Event

No. 055 Shitty Barn Session: Kevin Gordon

"I like the unfinished ending the story that just continues when the song's over," says Gordon. "Life never sums itself up in three-and-a-half minutes, and a good song doesn't need to do that either. But it should tell a story."

Gordon's own narrative begins in Monroe, Louisiana, where he "grew up the son of well-intentioned, but backsliding parents. I was a very confused young man." Like many other children of the 1970s who fit that description, Gordon wrote poetry and discovered skate-boarding and punk rock despite being weaned on the region's early rock, blues, honky-tonk and rockabilly sounds. He sang in a high school band whose repertoire was entirely Ramones and Sex Pistols covers. But his own fusion of words and music ignited after a girlfriend's parents gave him a guitar and he discovered the more literate and worldly compositions of the influential Los Angeles rootspunk outfit X. In the late-'80s Gordon moved to Iowa City, where he studied poetry and graduated with a masters degree from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. At the same time, he became indoctrinated in the world of the working musician. Gordon graduated from blues jams to playing guitar in a regionally touring band led by Bo Ramsey, who went on to become a producer and guitarist for Greg Brown and Lucinda Williams.