Gann Brewer’s 4th full length album, ‘Highway Lullaby’ is a clear eyed, down home, soul warming collection of songs that act as a sort of guide, a road atlas for the wanderer coming home.  The album opens with ‘Desiree’, we are heading south on Highway I, driving from San Francisco stopping at the San Gregorio General store for a lucky hat.  We feel the sun glinting off the water, the blue of the warm winter sky, the curves of America’s paradisal highway on a lovely day.  Dreams of the traveling singer, memories of love and nights and places gone by, they arise like thoughts in a meditation, hovering beautifully in a cloud out the window, then released.  The past has no hold on the singer, it does not thwart the course, all that has been has led to this ride, this moment where we feel free.  The past with her winks and trunks and spells is welcomed, honored, and let go like a holy road.  The album has a tone of graciousness, with nods to Brewer’s forebearers - Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Townes, Lucinda Williams, Kerouac, R.L. Burnside, Will Rogers, and Roger Miller.  There is a geographic tidal movement, between everywhere and Mississippi.  Brewer’s upbringing in Northwest Mississippi looms large in his work, anchoring the feel and the expansiveness of the album, calling like a ‘ghost down by the river.’  The singer cites a tapestry of locales that he has come to know: Holly Springs, Grover’s Mill, Jackson, New York City, Coral Bay, Big Sur, LA, Baltimore, Annapurna, Skagway, Luzern, and a Chilli’s on the outskirts of Memphis. You may know one or more of these places, perhaps you’ve crossed paths with an ol’ timer from the Highway, and in a flash of familiarity in the curving mirror of the song, you may recognize a piece of yourself.  Brewer doesn’t seek the shiny neo-retro town malls where the selfie slick hipsters air their spanking new tattoos, no, it’s the half spaces, the unremarkable edges of town, where he finds those nuggets of truth, or at least enough gas to get to the next gig.  This album doesn’t glorify the paperback mystique of the road and this isn’t the sound of a bleary eyed rake laughing off the back of the train.  This is the sound of a man who has found home, made peace, has time to tell his story and to hear yours.  But this home is not any one of these places, it’s neither off or on the road, it won’t let you define its walls, it travels with you, beyond you, yet it remains the source of the myth, a construction, and while you create it, this elusive home, it creates you.  ‘Song from Macolette’ is a gorgeous panorama of the road’s blessed wisdom, which rises like the Tetons echoing Neil Young’s ‘Dreamin Man.’

The driver with a hand steady but loose on the wheel, ready to react, trusting and open, wise and weary, and when the golden hour comes and the white lines smile, how the changes dance around your tranquil heart, a world in tune, moving like a river, all these living, enfolding, racing things coalesce like a highway song.

-Review by Neil Enggist. Neil Enggist is an artist, poet & musician based between Upstate New York, Switzerland, New Mexico, and the Road.. His amazing work can be found online via his webpage, neilenggist.com