Berkalin Records is pleased to announce the release of "Big Red Gibson" from Austin's folk-rock duo Jim Patton & Sherry Brokus. After 15+ years in the acoustic/folk field, Patton & Brokus have returned to their "folk-rock with an emphasis on the rock" (Washington Post) of their former band Edge City. The band is led by producer/multi-instrumentalist Ron Flynt (20/20), Cordy Lavery's (Utley3) electric 12 string guitar, drummer Steve McCarthy, and BettySoo (James McMurtry) on background vocals. Patton met Brokus at a bar in Arnold, MD, when she approached him on a break and asked if she could sing a song with his band. Despite strict rules against strangers sitting in, Patton asked her to sing Neil Young's "Cowgirl in the Sand" with them. She and Patton have sung together ever since. They listened to a lot of Richard & Linda Thompson, the Byrds, the Airplane, the Everly Brothers, and Emmy Lou Harris singing with Bob Dylan when they started, but from the beginning they developed their own style. Patton cites 20th century American fiction (“from Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Faulkner to Kerouac and Salinger and Raymond Chandler”) and the various lives of the friends he grew up (“I knew doctors and lawyers and waitresses and teachers and water rats and gravediggers and the guy who drove the truck that emptied the port-o-pots all over the state”) as the main source of his lyrical inspiration. Musically, Patton says he learned to play acoustic guitar playing Dylan songs, and electric in a band playing Rolling Stones songs ("and that was pretty much it for covers.")