Brown headlining May 4 Song of the Mountains

Junior Brown will bring his distinctive music and show to the Lincoln Theatre for the Song of the Mountains television taping on Saturday, May 4.

Opening for Junior will be Rick Monroe and the Hitmen. This will be the first appearances for both artists on Song of the Mountains which is celebrating the twentieth season of the concert series. Song of the Mountains airs across America on over 200 public television outlets and is hosted by Tim White.

With his unique voice, more unique song writing, and even more unique double necked “Guit-Steel” guitar, there has absolutely never been ANYONE like Junior Brown. He’s the American Original.

Born in 1952 in Cottonwood, Arizona, Junior Brown showed an affinity for music at an early age when the family moved to a rural area of Indiana near Kirksville. In the following years, Junior began to experience Country music and remembers it as “growing up out of the ground ike the crops – it was everywhere; coming out of cars, houses, gas stations and stores like the soundtrack of a story, but Country music programs on TV hadn’t really come along much yet; not until the late fifties.” Discovering a guitar in his grandparent’s attic, he spent the next several years woodshedding with records and the radio.

There is a dependable consistency in Junior’s writing style (he writes nearly all his material) yet he’s always full of pleasant surprises. Though Junior always knew he could sing and play what he wanted, he had yet to explore his potential as a songwriter. “I realized no one was going to walk into a club and discover me…so I started hanging out with some songwriters who I’d played some jobs with, and they showed me how to support myself by writing and publishing.”

In the early nineties Brown and his band (including wife Tanya Rae) relocated to Texas to the active Austin music scene and landed a weekly gig at the Continental club. Having worked as a sideman for many of the Austin-based acts over the years, Junior was already well familiar with the town. His unique and entertaining combination of singing, songwriting, instrumental and production skills led to a seven record deal with Curb Records that began with “Twelve Shades of Brown” in 1993. He later released two albums on the TelArc label.

There were several Grammy nods, a CMA (Country Music Association) award for “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead”, move and repeated TV appearances like Letterman, Conan, Saturday Night Live, Austin City Limits, SpongeBob, X Files, Dukes of Hazzard, Me Myself and Irene, Tresspass, Still Breathing, Blue Colla Comedy Tour 1 and 2, and more recently, Better Call Saul.

The birth of the Hitmen. For years Rick Monroe has been a solo artist hiring players as needed and doing the Nashville shuffle of interchangeable bands, but during covid everything changed. In 2020, Rick and the band, with Bobby Perkins & Alan Beeler, were set to have an amazing year starting off with a West Coast tour when the world shut down. Instead of everyone going their own way, they all stuck together and started streaming live shows from their basements, garages and living rooms. At the same time Rick and Alan Beeler started a standing Tuesday writing meeting which eventually became the bulk of their current album. Through some mutual friends, Rick met Malcolm Springer and they decided to track a few songs and see how it went. Once in the studio it was obvious that this was quickly becoming more of a band situation and when Malcolm brought Jason Bohl in, the sound finally came together. Rick joked one night about how the band was killing it and bam- someone said “The Hitmen”- and that was that.’

Song of the Mountains presents concert tapings every month at the Lincoln Theatre in Marion, VA. The concerts are taped for broadcast across America on Public Television. The May 4 tickets are available online and at the box office.

For information visit our website at www.songofthemountains.org or call 276-783-6092.

The next Song of the Mountains taping will be on Saturday, June 1, and will feature the music of Sam Bush and Jeff Parker & Company.