Tag: Marty Brown

Three CDs of New Music from Marty Brown!

Marty Brown Country Music In a recent review of the “lost” CD from Marty Brown, American Son, I mentioned that other new music was available from Brown. During the past several weeks, I have had these new CDs in constant play so that I am finally able to write about these three outstanding CDs that are available directly from the singer-songwriter.

Marty Brown was an up-and-coming country music writer and performer in the 1990s but his fourth and most recent major record label CD, Here’s to the Honky Tonks, was released way back in 1996. Since then, many have wondered if Brown was still making music. American Son, which was recorded in 2002 and recently made available by Brown, gave some hint of his continuing work. But three new CDs that Brown is selling at his Kentucky performances reveal something surprising: Despite Music Row’s rejection, not only is he continuing to write and record a large amount of high-quality classic county songs, he is continuing to develop as an outstanding artist.

The three recent CDs are: Marty Brown: Exclusive, Marty Brown: All-American Cowboy, and Marty Brown Christmas. Like American Son, they are packaged and sold by Brown and his wife, Shellie, so they are not in any fancy packaging, but the recording is generally of high quality.

Marty Brown: Exclusive (2012) features twelve songs written and recorded by Marty Brown. The album opens with “Good Times,” an upbeat song that could open a set when he plays at local establishments. I am not sure another artist could work the phrase “chips and salsa” into a song so well. “Borderline Fool,” with its Mexican music flair, reminds me a little of George Strait’s “Seashores of Old Mexico,” and one could imagine Strait singing this song too. The CD includes upbeat songs and ballads, as well as the waltz “Horseshoes and Halos.” Highlights on the CD include the love song, “Absolute Love of My Life” and an anthem about being alive called “That’s My Kind of Sky.” Brown wrote several of the songs on this CD with the idea that another country artist would record those songs. But as of now, this CD is the only place to get the twelve songs, and I cannot imagine anyone else singing them better anyway.

All-American Cowboy (2012) features nine original songs recorded by Marty Brown in Nashville. Although I recommend all three of these albums as well as American Son, if you were to only buy only one of these new CDs, this one might be the place to start. Every single song is fantastic, and while it contains two songs that also appear on American Son (“The Devil Was an Angel Too” and “Leavin’ Side of Me”), those are two of my favorites from that CD so they fit nicely with the other strong songs on All-American Cowboy. Every song is a highlight on this CD with songs like “Live Every Day Like Sunday,” “Love Can’t Live in a Honky Tonk” and the others having some of the best melodies in the Marty Brown catalog. If you were wondering what Marty Brown has done since the 1990s, buy this one now.

Marty Brown Christmas (2012), with nine additional originals, is the hidden rough gem among the new CDs. While labeled as a “Christmas” CD that was given to friends and family, three or four of the songs might be classified as “Christmas songs,” while the rest might more generally be labeled “Christian” songs. But something about writing outside his traditional secular country songs freed Brown to do some of his most innovative work on this album. The CD’s rough take on Brown singing “There’s No Room for the Holidays in My Heart” is in the tradition of sad holiday songs that deserves a place with other holiday classics. Although the recording quality of that beautiful song is not as polished as songs on the other CDs, Brown’s quiet singing with just his guitar reveals another side of his singing skills.

The freedom of writing a for a new category of music on Marty Brown Christmas also allows Brown to go in other directions besides quiet singer-songwriter. A song about Jesus’ crucifixion, “I Know the One Who Carried It,” shows that Marty Brown can be a rocker, and it makes me want to hear Brown sing more rock and roll songs. Meanwhile, Brown’s moving “Last Supper,” about a man on death row awaiting his last meal (“I couldn’t come to his Last Supper / But Jesus and momma are going to come to mine”) and “Washed My Hands in Muddy Waters” show that Brown can sing the blues too. Brown shines on these songs, and “Last Supper” features one of Brown’s most moving and powerful vocal performances ever. Despite the rough edges on this CD, or maybe because of them, on Marty Brown Christmas Brown approaches something wonderful that transcends musical boundaries, making me excited to hear what he does next.

Conclusion? These three new CDs from Marty Brown are worth tracking down. If you do not live in Kentucky where you can make it to one of his shows, you may do like I did and order these CDs by emailing Shellie Brown at ilikeitthatwaymusic@yahoo.com for more details about the price and mailing address. (FYI, I have no affiliation with the sales of the new CDs and am providing the ordering information as a service to other fans like me.) You may find updates on upcoming shows on Marty Brown’s Facebook page and in the comments to our previous post on Marty Brown’s career. In the most recent news, Brown will be performing tonight at Wah Bah! Steakhouse in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

What is your favorite Marty Brown CD? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • A Lost CD of Marty Brown: “American Son” (Review)
  • Marty Brown Sings His Song “To the Moon” (Originally Recorded by George Strait)
  • George Strait Sings a Marty Brown Song: “To the Moon” (Song of the Day)
  • Marty Brown’s Son Christian Brown Auditions on “American Idol”
  • Marty Brown Sings “There’s a Honky Tonk in Heaven”
  • Kentucky Music Hall of Fame Opens Exhibit on Marty Brown

    • (Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    A Lost CD of Marty Brown: “American Son” (Review)

    Last April in “The Great Lost Career of Marty Brown,” I bemoaned the fact that country singer Marty Brown had not had a major label CD release since 1998, and I imagined how one day Brown would be rediscovered with a pile of songs he had been writing and recording for more than a decade. While I still wait for Brown to recapture the fame he deserves, the many responses to that post revealed that many people still love his music. Fortunately, Brown continues to perform at local venues and continues to write new songs at a healthy rate. He recently even put out a new homemade music video. And back in 2002, Brown put together a collection of songs on an album called American Son as a comeback of sorts, but it was never released. I recently discovered that Marty Brown and his wife Shellie Brown were making that CD available for the first time, so I ordered one immediately. I was not disappointed.

    Marty Brown American Son American Son is a collection of the type of songs fans might expect from Brown, as he sings about love (i.e., “Love Happens,” “Make My Heart Your Home,” “Where’d You Come From?”), country fun (“Work Hard Havin’ Fun,” “Crackerjack”), and perhaps influenced by the time the album was recorded not long after 9/11, a couple of patriotic songs, including the title song and the still relevant “P.O.W.’s at the V.F.W.”

    Many of my favorite Marty Brown originals are his heartbreak songs, and that is true for American Son too. Brown always has had a great talent for turning a clever phrase and when he combines that writing skill with his great classic country twang, he cannot be matched by anyone recording today. His heartbreak songs on this album include “Friends,” where the singer tells a love that he cannot “just” be friends, and “The Devil Was an Angel Too.” The latter song has a refrain from the apologizing man that seems so clever I wonder why nobody else has thought of it. I also wonder why nobody else has covered the outstanding song.

    I have had the CD on repeat play for the last two weeks, and today my favorite song on the CD is “Leavin’ Side of Me.” The title tells you what it is about, but when you hear Brown’s voice say, “And I think it’s time you saw/ The leavin’ side of me,” the vulnerability and pain breaks your heart like what you hear in the great songs of Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, and Otis Redding.

    Because the album was not an official release, there is no fancy CD packaging, but Brown will autograph the CD for you for free. More importantly, it is the music you want, and they did not skimp on the recording. The quality of the sound, the musicians, and Brown’s voice, are all top notch.

    Conclusion? If you are not familiar with Marty Brown’s work, you may want to check out some of his other music first, but if you are a fan, American Son is another excellent CD to add to your collection (or a great holiday gift for someone who likes genuine country music). You may order American Son by emailing Shellie Brown at ilikeitthatwaymusic@yahoo.com for more details. They also have other new music from Marty Brown, including Marty Brown: All American Cowboy, Marty Brown Exclusive, and a Christmas CD. (FYI, I have no affiliation with the sales of the new CDs and am providing the ordering information as a service to other fans like me.) You may find updates on upcoming shows on Marty Brown’s Facebook page and in the comments to our previous post on Marty Brown’s career.

    What is your favorite Marty Brown CD? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Three CDs of New Music from Marty Brown!
  • “Boomtown”: The Debut Album from Maceo
  • Marty Brown Live in Calgary 1992
  • Marty Brown Profiled on Episode of “Kentucky Life”
  • Marty Brown in Middletown, NY (Concert Review)
  • The Great Lost Career of Marty Brown

    • (Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    Buy from Amazon

    New Video from Marty Brown: “Put Your Love Right Here”

    Marty Brown

    As regular readers know, Chimesfreedom has been rooting for a successful comeback from authentic country singer Marty Brown whose last major label release was in 1998. One of the recent good signs is that he has put together a homemade video for a catchy new song, “Put Your Love Right Here.” “Put Your Love Right Here” was written by Marty Brown and Even Stevens. [Update: Unfortunately, the video is no longer available online.]

    Chimesfreedom will have a review of some “new” Marty Brown music later this week.

    What do you think of “Put Your Love Right Here”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Marty Brown’s Son Christian Brown Auditions on “American Idol”
  • Marty Brown Sings His Song “To the Moon” (Originally Recorded by George Strait)
  • George Strait Sings a Marty Brown Song: “To the Moon” (Song of the Day)
  • Marty Brown Sings “There’s a Honky Tonk in Heaven”
  • Kentucky Music Hall of Fame Opens Exhibit on Marty Brown
  • Tune In For a Live Marty Brown Concert Online

    • (Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    The Great Lost Career of Marty Brown

    Marty Brown I am fascinated when I read about people who traveled around the United States in the early and mid-twentieth century discovering great blues musicians and folk songs. The music was always there, but more of it might have dwelled permanently in obscurity had the music not been recorded. Those tales seem stuck in the past, because with modern technology and the Internet almost anyone can post something on YouTube.

    But there remains talented artists who fall through the cracks.  These lost artists make one wonder if the future may hold a revival for some late in their careers or after they are dead — modern legends who are ghosts to us, just as Robert Johnson’s image and music embrace us across time. I hope that some day the world will rediscover Marty Brown.

    Marty Brown’s Early Career

    Marty Brown had some success in the 1990s with several outstanding albums. In 1990, he released his debut album, High And Dry which was not a big hit but did modestly well. One music critic gave the album an A+, saying Brown is “the sweetest surprise to ride the train in a long, long time and so authentically country he probably still has a tick in his navel.”

    Small radio stations played his songs, but the big country radio stations ignored him, opting for less twangy artists. Brown’s voice and his heartbreak songs led writers to compare him to Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, such as on the title song to the album. But I first heard of Brown when I saw the video for “Every Now and Then,” perhaps playing on VH-1 or CMT, with his Everly Brothers-type vocals.

    Marty Brown was born in 1965 in the tiny Ohio River tobacco farming community of Maceo, Kentucky featured in the above video. He began writing his own songs when he was fourteen, sneaking away with a friend to play music at honky-tonk bars.

    Later, Brown began making numerous trips to Nashville seeking a record deal while sleeping in an alley on Music Row. In 1991, the CBS news magazine show 48 Hours featured the artist in a story on country music.  The feature led to Brown’s record deal with MCA.

    During the Autumn of 1991, Entertainment Weekly and People Magazine described Brown’s tour to promote High and Dry.   During the tour, Brown rode in the record company’s 1969 Cadillac convertible to perform at fairs and Wal-Marts throughout the South. At each Wal-Mart, he performed on a small stage in a store aisle with little amplification. Fans brought him homemade cookies and fishing lures.

    At that time, the 26-year-old was already divorced with two kids and living with his parents. Just months before starting the tour, he was working as a plumber’s helper, making $5 an hour. While on his first tour, he explained that his goals were to buy his dad a bean field, put his kids through college, get a nice trailer for himself, and “not live no highfalutin life style.”

    The comparisons to Hank Williams continued. Somewhere around this time, Brown was filmed backstage at the Grand Ole Opry singing Hank’s “Moanin’ the Blues” for a German documentary about the country-music legend.

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    Brown’s Excellent Next Three Albums

    In 1993, Brown tried to reach a wider audience with the more diverse Wild Kentucky Skies, which is one of my favorite albums. The album features break-up songs like “It Must Be the Rain” and love songs like “God Knows.” A folk ballad he wrote about his grandmother’s death, “She’s Gone,” would not sound out of place on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. During this time, he toured with Jimmie Dale Gilmore.

    The title song, below, features a more lush production than a lot of his other honky-tonk songs, but there is still an aching country sound. One of his family members told a story about how Brown kept the Nashville Symphony Orchestra waiting the morning of the recording because he had a craving for a Big Mac.  But then he nailed the song on the second take. “Wild Kentucky Skies” should be the official Kentucky state song.

    Marty Brown – Wild Kentucky Skies

    { Wild Kentucky Skies – Marty Brown}

    In 1994, Brown released another excellent album, Cryin’ Lovin’ Leavin’, making a run of three outstanding albums in four years. AllMusic rates each of his first three albums 4-5 stars out of 5.

    Brown did not sound like slick Nashville country.  But the record company still hoped for Brown’s widespread success because it was the early 1990s.  During this time, other neotraditionalist and alternative country artists like Steve Earle and Dwight Yoakam were breaking through and building audiences.

    Brown received some critical acclaim.  But again the sales were not as high as the record company wanted. MCA Records dropped him.

    Brown then signed with the independent label Hightone and released Here’s to the Honky Tonks in 1996. For the most part, Brown wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on his four albums.  And on Here’s to the Honky Tonks, he co-wrote almost all of them (including one track covered by Engelbert Humperdinck). The CD again garnered critical praise but weak sales.

    He performed one of the songs from the album, “You Can’t Wrap Your Arms Around a Memory,” on Prime Time Country on TNN.  On the show, he also explained that he was inspired to write the song while watching The Honeymooners late at night. [2015 Update: Unfortunately, that video is no longer available on YouTube.]

    The Music Appears to Stop

    And then after the four albums, that was it. Marty Brown disappeared. Only Here’s to the Honky Tonks remained in print.  If you look him up on CMT or AllMusic.com or Wikipedia, the official story ends in 1996 with Here’s to the Honky Tonks.

    In the early 2000’s, I found an address for a fan club in his hometown of Maceo, Kentucky, so I wrote to the address.  But I never received a response.

    But of course there is more to the story. As country music became more pop-oriented, Marty Brown disappeared from the limelight and did not perform except for family reunions. But he continued to write songs, and a few were recorded by other stars. He co-wrote 1998’s “I’m From the Country” for Tracy Byrd.

    As time passed, Brown fell on some hard times as he fell out of the spotlight. In subsequent years the former local hero’s name occasionally appeared in the local newspaper in unfortunate stories unrelated to his music. For example, in 1997, just one year after Here’s to the Honky Tonks was released, Brown pleaded guilty in Indiana to a misdemeanor charge for taking an old engine block and selling it for scrap metal. He explained that he found the block in an alley, but he was fined and sentenced to probation.

    Hope for a Comeback?

    In the last few years, though, there have been signs of a career struggling to resurrect. Around 2008, a MySpace page popped up, selling a new CD he recorded with his son Marty Brown Jr. called Somethin’ Real. The website included some photos, showing that he had aged and was no longer the skinny kid in his early videos.

    I ordered two copies of the new CD. When I received them, the cover label was merely a copy of the 1996 Here’s to the Honky Tonks cover, but it included an autograph. Despite the amateur packaging and non-major label recording, the new music still had some of the magic.  On songs like the wonderful “She’s Beautiful Everywhere” he showed his voice remains one of the most authentic country voices around.

    Today, a few years later, the MySpace page seems to be gone. Another webpage has information about buying the album and a mailing address.  But it is unclear if the sales are still operating since the MySpace page linked to the site is gone. A Facebook fan page merely includes the abbreviated Wikipedia bio. [Update July 2011: See comments below for updated Facebook and other information.]

    His son Marty Brown Jr. has a MySpace page but there is no mention of the music he made with his father. There are only a few Marty Brown videos on YouTube, and they do not fully illustrate his range.

    Marty Brown

    Still, Marty Brown has not completely disappeared. In October 2010, he played at the Roxy Theater in Franklin, Kentucky. He still performs as a local celebrity, and he writes songs with new artists, as shown in this session with Michael Ray.

    I suspect fans who live in his area appreciate his talent, and his work is influencing others, including his son Marty Brown Jr. as well as another talented young son who writes his own music. But Marty Brown should be getting national attention from genuine country music lovers.

    What Happened?

    Why did his national career die out in the 1990s? Not enough people connected with his music.  You can blame that on several things, ranging from the promotion to his musical style.

    I love his music, although I realize that his hardcore traditional country sound is not everyone’s cup of tea. For example, after I loaned a Marty Brown CD to a country fan friend, he told me he loved the CD but “my wife said she’d divorce me if I ever play that music again.” In the comments section under a Marty Brown video, one person wrote: “I never want to hear this song again.”

    Maybe Marty Brown’s career stalled because the man was too authentic. He remained rooted in his small town, and even as his career was taking off, his dream remained to buy a trailer for his family. It is difficult to imagine him hanging out with the Nashville elite.

    Some of my friends make fun of country music, but most Nashville singers can hang out with the big eastern city folk while at the same time maintaining some connection to the country. John Rich and Trace Adkins sing about being country boys, but they excelled in New York City on Celebrity Apprentice. I cannot picture Tim McGraw and Faith Hill doing yard work, but I can imagine Marty Brown mowing a lawn.

    Many country singers come from small-town roots and they maintain that connection, but stardom takes them to another level. Even Steve Earle, authentic as they come and another brilliant artist who spent some years in the wilderness after encountering fame, moved to Greenwich Village.

    Maybe Marty Brown would have moved on if he had he found lasting fame, but I cannot imagine him living in New York City or Atlanta or any other large city. He was always too attached to his roots, as shown by the video of “Every Now and Then.” He was and remains connected to his place and locked in time like many folk singers and old blues musicians. In spite of his amazing talent, destiny apparently prevented him from being a big star on a national stage.

    Brown described his fear of obscurity in a 1992 Los Angeles Times article: “I’d go to bed at night, crying myself to sleep,” he recounted. “I’d ask the Lord why he gave me this talent to write these songs just to have them sit in a drawer.”

    Maybe some day when Marty Brown is an old man playing acoustic guitar in a cabin in Kentucky, someone with recording equipment will go visit him to get one more album out of the music sitting in drawer. And when people hear the music, they will wonder why there were not more Marty Brown recordings — just like I wonder about the lost folk and blues recordings from the early 1900s.

    Do have any favorite artists who have disappeared? Do you know anything about Marty Brown? Leave a comment.

    {June 2011 Update: See comments below for new developments since this post was published. If you are looking for news on upcoming performances by Marty Brown and his family, Shellie Brown has posted some information about shows in the comments.} {Update June 2013: Marty Brown returned to the national stage on “America’s Got Talent”!}

  • “Boomtown”: The Debut Album from Maceo
  • Marty Brown Live in Calgary 1992
  • Trailer for Hank Williams Biopic “I Saw the Light”
  • Marty Brown Rocks a Packed House (October 4, 2014 Live Review)
  • Marty Brown Jr. Praise Band: “Jesus Paid It All”
  • Marty Brown in Middletown, NY (Concert Review)

    • (Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)