Randy Lewis Brown on the Bowery Stage

“I love good stories, stories that make me think, that stick with me and sometimes haunt me.”

Songwriter and poetic lyricist Randy Lewis Brown was born in Louisiana, spending his childhood in pre-civil rights Mansfield, LA immersed in the formative strictures and music of the church. He discovered a new world when, at twelve, his family moved to Houston. It was there, as he grew to adulthood, that he began to connect with and make music in a deeper sense. Having grown up in both Louisiana and Texas, Brown’s tales are those of hard resignation with the occasional dappled sunlight of wounded optimism shining through told from a born southerner’s perspective. You might say his songs are as windswept as his heart. Having opened shows for Ray Wylie Hubbard, David Olney, Jim Lauderdale, Tom Kimmel, Pierce Pettis and others, Brown has played across the country -- extensively through Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, Arkansas and Louisiana -- at multiple festivals including Tommy Alverson’s Family Gathering, Yellowstone Songwriters Festival, Red Lodge Songwriter Festival and the South Florida Folk Festival. During his formative years in Texas, at age 12 he was offered a $10 guitar and for $1 a week by an older teen in the church, and he was instantly and irrevocably hooked. By 14, he was a budding songwriter and went on to form bands all throughout his teen years, dedicating himself in earnest to songwriting, even delivering lyrics in high school English class. A few years later, moving to East Texas with his bride to start a family where most of the counties were dry, the music was country and the bars to host gigs were few and far between, He began hightailing it across Texas on the weekends to as many welcoming stages as he could find. In the early 1990s after forming a duo with John DeFoore, and then adding cellist Dirje Childs to form the folk/swing/jazz trio Jealousy Motel which produced two albums of primarily Brown written material, he shifted focus to solo projects, although Dirje Childs reappears on his newest albums. Also during that time along with John DeFoore and his wife Barbara he ran the Piney Woods Pickin Parlor in the historic Mineola Beckham Hotel hosting national and international acts in the country, folk, bluegrass, gospel and Americana genres. He also ran a small recording studio for several years in his home, producing albums for local songwriters and recording songs and demos for, at the time, local budding artists Kacey Musgraves and Miranda Lambert.

With guitar, mandolin and voice alone he will guide you through his rich inner world and you will find yourself in the exact spot where the wide open spaces of the West meet the mossy confines of southern pine forests and mysteries are laid bare.

Randy Lewis Brown performs on the Bowery Stage on Saturday, April 8th at 7:30 PM.

Host or Publisher Winnsboro Center for the Arts