December 14, 2001
Leave It to Beaver
By Brendan Walsh, Corpus Christi Caller-Times

The term singer-songwriter is bandied about a lot these days. What used to refer only to introspective, poetic and lowkey musicians like Bob Dylan, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, now comes up in reference to artists as wildly diverse as R&B soulstress Alicia Keys, new-age pianist Jim Brickman and alternative country singer Charlie Robison.

Traditionally, singer-songwriters were expected to play only the piano or guitar, to feature sparse arrangements that emphasized lyrics and subtlety over musical flash, and to write cryptic songs conveying complex emotions with thoughtful metaphors.

But as the term is used more and more, it's beginning to mean less and less.

Austin singer-songwriter Beaver Nelson, who opens for Robert Earl Keen at the Executive Surf Club on Thursday, is a throwback to the original definition of the term. Called a prodigy by Rolling Stone magazine when he was just 19 and playing open mic nights in Austin, Nelson has released three albums to criticial acclaim. His songs don't just tell stories about a wild time with a girl at a honkytonk, and are about feelings far more complicated and specific than just happy or sad.

"They're so specific, in fact, that it takes three to four minutes (of song) to get them across. I don't want to come across like I'm a brooding guy or something like that, but poetry is key to me," Nelson said.

The musician konws there's somewhat of a limited audience for songs one must listen closely to in order to really understand. Books for verse rarely sit beside Danielle Steel romances on the Times best-seller list, and Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious" probably got more radio airplay in one month than Nelson's entire output has received during his 10-year career.

His lyrics, Nelson says, are not an attempt to confuse people, but he's "not writing the kind of song that 30 seconds into it you know exactly everything that's going on. I'm not interested in those kinds of songs.

"I think that when I really step back and look at some of them there are spots where people are going to go, 'What in the world is that?'" Nelson said. "But at the same time I can listen to Townes (Van Zandt), Dylan and (Tom) Waits records—albums I've heard hundreds of times—and sometimes I hear a line and it just hits me, 'That's what it means!'" That's exactly the type of music Nelson hopes he's writing.

It's also a style that comes with the risk that people will misunderstand the message. In an October review of Nelson's latest album, Undisturbed, I made mention of a line in the song "Beauty in Store" that, I thought, referred to beating a child to give him a taste of the horrific world that awaits him in adulthood. In my view, the song, despite its title, seemed soaked in painful irony.

In fact, Nelson said, it was something that he had written for his son, and truly was about how wonderful life is. The lyric "whips to crack your ass back in line" was referring to punishment for misbehaving, nothing more. The line about a child alone on a seesaw wasn't about sadness, but was about hope. The line about someone bleeding wasn't about death, but was about survival despite pain, Nelson said. But in music, he acknowledged, "Meaning is where you find it."

Attentive listeners may find meaning at the Surf Club on Thursday night. Nelson sure hopes they do.