimed gems as Jimmie Dale Gilmore's After Awhile, Chris Smither's Up On the Lowdown, Alejandro Escovedo's With These Hands and Hal Ketchum's Awaiting Redemption.
But it wasn't until Bruton officially retired from the road and came home to Austin in 1993 that he got around to making an album of his own, What It Is. This was followed by two more solo efforts, Right On Time in 1995 and his 1998 New West debut, Nothing But the Truth.

Spirit World

With Spirit World, Bruton has put everything he's learned in 30 years as a musician, songwriter and producer into his most polished and confident release yet. "I think this is a really good record," he says simply. "They all have a signature to them, but this one seems to have more of a signature. Or at least it's more legible."

The album was recorded in Los Angeles at co-producer/guitarist Mark Goldenberg's home studio, Shabby Road, and mixed at Tidal Wave with Greg Ladanyi as primary engineer. Bruton's rhythm section of bassist Yoggie Musgrove and drummer Brannen Temple was augmented by Goldenberg and a select crew of El Lay and Austin session players.

"I wanted to do it in Austin, but I knew I needed to get the most bang for the buck," Bruton explains. "Mark Goldenberg is not only one of my favorite guitar players, he's one of my favorite people. He's very thorough, where I'm usually not. I think the sounds on the album are amazing, and I had nothing to do with the technical aspect of it. It was all Mark and Greg."

Spirit World shows off Bruton's broad scope as a songwriter, from the gently insistent yearning of Teach Me How to Stay - which would sound right at home on any of Bonnie's albums - to the vintage rock and roll crunch of Acre of Snakes." The latter song takes its title from an old Texas saying; "Crazy as an acre of snakes." It was written after a spooky encounter with a female fan at an Austin gig Bruton played with Bob Schneider's band.

"There's just enough glamour in a musician's life that it tends to attract people who think some of it might rub off on their own lives," he says. "Sometimes the musician becomes larger than life to these people, and it can get pretty crazy." The album's emotional centerpiece is Just a Dream," an autobiographical account that reaches a bittersweet accommodation with life's injustice and impermanence. Bruton wrote the first two verses in a hotel in London, but didn't finish the song until the recording session was underway.

"I was in Los Angeles, and I heard that a friend of mine back in Austin, John "Mambo" Treanor, was dying. I came out of the rehearsal and called him and we spoke for the last time. It was very emotional. The next morning, I had the last verse. That song is about as cinema verite as you can get. Later, I wondered if it might be too hokey. But then I thought, "That's the truth of the matter, and any lyric will stand behind the truth."

Guitar slingin'

For a guy who's built a career as a hired guitar slinger, Bruton can hardly be accused of self-indulgence when it comes to spotlighting his own playing. In fact, he says the record label encouraged him to play more guitar solos on this album. "I think there's some pretty good guitar stuff on here, for people who like guitars," he says. "I just don't like the obligatory guitar solo. You have to say something."

Bruton points to the incandescent slide solo at the end of Book of Dreams as an example of his finest playing. "It was the right instrument, and the right amp, and the right moment, and I wasn't thinking," he says with the pride of a master craftsman. "I hope that young people realize that to be in this for the long haul, you've got to learn your craft. It's not all sunglasses and autographs. It's that this is what you do for your life. And if you make albums, and you are lucky, you get to make another album in a couple of years."

He did. Here it is. And we are the lucky ones.

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