Artists:Greg Bryce

Greg Bryce

Born in Detroit, Michigan.

Was inspired to play by listening to Elmore James. I still can’t play one note of him.

Made a bunch of money cutting down trees in San Francisco back in ’95 an spent it on a brand new National style “0” resophonic guitar, cause I had seen a picture of Son House with one.

I've been playin original and traditional guitar in the style of Fred McDowell an the Hunters Chapel singers ever since.

I currently spend the summer months living in bush Alaska where I work as a Wild Land Fire Fighter. The winters are passed quietly at my home in Oregon playing guitar and traveling.

An interview with Ben Solomon, GO Mgazines music editor.

By Ben Salmon The Bulletin Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Meet Greg Bryce. Actually, meet Summer Greg Bryce and Winter Greg Bryce. Summer Greg Bryce is a veteran wildland firefighter who spends April through October in Alaska, first in Fairbanks and then in the remote village of Galena. ("There are no roads," Bryce says. "You've got to either go there by boat, which is 400 miles, or by airplane, which is about 200 miles.") Up there, he does whatever is needed to battle blazes, drawing on nearly two decades of firefighting experience, including the infamous summer of 1988 in Yellowstone National Park. ("I watched the fire burn over Old Faithful from the roof of the Old Faithful Lodge," he says.) Winter Greg Bryce, on the other hand, has for 17 or so years spent the cold season in Bend. And for the last dozen or so years, he's spent much of that time practicing, playing and writing the blues. His music isn't the electrified blues-rock hybrid you'll hear on satellite radio, either. We're talking the real stuff, drenched in emotion and powered by guttural scream-singing and the kind of slide-guitar playing favored by old-timers such as Son House and Mississippi Fred McDowell.

It's the same kind of bottle-stompin' blues played by the Portland duo Hillstomp, which will play tonight in Bend (see "If You Go"). Bryce, 44, will open the show under the name blackflowersblacksun.

Alas, we are getting ahead of ourselves. The story of Greg Bryce begins far away from the blues, in the punk-rock clubs of Detroit and Ann Arbor, Mich., where he grew up playing bass in hardcore bands and running in the same circles — or at least neighboring circles — as members of the legendary proto-punk groups The Stooges and MC5.

It was early in high school, though, when Bryce was exposed to the blues. "Some kid passed me a tape. I think it was John Lee Hooker, and it just always resonated with me. It's got the cool sound, you know?" he said. "The old guys, they were just emoting amazing stuff. They weren't grandstanding or being big, shiny rock stars. They were just getting it out. And that always struck a chord with me." Even so, he was still years away from buying or learning to play a guitar.

He spent those years fighting fires and scaling rocks, "living in a tent and moving from climbing area to climbing area," he said. It was the challenging routes of Smith Rock that first brought him to Central Oregon. After a couple years, he settled on Bend for his winter home.

In 1995, Bryce found himself deep into the music of Delta blues giant Son House and in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, taking down trees for a handsome payday. With money in his pocket and the sound of the blues ringing in his ears, he set out to find (and buy) a resonator guitar — an acoustic whose warm, jangling sound is made by metal parts rather than wooden ones. "I was so enamored with that … noise that the resonator makes," he said. "So I made a bunch of money … and I found a place down there that sold those resonators. I made, like, $5,000 in a couple weeks, and I just took it over to the guitar store and gave it to 'em." Bryce "got a couple books" and began learning to play by listening to House, McDowell and others. Before long, he started writing his own music.

These days, he hardly climbs rocks anymore. All that time is taken up by the guitar. "Just in the last couple of years, I decided to kind of make a winter art project out of it," he said. the result is blackflowersblacksun, named after a favorite old print from Bryce's days in art school. It's a "band" name, but it's solely Bryce's project, a la Sam Beam's Iron & Wine. And while Bryce thinks it'd be cool to make music for a living, he's content, as he says, to make this a seasonal hobby. Last winter, he made a six-song demo of originals and re-worked traditionals at a buddy's studio in Seattle, and he uses the CD as a "musical business card" to get gigs, he said. (Hear some of the songs at www.myspace. com/blackflowersblacksun.) The demo's sound is beautiful in its simplicity. Imagine you're in a sweaty juke joint in North Mis- sissippi listening to some dude in the corner wailing on the slide, and you've got the right idea. It's faithfully reminiscent of Bryce's old-school heroes. And that's the point. "Those guys that are just singing from their depths and just getting it out. That seems to be a way that I can express myself," that said. "Lately I've been getting louder and louder, which is a real kick."

It's Winter Greg's way of dealing with Summer Greg's stress, Bryce said, and never the twain shall meet. "I'm so done by the time I get home from work," he said. "Here, "I'm so done by the time I get home from work. Here, I like to shift gears completely." Greg Bryce

Band Members

Greg Bryce - Slide guitar and yelling

Ron Carnell and CJ Davis - Prercusive stylings.