OFF THE WIRE
Jamieson "Junior" Brown (born June 12, 1952, Kirksville, Indiana) is an
American country guitarist and singer from Cottonwood, Arizona.
VIDEO - http://youtu.be/x_wLVCLPx0M
In
1985 Junior invented a double-necked guitar, with some assistance from
Michael Stevens. Junior called the instrument his "guit-steel". When
performing, Junior plays the guitar by standing behind it, while it
rests on a small podium/music stand. The top neck on the guit-steel is a
traditional 6-string guitar, while the lower neck is a full-size
lapsteel guitar for slide playing. Brown has two guit-steels for
recording and live work.
The original instrument, dubbed "Old
Yeller", has as its standard 6-string guitar portion the neck and
pickups from Brown's previous stage guitar, a Fender Bullet. The second
guit-steel, named "Big Red", has a neck laser-copied from the Bullet
neck, but in addition to electric guitar pickups, both the standard and
lapsteel necks use an identical Sho-Bud lapsteel pickup. There is a
pocket in the upper bout of the guitar to hold the slide bar when it is
not in use. Brown quickly became a local success in Austin, Texas as the
house band at the Continental Club. His debut album was 1993's 12
Shades of Brown; it was followed by Guit with It later that year (1993
in music). Both albums cemented his reputation as one of the more
critically acclaimed country performers of the 1990s.
