Kevin Browne

Skating

What the songs are about – 5^th installment

Our middle son asked me one day if I wanted to go ice-skating. We hadn’t been for many, many years, but I said yes. We started skating about twice a month at the Rockledge Ice-Plex (“the coolest place in town”). I’ve always enjoyed watching the speed skaters, chiefly from the Netherlands, during the Winter Olympics, so it’s been very enjoyable learning to skate again. There’s something special about gliding across the ice, especially when the Zamboni has…

Cornbread

What the songs are about – 4th installment

I still think fondly of Illinois and the corn fields were numerous in the Belleville area. I started playing these chords one day and singing the chorus and my brother Paul Browne was singing an echo. He gave me the “Mascoutah land” text. I think we are all still St. Louis Blues fans. I dealt frequently with allergies as a child and my third grade teacher sent my report card home with a comment about me wiping my nose on my shirt sleeves. A bit disgusting…

What the songs are about – 2^nd installment

 Immovable concerns being able to make clear and logical choices every time I’m confronted by difficult situations. Unfortunately, I don’t always accomplish that. Anger and apathy are difficult to overcome.

I paid tribute to Edvard Grieg, the Norwegian composer, with a little mandolin theme. Listen for it. Leon Olguin, as usual, picked up some of my mandolin themes and wove them together for a nice sound. The wizard at work again. I hope you enjoy it and thanks for…

Oftentimes I've been asked what a song that I've written is about. I've always enjoyed hearing the explanation about a song from the artist, so I decided to write a short bit about each song on the new "Plant a Dream" CD. The first song on the CD is Checkmate. I will attempt to add a new entry each week. If you'd like to listen to a clip of the song, simply go to the link below.

Checkmate

This song was originally about a political figure, because I wanted to write a hard-hitting text. Debbie said: “you…

Here's what a former student wrote to me about the music video of Back in Illinois (it's the first item on the links page): "All i have to say is .. WOW. i loved that music video so much :) it made me cryyyy!! I am so proud of you and your music is unbelieveable! I hope you continue to do it! I love ittt :))))) BEST MUSIC VIDEO EVER!!! i loveee youuuuu"

On November 2, 2007 my mother passed away. The time leading up to her death and the aftermath has given me many moments of reflection and some of these thoughts have found their way into some new songs. I hope that you are able to hear them soon. I had been able to visit with my Mom several times over the last 6 months and saw her five days before her passing and am very thankful for that. We had a good visit and as I often did when visiting Mom, we worked the crossword from the newspaper together on that…

We just spent the last two weeks visiting family members in Georgia, Virginia, Indiana and Missouri. Griffin, our youngest son and Andrew, our middle son came along. It was great having them with us. Griffin and I were able to play a lot of the songs with cello parts for those we stayed with and that was especially fun. We were also able to visit my old hometown in Illinois, driving by my old elementary and junior high schools. It was exciting to see the old house where my family lived when I was a child…

I can't believe school is ending again. Last week, I went to a party for a former student who had just graduated from medical school! Every now and then, someone will tell me they plan to study German as a major or go into linguistics as a profession. I can't tell you how much it means to a teacher to hear that. I want to know what my students are doing when they leave my classroom. I invest so much of myself into them, and I must admit, some students are great about letting me know they appreciate me too…

I wrote several songs in October and November 2006 and then recorded them along with three other songs from earlier in the year on a live CD. Shortly after we did the live recording in early December I wrote another song called "Chasm" and then "Song for Barbara". Barbara was the first student to ever sign my desk at school, which has now become a tradition. Students who have been in my class sign the desk the last week of their senior year and it was her creativity that started this tradition. Barbara is…