Introduction

When we were first introduced, I was struck by his agelessness. He appeared neither young, nor old, nor middle-aged. His face was smooth and unlined, but the eyes which peered out over black plastic frames spoke of experience and the thin white streak in his otherwise dark hair confirmed it. The hair, of course, was largely covered by the battered black fedora which he is rarely seen without. The cane that went with it was there, of course, and the hand not holding it shook mine with a grip that was brief, but solid.
"You must be Gypsy Crow," he said, and I nodded, for I was.
He gave me his own name which I knew as well as my own and asked me for a cigarette. He invited me to sit down. I accepted. We sat and we smoked in silence for a minute before he said, not looking at me, "A man's whole life is a song, did you know this?"
No, I told him, I did not know this.
"Epic, majestic, titanic songs," he said, "Always beginning with birth and always ending in death and in between are major and minor keys, changes in melody and time..." He trailed off and was quiet a moment. He dropped his cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his heel.
"A man's afterlife is a song as well," he said. "A soul is like a concept album, did you know this?"
I allowed as I did not know this either. But already I was learning.

Hunger

His rail thin appearance is legendary; oftentimes the mere sight of him is enough to send conscientious mothers into fits trying to feed him. But Jeremy Owen has a history with food.
"I try never to touch the stuff," he confided as we met for a second time at a diner off Broadway. I myself ordered a large plate of french fries which he was disinclined to share.
"You've read the popular stories, I assume?" he asked and I nodded. While not the best topic for those wishing to keep their appetite, the reasoning -if you can call it that- for Jeremy's dislike of food is well-known.
"Well, it's not true," he said as I nearly choked on a fry.
"Not true?" I managed.
He nodded. "Yeah, well, I had to say something, didn't I? And the story that's out there, well, it's kindof true-" he held his thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart to demonstrate just how little truth the myth contained.
"The truth is," he continued, "that a Folk singer, a Gutter Folk singer should be hungry. Always. Even if you can afford food, abstain. That hunger reminds of you the hunger you should feel in your heart. Always. Because that hunger is the fuel that drives your art."

Confessions of Mediocrity

Accepting his 2009 Loser award for Contributions in the Fields of Slack & Squandering, Jeremy Owen had this to say:

"I'm a Hack. I can't really play guitar, and, after 15 years of practice, I know that I never will. I also can't sing; I lisp and I slobber and I'm nasal; not tuneless, but not tuneful, either.
Every song that I've ever written has already been written a dozen -nay, a hundred!- times already, each of them better than my own sad and stunted incarnation.
But I would be willing to venture that I am among the very Best of the Worst. Beneath a thin veneer of mediocrity is a glorious luster; underneath and behind every failure is a measure of success - if only because I have succeeded at being so profoundly unsuccessful.
The world is filled with half-talented people; I am their King and Sovereign Lord. And since that is the best I will ever get, the best I will ever be, I accept it. As I accept this award: because that's just the way things are. And half of something beats all of nothing anyday."

Songs in the Key of E

His name was Marcus Beaubier and he was a comedian. But like many a funny man, he possesed no small amount of truth and the indelible mark he laid upon the genre we know of as Gutter Folk came the day he told a young and impressionable Jeremy Owen:

"You should always start the song with an E chord; it's a big, fat, monster chord that grabs people right off, so that all you need to do is worry about finding a second chord that'll hold 'em."

That he was speaking of punk music made little difference to the godfather of Gutter Folk, he just scooped it up and threw it into the mix.

Gutter Folk - The Definition

Gutter Folk: [guht-er fohk]
noun
1. Acoustic music played with a certain recklessness of spirit
2. Disenfranchised music played for disenfranchised people in a time of spiritual poverty.
3. A form of musical rebellion.

He couldn't be found with Google

Gutter Folk, as it has come to be called, has been influenced by numerous artists and genres, from Country & Western to Grunge, from Marilyn Manson to Michael Bolton. But the secret ingredient as it were, the hidden influence that no one talks about is a forgotten school of music called 'Water Jazz'. That no one talks about it is a sign of how completely forgotten it has become, for it was practiced at only a single location for a limited period of time, by a man whose name not even Google was able to recover.
But it existed, it surely did, and it proved to be the quickening agent for a young Jeremy Owen, then Gypsy Crow, as he struggled to find his own musical identity.
Recalls Owen in his 1967 memoir 'The Way of the Road':

"I saw this guy on Granville; a scruffy, disreputable sort, banging away at a dirty, 5 string guitar. He was all over the place with his timing and the guitar was so out of tune it sounded more as though he were torturing the instrument, rather than playing it. But despite a total lack of aesthetics, the man had a hat out and a battered sign beside the hat. The sign read: Water Jazz, and it was enough to intrigue me, though the briefest of exchanges proved beyond any doubt that the man was a total lunatic. Nevertheless I came away from the encounter with a sense that he was on to something. He was a genius, though the loss of his reason had also robbed him the ability to focus that genius. I thought perhaps, if his lunacy and abandon could be wed to my own style and purpose... well, then we might have something."

Fact and Fiction

Certain challenges rise up to baffle any historian trying to make sense of this man's life. Biographical evidence is scarce, stories are often apocryphal, contradictory, or both, and the reclusive nature of the subject in question makes separating fact from fiction a herculean task of the intellect.
That being said, certain facts are indisputable: Jeremy Owen is/was a musician, he was born & lived in Canada, and formed two Bands -neither of which amounted to anything- before striking out on his own to play folk music and focus on song-writing.
But what are we to make of the tale that he sold his soul to Jesus at the crossroads for a red guitar, three chords and the truth? Did he truly work in politics for ten years before retiring to make music on his pension?
Even something as simple as his birthday presents immediate problems: we are told, by various sources, that he was born in 1921, 1969 or 1991. When I posed the question to him, Owen merely shrugged.
"I was born," he said, not sounding entirely pleased. "Isn't that enough?"
Despite some natural reticence on his part, I was determined to find the germinating seed of truth amidst the garden of myth that had grown wild all around it. Bracing myself I asked him flat-out about his unlikely history. Which of it was truth, which of it lies?
His eyes sparkled. "All of it is true," he said, "especially the lies."