We recently connected with Dustin Brown and have shared our conversation below.

Dustin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I’m currently working on “Blue Cut The Deeper”. It is a project that is unfiltered by expectation and fully what I want and a stream of conscious creation..

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Since I was a young kid, I have been writing songs and creating music. My parents weren’t musical per say, but my sisters both sang and played guitar. My grandfather whom i never met also was a multi-instrumentalist with fiddle being his main. So, I guess you could say that it ruins in the family, though not really encouraged. We are a hard-working blue-collar family and the thought of playing music wasn’t really an option as a serious career or source of a living. I was always the black sheep and rebel of the family and still am. So, I’ve chosen this non-conventional path and it hasn’t led me to sacks of money, but a life worth living. I have influences ranging from Johnny Horton to Cage The Elephant and Townes Van Zandt. I’m a writer and poet first and a music creator second. So it comes out in many ways in my songs.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The idea of success. I’m still unlearning what society and my own understanding of success is and is not. It’s very easy to get on social media and see what you don’t have, or wish you were something else. That is damaging and backwards thinking that will get you nowhere. I am still figuring it out, though I have lately just started to remind myself of the things I have accomplished and have started to focus less on what I haven’t. You must smell the roses once in a while and bask in all you’ve done and why you’re doing them. That and saying “No”. I have found more abundance in not doing anything and everything for a buck and instead chosen to take the quality over quantity route. It’s easy to burnout, especially when you’re a low-level performing artist. I grew to despise the business and gigging. Now I have reset and do less shows and ones that are important to me.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Connecting. I often struggle to do so in day-to-day life. Not that I don’t want to. It’s just that I take a while to warm up to someone and need to trust them before letting out my feelings and full personality. Even then I can find it hard to say how I truly feel about someone or something. So oddly enough I can write it all down then sing about it and when people feel it and it resonates with someone in the crowd or around a campfire that’s it for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dustinbrownsongs.com
• Instagram: dustinbrownsongs
• Facebook: Dustin Brown Songs
• Youtube: Dustin Brown Songs

Image Credits
On Instagram @vivid.imagery