Junior Brown

Guit happy

by: JENNIFER CHANCELLOR World Scene Writer
9/28/2007

Alt-country’s poster boy Junior Brown gets ready for his newest guitar

When Junior Brown moved to the Tulsa area more than 20 years ago, it was to play music with legendary steel guitar player Leon McAuliffe, who played with Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys.

It was also to teach music at Oklahoma’s Hank Thompson School of Country Music at Rogers State College.

“Leon McAuliffe and Eldon Shamblin were the guys who were teaching music classes up in Claremore,” he said in a recent phone interview from his home near Bixby.

There, he also met his future wife, backup singer and rhythm guitarist Miss Tanya Rae, as he calls her.

It’s been a long, fun ride since then, he admitted.

And, eight albums and countless live solo shows later, he admits he has no intention of quitting any time soon.

Catch him this Friday, when he’ll combine alt-country soul with the lively and unpredictable spirit of rock ’n’ roll, at the Continental Club, First Street and Elgin Avenue.

Gunshy, a Chicago-based, throaty Tom Waits-meets-Bob Dylan indie folk/rock act, will open.

As for the venue, Brown is well-recognized for helping put a famous Austin, Texas, club by the same name on the map.

How? He’ll tell you: “It’s music for everybody. People who love country love me because it sounds like traditional country ... people who don’t love country music tell me they like me because I don’t sound like traditional country music at all,” he said with a chuckle.

Singing about (among other things) the highway patrol, parole boards, hillbilly hula gals, singing janitors and a wife who believes her husband’s mistress is dead, his song lyrics span the exploits of the working class – and are celebrated by it.

Also, Brown has been known to play just about anywhere that people will come to listen – from Cain’s Ballroom to, well, tiny underground venues.

“I’ll play wherever they’ll come to see me,” he said with a laugh.

“There’s even this little sort of a storage shed type of place called Unit D. I played all kinds of places. It’s fun.”

Simply, Brown loves to play.

And play he does.

He’s been named No. 1 lap steel player, No. 2 country artist and No. 3 country album in Guitar Player Magazine’s 1994 “Best of ...” listings.

He also was named the only contemporary musician in Life Magazine’s “All Time Country Band” rankings.

Since then, he’s released six more albums, which made him one of the most critically acclaimed country artists of the 1990s and early 2000s.

And a large part of that fame includes how he plays his dear custom guitars.

When asked about his guitar, “Big Red,” a custom dualnecked standard six-string and steel guitar combo that he calls a guit (southernly pronounced “get”), his slow drawl quickens.

When performing, Junior nimbly plays the guitar by standing behind it, while it rests on a small podium and music stand.

“That’s the only one I play anymore,” he said of Big Red.

Most of his others, including his first, Old Yeller, have been given away, he said. Yeller even hung in the Country Music Hall of Fame for years before he gave it to his mentor, Bobby Cudd.

“But I’ve got a new one coming with pedals on it,” that will allow him to play pedal steel while standing up, he said excitedly.

“I haven’t figured out a name for that one yet,” he said, explaining that a name comes with a “feel” for how the instrument plays.

And this one’s completely unique.

“It’s nice, the same kind of border inlay’s gonna be going around the steel, so it’ll tie it all together. It’s much bigger than the other guit steels I play because of the mechanism needed underneath to reach the pedals. It’s like nothing else, kind of like me,” he said, then chuckled.

It won’t be ready for Friday’s show, he said.

“But I will be,” he said with a deep laugh. “Y’all come out. It’ll be a ball.”