dency. Brown wound up spending a good
deal of time on her own.
“I did a lot of knocking around and
scribbling in my notebook,” she recalls.
“The writing became a kind of lifeline — a
way of comforting myself and feeling con-
nected to the world in some way.”
As her scribbles morphed into poems
and lyrics, Brown began working out her
own songs at the piano. “Writing and
playing music was just something I did
very naturally,” she says. “The internal
part of that [creative process] wasn’t ever
something I had to struggle with.” Back
then, though, Brown wasn’t very inclined
to share her creative output.
In her early teens, Brown and her
mother moved back to Iowa. Brown finished high school and then flirted with
college, but by that time, Brown was
nursing an artist’s urge for wandering.
It led her to New York City, a place
where she went looking for creative community and inspiration, but soon found
herself overwhelmed by noise and traffic.
“I was 23, and I think I had a glamorous, idealized idea of what it would be like
to be an artist in New York,” says Brown,
now 36. The reality was far more challenging than she could have imagined.
The community of musicians and artists she spent her time with were “good
people, people I loved very much,” she
says, but they were deeply entrenched in
an unhealthy culture of drinking, smoking and drugs.
Two years into her New York experience, Brown had nearly lost three good
friends to overdoses and was still reeling
from the suicide of one friend and the
murder of a close friend’s younger sister.
“I knew then I had to choose a different
direction,” she says. “I realized ‘If I’m going
to get out of here alive, I’ve got to do it now.’”
Brown ultimately connected with a
healthier, more positive creative com-
munity in Tucson, Ariz. While there, she
became increasingly clear that her path
was leading her toward a musical career.
But she still had mixed feelings about
performing. Plus, she says, “I didn’t even
know how to play the guitar.”
That changed when, on one of her vis-
its home to Iowa, her father showed her a
1930s arch-top May Bell. “He was always
showing me guitars,” says Brown, but this
one turned out to be something special.
“He took it out of the case and said,
One of the best
things about
music is its power
to connect and
transform.”
spring “Get Lucky” tour — an experience
Brown describes as “amazing.”
Brown’s core musical influences include
country blues artists like John Lee Hooker
and Elizabeth Cotten, as well as singer-
songwriters like Tom Petty, JJ Cale, Loretta
Lynn, Rickie Lee Jones and, of course, her
father. But more than any one musical tra-
dition or style, Brown draws on a poignant
sense of spiritual and emotional truth she
finds in all the music she loves.
With a voice reviewers alternately
describe as “rich,” “dark” and “dreamy,”
and a musical style that ranges from haunt-
ing to rocking, Brown draws her emotion-
ally layered songs directly from personal
impressions — and from a desire to make
a powerful, potentially healing connection
with those who listen to her music. “One of
the best things about music,” she says, “is its
power to connect and transform.”
Brown is committed to staying healthy
herself, even when it means resisting the
temptations of a rock-’n’-roll lifestyle. While
touring to promote One and All, Brown
took care of herself by eating at least three
healthy meals a day (she’s a vegetarian),
‘Hey, sweetie! You should check this out,’”
Brown remembers. “I picked up that
guitar and strummed it a little bit. Then
I took it upstairs. And that was it for me.
I was hooked.”
Brown spent the next several months,
doing almost nothing but playing and
singing, doing her best to keep up with
the flood of music that poured out of her.
Ramsey, a seasoned performer who
had most recently earned popular fame
as a lead guitarist for Lucinda Williams,
was impressed by what he heard. “Bo
called me from the road hollering,” Brown
recalls. “He said, ‘Let’s make a record!’”
Brown moved back to Iowa short-
ly afterward, and Ramsey became her
chief musical collaborator and co-
producer. Several years and albums later,
he became her husband. Ramsey and
Brown now have a young son.
Working with Ramsey, Brown has
released four full-length CDs (and three
EPs) over the past eight years, all of
which have earned strong reviews and
critical acclaim.
Her most recent release, One and All,
(Red House Records, 2010), came out in
April. A Boston Herald review proclaimed
the album “an early contender for top folk/
Americana album of the year.” The album’s
second track, “Other Way Around,” rapidly
rose to the top of the folk charts.
This January, Brown was invited
to open for Mark Knopfler during his
experiencelifemag.com
Go behind the scenes at our cover shoot
with Pieta Brown and find out more about
her music, her passions and her new album.
Learn more at www
. pietabrown.com. And
for a chance to win a
copy of Brown’s latest
CD, check out our video
interview with her at
experiencelifemag
.com/pietavideo.
