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Portland musician Brian Berg was found dead Saturday in Salem.
Friends grew concerned due to not having heard from him in recent weeks, and his landlord performed a welfare check, discovering him deceased.
Though full details of his death have not yet been released, one of his former bandmates posted on Facebook that he had said "goodbye in a very Berglike manner" a couple weeks ago and that "he had given up" and "couldn't find a way out."
Beginning in the mid-'90s, Berg led his Portland-based roots-rock combo, 44 Long, to national airplay along with recognition in Rolling Stone ("kick-ass muscle-rock"), Billboard ("searing yet lyrically subtle"), and other biz bibles.
The band got praise from uber-critic Greil Marcus, who selected the band's Elvis Costello-meets-Creedence debut Collect Them All as one of his top 10 albums of 1997. That disc and its follow-up, 1999's Inside the Horse's Head, turned heads with a sound at once classic and crisply contemporary, with Berg's sharp-eyed lyrical stance and winning melodies to the fore, delivered through his keening vocals—at once somehow innocent and cynical—and bolstered by clockwork ensemble playing from drummer Cory Burden, bassist Eric Furlong and guitarist Andy Ricker, whose Pok Pok Thai shack grew to become nationally famous.
"To me," Berg told In Music We Trust's Alex Steininger in 1999, "[the band's sound is] just an alternate universe radio station where its cool if The Replacements go into Simon & Garfunkel or Led Zeppelin goes into Neil Young."
The band was one of Portland's prominent rock 'n' roll ambassadors in the era before the national spotlight shone quite so brightly on the town. It was courted by major labels and delivered acclaimed appearances at industry showcases like SXSW. After being discovered at one such junket, Berg spoke to Billboard about the band's broad appeal: "I've got 19-year-old girls with nose rings, rings everywhere, telling me they love the record, and then the retired anesthesiologist across the street."
In the same interview, while mentioning a struggle with low self-esteem, he discussed his work ethic, "writing 100 songs a year, to write 10 good ones."
But despite the critical praise, next-level success wasn't in the cards for 44 Long. Berg's next batch of songs was soon in the can, but it was ultimately shelved. It would be seven long years before the next 44 Long album, Hangover Heights Part 2, emerged in 2006.
By this time, Furlong had left the band.
As Berg explained to WW's Jay Horton that year, "a lot of family stuff… birth, divorce, death, death," had conspired to derail the band's career track, and the despite a vestige of critical good will in the music press, the changed realities of the music business in the mid-'00s made it hard to regain traction.
Berg intended to release the songs that had been originally meant for Horse's Head's follow-up that same year, but they did not emerge until a half-hearted digital release in 2012, alongside 33 and a Third, a final collection that was essentially a Berg solo project cut in the basement studio where he also produced work for many other area artists. He was proficient on guitar, bass, drums and keyboards.
In addition to being praised for his talent, Berg was widely loved, with many social media posts in the wake of his death speaking highly of his kindness, intelligence, and inspiring creative example. Horton, in an email, refers to his "raffish courtliness and wry patience."
But as is often the case with those who are the most positive and kind to others, Berg seemed to struggle to extend that same kindness and positivity to himself. He had a long-running battle with depression and alcohol addiction—the chorus of the first song on that first 44 Long album, after all, went "I fall off the wagon everyday"—and despite multiple stints in rehab and some periods of relative upswing, friends speak of him being "not himself" in recent months, of having "lost the will to live."
He is survived by his daughter, Bridget, 15, of Portland, and brother, Kris, of Lawrence, Kansas.
A memorial service and a tribute concert are both being planned.
Willamette Week