Baby Gramps : Same Ol' Timeously and Baptized on Swamp Water
Genre: Folk	Dates: 1999, 2005

Gramps’ appearance at Hickman’s Little Theater in 2008 just prior to the True/False Film Festival is already a thing of legend for the lucky few who attended. He is hard to describe: vocally, he fuses Popeye the Sailor Man with Bob Dylan with the legendary throat singers of Tuva; he seems to know every song published in this country, and can knock them out on request with surreal interpolations; he plays a guitar made completely of steel as if it’s a guitar, a washboard, a drum, a woman, a bitter enemy—whatever suits his fancy; and he is a ‘tween song rambler who makes Lawrence Ferlinghetti sound like Sylvester Stallone.  Oh, yeah: he’s currently (as of summer ’08) on tour with Johnny Depp. Thanks to the Hickman Media Center for purchasing (with library funds) these incredibly hard-to-find discs directly from the man. Special recommendation to English teachers: “Palindromes.” Special recommendation to American history teachers studying the Depression: “Big Rock Candy Mountain” (don’t expect the version you learned in grade school!).