Vancouver’s Graham Brown Band will be heading to Red Deer this September as part of the group’s fall tour.

The guys play The Hideout on Sept. 15, and will be showcasing tunes from their latest disc Hiwatt which was released last year.

Brown was born in Glasgow, Scotland and came to Canada with his family as a child.

“We first arrived in Winnipeg and then shortly after moved to Toronto. I was still too young for school but I do have very strong memories of the old house we lived in and the neighbourhood,” he recalls of those early days. The family resettled in Edmonton and later St. Albert. And a passion for music was born early on as well.

As a youngster, Brown was struck by seeing the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show, and he later became hooked on playing guitar.

“I would sit on the steps and fake my way through Beatle songs to the pleasure of some neighbourhood kids but something was missing. I needed a drummer and a bass player but didn’t know any. About half way through Grade 4 a new kid came to our school by the name of Kim Upright, he played drums and we were almost set.

“By Grade 7 we finally found ourselves a bass player by the name of Bob Drysdale who I met through playing hockey. We decided to call the band (Stone) and even had it on the bass drum just like the big guys do. It was a great time and I have very fond memories of the show, I also remember that I never felt nervous about getting up in front of people to sing and play guitar, it all seemed so natural to me.”

It was in 1984 that he formed his first professional band with two friends from St. Albert. He later moved out to Vancouver and it took about a year to put a band together and get a record out. Collaborations followed as he continued to hone his craft, and then it was time to venture out on his own.

His first solo disc was produced in 1998. In 2005, he released his third solo project Graham Brown – Stand Your Ground which was followed in 2008 by Do What You Should.

The aforementioned CD Hiwatt follows a bit of a different course from earlier outings, he says. “This new baby is very different from our last outing where I mellowed out on the guitar thing a bit. The new record has lots of screaming wawa guitars, pounding drums and bass, which, of course, are all beautifully dressed in well-written and emotionally moving rock and roll songs.”

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