Junior Brown is a man who knows where he’s been and exactly where he’s heading. With inspirations ranging from Merle Haggard to the Kinks, surf music to Muddy Waters, Brown’s guitar reflects the varied styles of western swing, honky-tonk, rock and roll, and the blues, though his audience finds his entertaining work to be all the more exciting because it refuses to be categorized into any one genre, spanning all of them and none of them at the same time.

Born in 1952 in Cottonwood, Arizona, Junior Brown was taught piano by his father and discovered a guitar in his grandparents’ attic at age seven and became fascinated with the instrument so much so that he spent the next several years playing along with records by the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Kinks and other high-profile rock bands of the mid-‘60s, mimicking their styles, but developing one of his own at the same time.

Never one to rest on his laurels, Junior developed a passion for country music by the early ‘70s. “I liked what Merle Haggard was doing at that time,” he recalls. “I liked Ray Price. I loved Ernest Tubb, because I’d watched him on TV as a kid back in the mid-‘60s.” With these and other prominent country figures as his inspiration, Junior spent the entire decade further sharpening his guitar skills in tiny little country bars along the Southwest border “[I spent] all of the ‘70s in hardcore, six-nights-a-week house-band stuff. I did ten years of that, night after night, four sets a night. I mean, after that, you gotta get good. You have to, just to keep from going nuts.”

Probably Brown’s biggest contribution to the music world was his invention of the “guit steel” guitar, an idea Brown had been carrying with him and developed along with friend Michael Stevens. The guitar is a combination of a Fender Telecaster on top with a steel guitar on the bottom making the awkward switching of guitars between songs a thing of the past.

By the mid 80’s, Brown was a huge success in Austin, Texas being the house band at the Continental Club. His virtuoso guitar style and incredible fretwork led to his first album, released in 1993, 12 Shades of Brown, and later on that year Guit With It. These two releases led to him being named one of the most critically acclaimed country singers of the 1990’s.

With his reputation solidified, Junior was asked to do a cover of the Beach Boys “409” on the now out of print, Stars and Stripes Volume 1. While Junior Brown’s work is quite varied, the same can be said of his live performances. Junior Brown never forgets his country roots during his live sets, but it is not unlikely to see a bit of jazz guitar, mixed with classic surf instrumentals, interwoven with a smattering of blues. All of this can be heard on his latest release, The Austin Experience, recorded at his beloved Continental Club in April of 2005 in front of a crowd appreciating a man at the height of his musical prowess.

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