Brooks West stands on a darkened stage, a single spotlight separating him from the audience. He stands alone with his guitar in front of a microphone and sings, presenting his unique brand of poetry to a room of captive listeners. All in attendance who listen closely to the singer’s words are rewarded with unique and perspectives on a variety of rich subjects.
     Brooks West sings on life. Brooks West sings of God. However, according to his own confession, West sings a bit more about one single subject than any other. "Not all of my songs are about girls and breaking up," explains West, "but, I guess a lot of them are."
     It is probably fortunate that West does preoccupy the subject of love and the love-lost, as he brings a refreshing spin to the subject, using clever metaphors and original ideas to express his personal reflections on his own encounters with love.
     For instance, Deb Jenkins, who is also a prominent musician in the Fargo-Moorhead area and who helps Brooks in booking shows, describes West’s appeal as a songwriter by referencing one of his older songs. “Brooks speaks plainly and always tell the truth, both in writing and music,” she said. “My thoughts on Brooks go directly to the song ‘Sharpie.’ I know I heard that song for a long time before I knew he was not talking about a physical person. Or, was he? Wow, the way he makes you feel when you listen to the lyrics!”
     The song “Sharpie” is an older song of West’s. In the song, he appears to be crafting an ode to a favorite marker of his. However, the song also can be taken as a love song, when looked at under a different light.

     Beyond lyrics about girls and break-ups, West admits that, at times, it is the music he writes that dictate the direction of his lyrics. “Sometimes,” he explained, “you’ll [tinker] around on your guitar, and you’ll find something that’s melodically interesting…a little hook or something, and you’ll have a mood there that can inspire lyrical ideas.”
     Whatever the method of generating his song’s subjects, West is rapidly building a reputation as a true poet of the acoustic folk scene. Josh Harty, a friend of Brooks’ and another of Fargo-Moorhead’s well-known acoustic musicians, describes West as “one of the best songwriters in the area.” However, he expresses West’s songwriting as being more than songs about girls. “He’s well-rounded, not a unilateral writer,” Harty claims. “What I mean is he doesn’t just write songs about relationships or a crummy day. He has the ability to write about such a wide range of ideas, topics, or events and not sound cliche.” This knack for amazingly clever lyrics and songwriting adds to West’s appeal, and has helped to make Brooks one of the region’s largest draws for acoustic folk music.
     Part of that musical progression has involved his moving on to writing songs from a third-person perspective. On his self-titled record that he released at the end of last year, West closes the album with “The Ballad of Mark Carney,” which he based on a real-life murder case that happened in Moorhead a few years ago.
     “That was kind of tough,” he admitted. “That was a big step for me, because it deals with an experience outside of my own. That’s a story about someone else’s love triangle, somebody else’s murder, somebody else’s love affair. So, I had to try to write that from someone else’s [viewpoint], and that was tough.”
     The lyrics describe a married man, whose wife cheated on him with a co-worker. The song ends after Carney kills his wife’s lover:

     “I wrote a story about one of my first sexual encounters in that class,” he described. “It was a ten-page story, and it was on the computer at my parents’ house. My mom got a hold of it, and reamed me for tuning it in. When I finished the story, I was, like, ‘This is a good story. This is sexy. This is raw.’ But, my mom was, like, ‘You are a filth-monger!’ She was so mad. She was holding it, and she was banging it against the table. It’s funny now, but [at the time] I was scared.”
     According to West, his primary influence behind his devotion to folk music is “the money.” He claims, “There is literally hundreds of dollars in folk music.”
     Seriously, though, West says that Fargo-Moorhead is a good place to be a performing singer-songwriter. “It’s cool to be a musician in Fargo, because you can get a gig anywhere,” said Brooks. “It’s easy to make a name for yourself and easy to make a little bit of money here. There’s a small handful of people in this town that are doing acoustic music, and there’s a demand for it.”
     Despite the large demand for live shows, West would also appreciate it if more people would buy a copy of his album, so he can quit his day job. “Buy that record,” he pleaded. “I have 800 CDs in my apartment, and they are all the same. I only need one copy of my record, so somebody else has to buy the other 799 of them.”