The Toejazz of John R. Brusseau
Discover the homemade New Age synth music of the Alabama author and spiritual counselor
John R. Brusseau is a 62-year-old musician, author and spiritual counselor living in Priceville, Alabama. He is the singular journalist and editor-in-chief of a Substack called The Priceville Times for which he writes passionately about modern man’s relationship with The Great Architect of the Universe. Often, posts are poems/lyrics. Other times, they’re long-form essays on the original sin back in Eden and the ever-widening-gulf between God and us buncha bungled numbnutses.
However, we’re gathered here today to celebrate the man’s music — something he’d probably declare too prideful but that we can’t help but do anyhow, Sorry, John! You see, his inventive and loping econo-synth toejazz compositions are both songwriterly and hypnotic. Perfectly clumsy elephant march low end. Elegant and rudimentary New Age melodies played on synth harp and even synthier horns. And Bresseau’s strained, breathy vox leading us on this righteous path. Even in the rare romantic number, there’s something distraught scratching just beneath the surface. A muffled primordial scream. A white-knuckled attempt to keep cool. Some deep frustration with our human predicament of never-quite-achieving Escape Velocity. Being humbled time and again under the Loving Thumb of God.
Our first listens of his music immediately brought to mind Warren Zevon’s experiments in programming on his underrated ‘Mutineer,’ playing Brusseau’s “Everybody Gets What They Want” back-to-back with Zevon’s “Something Bad Happened To a Clown” more times than we’ll admit here. There’s something of Bette Midler’s fictional-Off Broadway novelty cut from her ‘Beaches’ soundtrack “Oh Industry” — if not the excellent ballad “I Know You By Heart” (also from Beaches). Genesis’s post-prog pop “I Can’t Dance” is in here too. Lyrically, Brusseau is most often giving it up to God on high (“God’s Answer,” “Quickly Comes the. Night”). But he also takes the piss out of the Military Industrial Complex’s fumbled feats of derring do in the Middle East and everywhere else (“Floriduh,” “In America,” “Death in the Labor Camps”) and — every now and again — gets a just little biblical-libidinal (“Come Love Let’s Fly”). We reached out to him in April about the possibility of collecting some of our favorite songs on a cassette. While Brusseau was flattered by our enthusiasm to release his music on ULYSSA, he has asked that his music not be promoted in such a way. “God bless your ventures,” he wrote.
In a post on The Priceville Times, just 24 hours after our initial correspondence, Brusseau seemed to signal to our failed proposition through his poetry. We were giddy and flattered in return.
We strive for recognition
We wrestle for control
We long for everything but You
and we are so un-whole
Sell ourselves on YouTube
Sell ourselves to man
So blind to who You are to us
We do not understand
And so, that’s that. Fait accompli. Brusseau has a legendary courage of conviction that we must ultimately respect. Homie didn’t say anything about a playlist though. ‘The Toejazz of John R. Brusseau’ is made of selections from the several albums available on digital streaming services — each numbered as a “greatest hits” collection. For the curious, there are at least 15 more of these “greatest hits” collections to be found on his Web site. After you enjoy this playlist sampling, we urge you to go much deeper — even though, as mentioned, Brusseau might just prefer you didn’t. And May God bless your ventures.