Thursday, June 30, 2011

Trailer Radio's Shannon Brown-Goin' For It in Gotham

I don't like country music.  I don't garden.  I don't cook.  I don't eat tomatoes unless they come from a packet and are drizzled over french fries.  I don't bike.  I don't scrapbook, hell no.

At age 37 I knew who I was.

I moved to New York City from Man, West Virginia in 1997 seeking fame and fortune on the Broadway stage.  I arrived with $2000, a pile of sheet music and 85 pairs of shoes.  I promptly got sucked into Corporate America.

Corporate America trained me to be a web designer.  So for 10 years I designed, and coded, and HTML'd, and FTP'd.  Life was ok, my career was ok, my bank account was ok.  But my life as a whole was so...virtual.  I’d had a more intimate relationship with PhotoShop than with many past boyfriends.  My friends started calling me CyberShannon.  It’s who I was.

This is not a blog about leaving my day job and "following my bliss" because that’s a fairytale cooked up and served hot by the self-help industry and doesn’t happen to most people in real life. But I can tell you I was pretty miserable.  I gave the world the reigns and it made me a web designer.  I wasn’t having a lick of fun.

I'd not sung a note in 10 years, but I decided to take some voice lessons.  One day in the middle of a nice Sondheim tune my teacher stopped me and said, "Why does everything you sing sound like country music?" 

I didn’t know why…maybe it was my accent, or the fact I’m from West Virginia.  But it’s not who I was.

But then a light bulb sprang atop my hard head.  Maybe I should try that.  Country music.  Singing it.  Opening my mind to it.  It felt pretty natural…it felt pretty good.  The more I sang it, the more it felt like my dirty little secret...what would my friends think?  My own mother said “Country music?  Who are you?” Eventually I found a band, booked some gigs, and invited all my friends to watch me sink or swim.  I felt kinda old to be starting something new.  I kept thinking,  “What if I trip and break a hip on stage?”

Shannon and her biscuits
Luckily I swam.  And I’m still swimming.  At the ripe old age of 39 I’m still a web designer, but I’m also a country singer, and my first CD is being released this summer.

Operating under this new-found freedom, I decided to open my mind to other things, too. This summer I made my first attempt at gardening planting rose begonias and coleuses at my boyfriend’s country house.  I opened my mind to cooking, and while I nearly burned off a pinky toe (don’t ask…) I now make a helluva parmesean chicken!  I opened my mind to tomatoes, and have unlocked the joys of the BLT.  I bought a bike and a helmet, and allow my bangs to get crushed beyond recognition in order to tool around Central Park.  As a result, I’m happier now than I was in the days before my thighs met and bonded for life. 

The moral of the story:  It’s never too late to try something new.  Regardless of age, or your past, or what people think, there could be something out there waiting to enrich your life if you can just open your mind new adventures.

For the record I still don’t scrapbook.  But I will admit to squeezing the puffy stickers at the craft store on occasion…

2 comments:

  1. Hey Shannon! Thanks for sharing your story. You are the complete package! Looks, beauty, smarts, a great sense of humor and talent. Not necessarily in that order. I would love to try some of that Chicken Parm...Keep on Rockin!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Karen - one day, ye shall have the Chicken Parm!! Glad you like the story, my sweet friend. Together we shall rock the stage, and the garden (my begonias are lookin' sweet this week!).
    Cowgirls forver!

    ReplyDelete