By Dean Poling
NASHVILLE — Assigned to the high altitudes of Montana, Air Force Airman Brent Browning dreamed of the salt-and-sand breezes a little closer to his native South Georgia.
These ocean memories prompted him and buddy Ben Banks to write a country song called “Island Time” while stationed in the Rocky Mountains.
Now, out of the Air Force, “Island Time” is opening doors for Browning. He spent recent weeks traveling cross-country meeting with numerous country radio deejays, hearing stations play “Island Time,” some placing it in regular rotation, conducting interviews on the life of a music man, playing gigs along the way.
The Rockies may have inspired Browning to dream of islands, but his larger dream has been to become a professional country musician.
He’s been living this dream, but, as the old song claims, it don’t come easy.
“I’m a one-man show,” he says, during a recent phone interview, the day after his regular Wednesday night gigs at Walker’s Drive-In, at the Lowndes County crossroads of Highway 122 and 125, driving east to a series of weekend shows on the Georgia coast.
A one-man show both on stage and off.
Performing, Browning is often a man, a voice, a microphone and a guitar. Off-stage, he manages what has become his full-time music career. He scheduled all of the radio stops that recently took him all the way to Vegas and back. He handles his press and marketing, his booking and learning the songs.
“I spread myself a little thin,” he says, but Browning’s the man at the wheel of his career.
In songwriting, Browning often works with co-writers, friends and colleagues he’s met along the way. He plans to form a band a little further down the road, but for now the money’s good as a one-guitar performer traveling to clubs in St. Simons, Amelia Island, and back out west come spring.
“It can be a little lonely,” he says of life on the road, “but the music business is also a lot of fun. And you can make a living at it if you work at it. I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.”
He grew up in Berrien County between Nashville and Alapaha. As long as he can remember, he’s wanted a life in country music.
His MySpace site recounts how he took his guitar to high school, playing and singing in homeroom, between classes, during lunch. After graduating Berrien High School in 1996, Browning had a brief stint with a local country band called the Southern Drawl Band. Very brief. He thinks the band had two shows before breaking up.
Hoping to see more of the world, Browning joined the Air Force. There, he joined the Branding Iron Band, which played regularly at the Beaver Creek Casino and as house band for the J Bar T. Browning also picked up a job moonlighting as a radio deejay.
He formed a new version of Southern Drawl, which became a regional draw in Montana. With radio station program director Scott Hershey, Browning wrote more songs, including “Losing You” based on the end of a relationship.
Out of the Air Force, Browning tried his hand in Nashville, Tenn. Several months there, he got a call concerning a sick relative, and he returned to Berrien County, building a base from his native county.
He’s pushing the “Island Time” single, but he’s also working on an album. It will be filled with his and co-writers’ songs, like “’55 Ford.” And “Butterflies,” about a woman who comes to realize she broke up with the wrong guy. And “Gone,” a song about a farmer with hopes of getting his family farm back after being bought out by a huge corporation.
He hopes Valdosta-area country radio will give these songs play as stations have played his songs in other regions. If enough radio stations play his songs, Brent Browning may find fame and fortune.
That would be fine, icing on the cake, because right now, he’s already living the dream.
More information: Visit www.brentbrowning.com.
