Kane Brown finds love, confidence on road to his latest album, ‘Experiment’
NASHVILLE — Kane Brown went home and cried in the bathroom three years ago after signing his record deal with Sony Music Nashville. Growing up in North Georgia, Brown was sometimes homeless and often on the move. He attended five high schools in as many years. He saw his friends abuse drugs and become victims of gun violence. His father has spent more than two decades in jail.
The record deal was a dream come true — and his ticket out.
His self-titled debut album was released in 2016 and sold or streamed the equivalent of more than 1 million copies. His chart-topping duet with Lauren Alaina is three times platinum, and its follow-up single, “Heaven,” clocks in at the equivalent of 2 million copies sold.
“I know it sounds weird, but I don’t feel different,” said Brown, 25. “I just have a little money that I didn’t have before. And I have a [wife] that I didn’t have before. And I have more confidence that I didn’t have before. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. But I still feel the same.”
Brown’s sophomore album, “Experiment,” home to his current top 10, “Lose It,” is available now. While he still feels like the same guy, the album reflects his personal and artistic growth.
“With success comes confidence, and what I find with Kane … is that he approaches it with a great sense of humility,” said Sony Music Nashville Chairman and CEO Randy Goodman. “He’s been out on the road and playing with people like Chris Young and Brad Paisley … and he’s really a student. I think this new album represents that so much.”
The last time Brown released an album, he was worried radio wouldn’t play him and that he would be a one-hit wonder. He listened to ’90s country when he was a child but drifted away from the genre as a teen. When he rediscovered country music, bro-country was at its peak and Brown thought that’s what people wanted to hear. He wrote songs for his debut album with that in mind,
his goal to fit in with the music on country radio. Dann Huff signed on to produce the project, and Brown offered very little feedback.
“I told him, ‘I don’t know what I wanted it to sound like, just produce it and do you,’” Brown recalled.
This time the recording process was completely different. Brown was more familiar with Nashville’s songwriting process and co-wrote 11 of the 12 songs on his album. He wanted to make sure he could relate to some aspect of every track. He told Huff he wanted to use “a lot of extinct instruments” like steel guitar and fiddle because that is a “big part of having a traditional country sound.”
“I was just … mixing the old school with the new school,” Brown said, explaining “Experiment” is an even blend of songs geared to women and men. The “dude songs,” he said, are “nothing but rocking guitar and sick solos” courtesy of his celebrated producer Dann Huff.
As for lyrical content, “Experiment” is Brown’s “love letter to his [wife],” Katelyn Jae, whom he married in October. He was worried he wouldn’t be able to find songs of the same caliber as “Heaven” and “What Ifs,” but he also wanted to use to his platform to address what he said is the “screwed-up world that we’re living in right now.”
In “American Bad Dream” he sings: “Remember when ninth grade was about getting laid/ Skipping class trying not to get caught/ Now you gotta take a test in a bulletproof vest/ Scared to death that you might get shot.”
“Instead of people being on different sides, I feel like we should all just meet in the middle and wake up and realize it,” Brown said. “What’s good about music is it’s sending out a message, and [‘American Bad Dream’] is my message to everyone.”
When Brown started work on his debut album for Sony, he was single and had to negotiate that path on his own. He met Jae through mutual friends after a concert in Florida. Brown thought she was cute, but she thought he was interested in someone else in their group. Later that night, Brown sent her a message on Instagram and asked when she was coming to Nashville. She replied by asking when he was coming to Miami. He bought her a plane ticket, flew her to Music City, and she never left. Brown didn’t tell her until the day she arrived that he was leaving that night to go on tour with Florida Georgia Line.
“I was like, ‘Hey, come out on tour with us. We’re leaving tonight,’” he remembers saying. “She was like, ‘I guess. You invited me here.’ We went on tour and … she didn’t know country. She was like, ‘This is awesome.’ She just never left. We hit it off.”
Without Jae, Brown said he knows he would have struggled with depression because he would have had to come home alone. If he had a problem, there would have been no one to talk to. But now, he said, he knows he has somebody who would stay by his side even if his success vanished.
That doesn’t seem likely — his fame continues to fast-track. In 2019, Brown is headlining his first arena tour, including a stop in the state where he met Jae. To date, Brown has sold more than 10,000 tickets at the Amway Center in Orlando. He’s also headlining arenas in Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma and Virginia, among others.
“Doing a headlining tour is something a lot of people want to do because it feels like the next step,” said Brown’s manager, Martha Earls. “But you have to grow in the right way.”
Earls said Brown’s tour was small by design — only 22 dates — in the first quarter of the year to keep it manageable. As seats sell out, in some venues they open more spaces to accommodate his growing audiences.
“It’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s see what the market will bear. Let’s see what happens,’” Earls said. “Some artists are selling $19 tickets for the bragging rights. But for us, it’s like, ‘No, let’s make this a meaningful, valuable show.’ It’s the more expensive floor seats that are filling up first. It’s going to be amazing.”
Looking ahead, Brown is ready for what comes next. He’s excited to stare at sales, steaming and airplay charts for the next two months to see how people respond to his music. He’s looking forward to band practice, which he previously rarely attended. While on tour with Paisley, Brown noticed the country star’s level of dedication. Paisley goes to every soundcheck. Now, Brown sees merit in showing up, too. He wants to practice moving around on the stage, see if he can jump into the audience without missing a note and test his limitations.
“I came up with a new goal — do better than I did last year,” he said. “This year, hopefully, we can get three No. 1 songs or maybe two tripleplatinum singles instead of a double platinum and a triple platinum. Just outdo something I did last year.”