Scooter Brown.Photo: Arika Tackett
There are those who think they know Scooter Brown. They assume he lives a life resembling how he looks, a 6'3" long-haired country rocker who stays up late and gets tattoos and likes to cause a ruckus every now and then.
And in a way, that’s all very true.
But there is so much more to Brown that some might not realize. Indeed, the lead singer of theScooter Brown Bandlives on six acres of farmland. He has pigs and goats and chickens. He meditates and he’s getting ever closer to his spiritual side, and yes, he loves his wife and children like crazy.
He also admits when he makes a mistake.
“I love the ocean and the sand and going on vacation with just my wife was absolutely amazing, but deciding to come back from that vacation on the same day you have to get four kids ready for their first day of school was probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done,” laughs Brown, 40, during a recent interview with PEOPLE days from his return from a Mexican getaway with his wife of 15 years, Vicki. “It sounded good at the time!”
Indeed, the man who created a band immediately after two tours overseas and one tour of combat in Iraq as a United States Marine is also a father of four children — two of which were adopted upon their births in 2012 and 2014. And at this very moment, the self-proclaimed war hippie admits that he is going through a bit of an identity crisis, trying to discover who he wants to be going into the second half of his life.
Scooter Brown.Arika Tackett
Much like the rest of the world, the seemingly endless pandemic has allowed Brown the time to deep dive into his own being, a being that often questioned if he was achieving enough, living enough, being enough to all those who need him.
“I was just talking to my dad about this,” remarks the Colorado native. “He was telling me, ‘You’ve lived quite a bit of life in your first 40 years, more than probably most people live in a lifetime. But sometimes, you get caught up in your own life where you want to do more or want to achieve more. Sometimes, you just need to take a step back and be like, ‘Wow, this has been pretty amazing so far.'”
It’s a realization that now, one can almost hear within his music.
“There was a time when I thought I had to be this certain thing with this certain sound,” says Brown, whose band is most known for their rootsy Southern brand of country music heard within songs such as “Country at All” and “Something Waylon Would Sing.” “But in reality, I love all kinds of music and I love towriteall kinds of music. I mean, I’m sitting on hundreds and hundreds of songs that aren’t really what you would call country music. Maybe it’s more folk or more blues, and at this point, I’m like, ‘You know what, I’m just going to do whatever I want. And I hope that people like it. And if they don’t, then I’ll figure out something else to do.'”
Scooter Brown Band’s “Wine Drunk”.courtesy 117 Entertainment Group
So Brown is writing and he’s singing, while still claiming he’s ‘not much of a singer anyway.'" But alongside the band that he created all the way back in 2009, they are playing what they want when they want, including their new single “Wine Drunk.”
“I know that there are people who became fans of us because of our traditional sound that are going to hear ‘Wine Drunk’ and be like, that’s just crappy pop music,'” Brown says with a laugh. “But the fact is that at this point, I just want to have fun. I just want to do something I love.”
And for the record, he loves himself some good wine.
“There is plenty of songs about whiskey and I’m not a huge beer drinker, unless maybe it’s a nice ice-cold Guinness every now and again,” he laughs of the song that he co-wrote alongside Adam Wood. “But I haven’t heard very many songs from the dude’s perspective of getting wine drunk. I’m okay with saying, ‘Hey, I don’t have to go out and hang out with the boys. I’m perfectly fine sitting in the house with my wife and drinking some wine.”
source: people.com
