King Of The Road

Guit-Steel Champ Junior Brown Keeps The Highways Hot And The Picking Even Hotter

originally published August 22, 2007

George Brainard

Junior Brown

It seemed as if debonair guit-steel slinger Junior Brown came from out of nowhere when songs like "Highway Patrol" and "My Wife Thinks You're Dead" began popping up on country playlists during the early 1990s. Brown, however, had already been waiting in the wings, sharpening his reverb-heavy, double-decker picking style for several years.

Partnered with an instrument now synonymous with his own name, nearly 15 years later, Junior Brown remains the undisputed heavyweight champion of the guit-steel - part twangy electric guitar, part quivering pedal steel - and a man apart from today's homogenized landscape of country music. Brown hasn't officially released an album since 2005's Live At the Continental Club: The Austin Experience, but he's still a formidable presence on the road. He and bass player/ wife Tanya Brown, alongside a precision-tested road band, knock 'em dead nightly with a repertoire that effortlessly jumps from hardcore Ernest Tubb-style honky-tonk to Hendrix's "Foxy Lady," all the while keeping one foot on the effects pedal.

In the last couple years, the Texas musician has lent his bucket-deep baritone and guit-steel prowess to kiddie/ adult cartoon fave "Spongebob Squarepants" and partnered up with original guit-steel designer Michael Stevens to make future models of the custom instrument available for purchase by other musicians. Flagpole picked up these and other tidbits from Brown while recently speaking with him by phone from his tour stop somewhere east of Dallas and west of here.

Flagpole

The general public became aware of you through the first couple records you put out, Guit With It and 12 Shades of Brown. But you were out there making music for some time before that.

Junior Brown

I had mostly worked as a sideman, sometimes on the steel guitar, but mostly as a guitar-player sideman. I managed to work a good bit freelancing with bands throughout the '70s, but during the early '80s, the country crowds started to dry up with more people getting into rock bands and stuff. I started teaching guitar lessons during the mid-'80s to supplement my income, along with still playing as a sideman for people.

After that, I realized I'd better get serious and start writing some songs because time, it was a-wasting [laughs]. I'd just realized that I had to get more serious about my writing, or I wasn't going to make much of a solo artist.

Flagpole

You're known primarily as a country artist, but you mix up a lot of different subgenres like surf-rock, honky-tonk, countrypolitan and others. Do you see a connecting thread that links them together?

Junior Brown

I guess it'd be the combination of the guit-steel, the way a song works with the guitar and steel guitar parts together. That's what sort of takes me off to the different worlds, mostly. Sometimes, it will be the lyrics, like I'll sing a song in Spanish just because I really love the song and that doesn't have too much to do with the guitar parts at all. It's usually how everything fits with the guitar, though.

I just go off on these different journeys on things I'm interested in. Most of my favorite music, though, is honky-tonk country. That's the style that I write in, mostly. A lot of it comes from different stuff I messed around with as a teenager, like the surfer guitar, or from past experiences of things I've enjoyed. I just like to try a lot of different guitar styles here and there… some Hawaiian, some country steel, some blues stuff.

Flagpole

Would you consider an instrument like the steel guitar, that's been so essential to country music's past, as taken for granted today?

Junior Brown

Ah, it's all gone. Most of the true old country style I like can be found on old records and that's about it.

Flagpole

How did the guit-steel originally come about? Do you have any fellow guit-steel players out there these days?

Junior Brown

Well, it started with having to choose between an electric guitar and a steel guitar while onstage. I just got tired of switching between them and having to plug this one in and unplug that one. That's the main reason I wanted to build one, to cut down on the switching out while I was singing. Now, it's just become part of me and I'm the guy that plays those things!

We're starting to sell some of 'em, actually. Michael Stevens, the guy that built the original one for me, has started custom-building them for a few people, so you'll probably see more popping up here and there.

Flagpole

You haven't released an album in a while. Got anything fresh and tasty on the backburner?

Junior Brown

Yeah, I have some songs that I'll record one of these days, but they're not quite ready yet. A lot of people get the impression that they have to go and put out a record every year. If I can't put out a really good record, I don't jump on it just to do it, y'know? I don't do tribute records or special guest records anymore, both of which have been done to death. So, a Junior Brown & Friends record probably isn't something that will be coming up in the near future [laughs]. That's not for having a lack of friends, but the format's just been clichéd.

Or you have the "let's do a tribute to so and so" album where they get a bunch of people together to do these songs and the whole thing ends up having nothing to do with the so-and-so in question. I just try to avoid stuff like that.

Michael Andrews

WHO: Junior Brown, Clay Leverett & John Neff
WHERE: Melting Point
WHEN: Thursday, August 23
HOW MUCH: $22.50 (advance), $25 (day of show)