Today we’d like to introduce you to Randy Brown.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I was born in the early 1950s in Shreveport Louisiana, during dark days of the south, long before MLK or Civil Rights. We soon moved just south of Shreveport to the Mansfield, Louisiana. The oldest of three sons, my young life was steeped in being at church every time the door was open. My father, a draftsman and part-time Church of Christ (where no musical instruments were allowed) minister with a daily 100 mile plus paper route for the Shreveport Times and my mother a homemaker who helped on weekends with the paper route as well as went door to door collecting for the paper for two weeks each month.
During a recession in 1964, at age 12, the family moved to Houston where I suddenly discovered the contrast between living in a city compared my rural North Louisiana roots. Despite the culture shock of integrated schools, traffic and being a minority in our neighborhood, I also discovered a new world where musicians were around every corner. At a church gathering in a private home, I heard two older boys playing guitar and was entranced by the ability. One of the boys offered me an old acoustic guitar for $10 and allowed him to pay it off at $1 a week, which was the amount of my allowance. I was hooked immediately.
After two years in Houston, we again moved to Jacksonville, Texas, when one day after 9th grade English class a young man sat writing intently and I asked him what he was writing. He showed me some poetry he had written and a new one he was working on. I was shocked, I had never thought that just anyone could write. With that permission under my belt, I went home that night and wrote my first song, followed by maybe thirty more in the next year when we moved again to Dallas. I fell into a musical group of friends there and joined a band playing the rock-and-roll covers required at the time. We practiced once a week for a couple of years and even played one or two gigs. I was still writing and during my senior year in high school, when my senior English teacher, Eunice Larkin, found out I wrote songs and asked me to talk to the class about songwriting. Up till then, I had kept the songs I wrote to myself. But that event gave me the confidence to begin performing my original compositions in public. During college, I formed a duo with a friend from high school called Brown & Hutchins and we played in all the Dallas County Community Colleges, plus East Texas State in Commerce and others. That was what I refer to as the great singer/songwriter scare of the 1970s.
I married my high school sweetheart, Barbara, in 1973 and we moved to Mineola in East Texas on a lark in 1974. However, there were no places to play my own music. In East Texas at that time, there were no bars as most counties were dry (no legal alcohol sales). The only place with bars and live music were VFWs, American Legions and Country Clubs, so I joined a country cover band and began a life of playing in those bars all across Northeast Texas every weekend while working a day job as a computer programmer. I played that circuit for 14 years, never once performing one of my original songs which I continued to write. By now, I had created 300 or more original songs which filled notebooks but were never heard except in my living room.
In 1988, I dropped out the cover band business and stopped playing music in public completely until 1994 when I met John DeFoore, a music teacher and professional musician who had just left Dallas for the quieter life in East Texas. We immediately became friends and I played some of my songs for him, which he loved and we started playing together as a duo. After a couple of years of duo playing, we met a cellist, Dirje Childs and things clicked between us immediately. We quickly formed a trio called Jealousy Motel, doing all original music. We played all over Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana with our unique combination of jazz, swing and folk featuring guitar, mandolin, cello with three-part harmony. We were together for 8 years and recorded two records; Jealousy Motel in 1997 and We’re Gonna Ride in 2001. Both these records are still available at http://cdbaby.com
In 1998 I began entering my songs in various songwriting contests resulting in being a winner of the 2009 Texas Independent Music Expo (TIME) and the 2007 New Traditions Songwriting Contest (Nacadoches, TX), I am also a two-time (1999 and 2008) regional finalist in the prestigious Grassy Hill Kerrville New Folk Competition, three-time honorable mention at the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival with 2018 being the latest, received an honorable mention citation in the 2011 Rocky Mountain Folks Festival songwriting competition and most recently in 2018 won the South Florida Songwriting Competition.
These days, I like to describe myself as being well past my prime, having an early bedtime and far too much thinking time on his hands. I have independently released two solo recordings: But Wait, There’s More (2013) and Dream Big (2007). Arriving in 2019 will be my third and fourth solo recording, tentatively titled Hard Truth and Good Lies and Red Crow. These two projects will be stylistically differnt but each an interconnected collection of songs seeking to define my own experiences with life, death, heartbreak and the search for meaning, while maintaining a healthy sense of humor and a respect for the mystery that surrounds us.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The road to here didn’t seem smooth at the time. As every artist, I have frequently doubted myself and my art. I have taken criticism to heart and let it discourage me. But in retrospect, the disappointments, setbacks, and failure which seem so overwhelming at the time, in reality, become the seed that makes me move forward with my art. Ever trying to be more honest and true to my personal vision. In hindsight, every failure has given me more success in creating truthful music that reflects the human condition.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with BrownRandy – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
I am most proud of the fact that I receive respect from my peers for my songwriting. Of course, internet streams, CD sales and fans of my music make me proud too and I would never discount that. But to receive praise and acceptance from artists that I respect has to be the top thrill for me. Also in 2018 one of my songs titled “The Trouble With Me” was selected by Flaming Torch Records (http://flamingtorchrecords.
What sets me apart is that I happen to have a very common name. Music career wise I became sick of Randy Brown as a stage name. Everywhere I looked my music was confused with that of other Randy Browns. Now, it isn’t the other Randy Brown’s music isn’t bad but it simply isn’t mine . So… as a solution, my wife proposed a stage name; BrownRandy. At firs I thought, was that too weird? But then I partially gave in and took the domain name brownrandy.com for my website. However, I didn’t take the BrownRandy moniker as a stage name. The next thing I knew my friends were calling him BrownRandy. So, as time passed I got more used to the idea as well as growing steadily more irritated by name confusion on iTunes, Spotify, and Pandora to name a few. As that frustration increased I decided two things. First, to abandon the Randy Brown name for future releases of music and to use BrownRandy as my moniker for all new promotion.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Besides the name change to BrownRandy and the re-release of past music under that name, I will be releasing two new records in 2019 tentatively titled Hard Truth and Good Lies and Red Crow. I also have begun writing and touring with another award-winning songwriter from Amarillo, Texas by the name of Randy Palmer. We currently tour once or twice a year under the name “The Randyboys.” http://
Contact Info:
- Address: 3236 FM 1801
Mineola, TX 75773 - Website: brownrandy.com
- Phone: 903 571 2374
- Email: randy@brownrandy.com
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/brownrandy
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/brownrandy
- Other: Pandora search for “Randy Brown (folk) or Youtube Channel –https://www.youtube.com/user/brownrandy1952
Image Credit:
Lindy Hearne, Ira Hantz
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
