Audio By Carbonatix
Honky-tonk renegade Junior Brown is the consummate misfit. Beating the hell out of his one-of-a-kind guit-steel ax (custom-built after it appeared to him in a dream), roaring lyrics with coarse, chainsaw-toned vocals, and displaying the sort of nimble-fingered facility that makes guitar geeks around the world go limp, the Arizona-born, Texas-informed, Oklahoma-based musician works a drastic mixture of hard-country philosophy and heavy-gauge rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a combination so wildly disparate that only a certified genius could make it work, and Brown has deftly exploited it. Winning an award from the incestuous, highly politicized Country Music Association is a small feat, but he took its Video of the Year honor for 1996’s “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead,” conferring a degree of legitimacy that Brown has subsequently (and wisely) done little to further. The man strictly goes his own way, and every jaunt is like a Tilt-A-Whirl ride to a gaudy, absurdist and perfectly realized country-music realm.
