Brookside native Matt Brouwer, who now lives in Houston, Texas, will be passing through the area in the near future to visit family as part of his trip east to participate in the upcoming Juno Awards in St. John’s, N.L. Brouwer is nominated in the gospel category for his latest album, Where’s Our Revolution. Submitted photo
TRURO – Go big or stay home – Texas style. Such is the life of Brookside native Matt Brouwer who never imagined, while growing up on a dairy farm amidst the rolling fields of Brookside, that his life’s pursuit would lead him to the wide-open, oil-rich plains of Texas where he would earn his living belting out gospel songs to audiences of all stripes while sometimes also hobnobbing with the rich and famous.
And now, perhaps, Juno bound.
“It was amazing …,” Brouwer said, during a telephone interview from his home in Houston, while chatting about the making of his latest album which led to a nomination for this year’s Juno awards.“I’m a kid from Truro, Nova Scotia, so you never expect some of these, you know, cool encounters with people who you have admired since you were a little kid. So it was a real special day.”
The moment to which he refers was a morning when he walked into the music studio and discovered the likes of musical entertainers Vince Gill and Amy Grant waiting to record a track on his new album.
“Over the years there’s a lot of talk about, ‘Oh, let’s get this person or this person,’ but it rarely works out,” he said. “When I walked in that Monday morning and Vince and Amy were there ready to sing, it was a pretty cool experience.”
And so was having his third and latest release - Where’s Our Revolution - nominated for an Album of the Year Juno in the Gospel category.
“Totally excited. It was a real surprise,” he said. “Pretty cool.”
The nomination is actually his second (his first album was also nominated) but despite the fact he did not win with that one, the experience is still one he is looking forward to with earnest.Brouwer discovered the power of gospel music while still in high school during a conference he attended in Sackville. The fact the life-changing experience occurred some 15 years ago, has not diminished his excitement for the way the “aggressive” rock music in its Christian gathering stirred his soul.
“I grew up on a dairy farm so we didn’t get a lot of that,” he says, of the music.
“And then just the spiritual connection that the music had. It made so much sense to me and hit me on so many levels. I just walked away from that conference going, ‘OK, I want to be a part of that what I felt there,’ like that was something that I felt like I would gladly be willing to give my life pursuing - the music, the art form but also a deeper connection to God in the spiritual sense.”
That began a long road of self exploration that eventually led a shy teenager to brush back his inhibitions and open “this passion” that enabled him to share the songs of his heart.
“Fortunately, the passion just barely won out over the fear and I just started getting up and singing my little songs I was writing.”
Coming from a family of farmers, the prospect of Brouwer taking his acoustic guitar on the road to earn a living didn’t seem promising. That, even less so, because he didn’t have a backup plan. But once his sights were set, there was no turning back.
“I knew that this was what I was supposed to do and I was going to do.”
Brouwer headed west to a Christian college in Calgary where he became involved in helping to change the style of music they presented there through weekly concerts.
By the time he left college he had been signed to a recording contract in Nashville, where he went on to record his first album.
Somewhere along the way, however, the business side of the music world began to
eat at him and he began looking for other pursuits.
Brouwer ended up in Texas as part of an outreach organization called The Loft, where he became involved in social justice and missionary work, during which he spent time helping out in such places as Venezuela, Poland, Jamaica and Guatemala.
But he also continued writing and performing music, eventually returning to Houston and setting up his own independent label, Black Shoe Records.
“It’s been a really incredible way to look at how music can make a difference in people’s lives beyond just the enjoyment of the art form itself,” he says, of the benefit concerts and fundraising venues of which he is a part.
And despite his success, Brouwer remains “humbled and excited in this economy to be able to continue to do that and do it well.”
He also continues to branch out with such endeavours as producing an album for a female artist from California and other long-term projects that include writing a screen play and working on a book about his life on the road as an musical artist.
“Trying to communicate is really, I guess, a life-long pursuit and doing that in better ways, it’s a thrill,” he says. “Just moving on.”
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