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The Tennessean: Nashville producer Tony Brown's collection of country hits leads to ACM Icon honor
The Tennessean's conversation with 77-year-old music producer and executive Tony Brown would lead you to believe he's well on the way to discovering how to achieve 100 more No. 1 singles.
On Aug. 21, Brown — whose work as a gospel-inspired pianist dates his career back to working on tour with Elvis Presley and the Stamps Quartet and to backing Emmylou Harris with the Hot Band — will be honored, alongside Trisha Yearwood, with the Academy of Country Music's Icon Award at 2024's ACM Honors event at the Ryman Auditorium.
The event, hosted by four-time ACM Award winner Carly Pearce and reigning ACM Song of the Year winner Jordan Davis, will also celebrate Luke Bryan, Alan Jackson and Lainey Wilson.
As stated via the ACM, the Icon Award is given to a "country music artist, duo/group or industry leader who throughout their career has advanced the popularity of the genre through their contributions in multiple facets of the industry such as songwriting, recording, production, touring, film, television, literary works, philanthropic contributions and other goodwill efforts."
Brown's gifts keep on giving, though.
Sept. 6 will mark the release of George Strait's album "Cowboys and Dreamers." It's the 20th album Brown and the King of Country Music have worked on together.
'That time will never happen again'
Brown recalls an era from 1989-1997 when he cut platinum albums for a who's who of Country Music Hall of Famers, including Strait, Reba McEntire, Brooks and Dunn, Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, Patty Loveless and Wynonna Judd, among many others.
He credits country music's marketing and radio release cycles, making every album he cut to place three singles in 12 months essential. Thus, a balance of recording songs for a quarter of a year and releasing them for the balance of time was achievable.
At his production height, routinely, one out of every four songs in country's Top 20 was produced by Brown.
That success allowed him to become president of MCA Nashville. While at the label, creatives and executives, including now Big Machine label boss Scott Borchetta and marketing legend Walt Wilson, worked to promote albums that achieved platinum status.
"I was lucky to be producing such an unbelievable roster of artists," Brown says. "That time will never happen again."
Early success offers lifelong lessons
Co-producing Steve Wariner's 1985 hit "What I Didn't Do" with Jimmy Bowen allowed longtime instrumentalist Brown to scratch his lifelong itch to become a studio producer.
Taking five years to hone his skills with the likes of Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett taught Brown one crucial lesson: "The singer and the song were the big deal, while the track was just the clothing for the song."
Brown and Crowell's the Notorious Cherry Bombs supergroup bandmate Gill — himself an outstanding vocalist — joined Wynonna and McEntire as artists he Brown began working with.
Alongside McEntire, Brown recorded the Oklahoma native's 1991-released cover of Bobbie Gentry's "Fancy."
She had wanted to record it for six years. She did so with Brown after Brown's mentor Bowen moved from MCA to Capitol Records in December 1989.
"Of all of the records I've cut, that's the most famous one I've ever produced — and it was a Top 10, not even No. 1," jokes Brown.
Between the duo, in 1992 alone, Brown had a hand in the creation of five No. 1 singles (including Wynonna's "No One Else on Earth" and Gill's "I Still Believe in You").
Switching Wynonna's core sonic impulses from an acoustic country act to an electric, R&B-influenced rocker benefited the power of her vocals as an artistic instrument.
For Gill, Brown sat with the singer-songwriter and whittled through his voluminous collection of songs to discover a dynamic, allowing the record to have a cohesive lyrical and sonic vision.
Working with the King of Country Music
By 1995, he was a half-decade into working with Strait.
Brown's obsession with understanding what allows a song to be a radio smash proved incredibly important to his work with the artist with dozens of No. 1 hits.
Straight ahead and honky-tonk honed fiddle and pedal steel songs bearing a spiritual overtone and deep lyrics penned by a who's who of country's classic legacy, including Dean Dillon and Jim Lauderdale, began to define the performer's catalog more significantly.
Nineteen albums later, a working relationship based on his and Strait's ability to agree on roughly 90% of the music they cut — with Brown being trusted to choose the best take for the album — has been revived.
Between 1993 and 2013, the previously mentioned math allowed for a 20-year run where nine out of every 10 Strait singles was a country No. 1 hit or Top 10 charter.
"George has three radio hits on ('Cowboys and Dreamers')," Brown tells the Country Drive podcast.
The album is 13 tracks long and Brown initially sourced seven tracks for Strait.
Their formula for success still holds water.
Note that the space between modern and traditional country widens considerably in the early 1990s.
Also note that Brown played an important role in widening both sides of that gap as quickly as they did.
Brown's "honest, raw and real" singer-songwriter-driven work with Crowell, Earle and Lovett spawned Earle's 1986 and 1988 hits "Guitar Town" and "Copperhead Road," Crowell's five consecutive No. 1 singles for 1988 album "Diamonds and Dirt," plus Lovett's trio of critically acclaimed Top 20 albums in the second half of the 1980s.
For Brown, delivering music that — as artists like Clint Black, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson and Travis Tritt began to fuse mega-marketed potential with country's traditions — still made people like country's roots, despite pop evolutions, allowed those artists to succeed as they did.
Thoughts on country's modern era
Ask Brown about his favorite country productions of recent vintage and he offers up the rock and soul-tinged country work that Jay Joyce has accomplished with Little Big Town on songs like the back-to-back Grammy winners "Girl Crush" and "Better Man," Eric Church's catalog of work since 2006 (including 2011's "Springsteen") and Lainey Wilson's recent trio of Grammy-winning breakthrough albums.
Joyce's ability to consistently derive innovative sounds from a sonic palette combining country, Memphis, Muscle Shoals and Philadelphia R&B and rock inspired Brown to visit him a dozen years ago.
"I told him that because nobody knew what he looked like, the next time he won an award for single or album of the year I was going to go onstage and accept the award," Brown jokes.
'Cinematic and creative records'
"It's a young man's world, so I'm honored that the ACM would give me this award," Brown says about receiving the Icon Award.
Genres are limiting to Brown's impressions of his work though.
"My love of country's as real as gospel music was to me in my youth," he says. "I trusted my gut and believed in timelessly cinematic and creative records that, at varying depths, incorporated bluegrass, blues, folk, R&B, rock and soul into one sound."
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