Band Member Profile: Zach Brown

Hey folks! Now that there is a few of you out there who have heard me spill my heart out through music on steemit, I figure it's an appropriate time to tell ya a little bit about my background. I hope to do a mini biography like this on each band member in good time, but I figured I'll just start with me since I'm the blogger. Let's get personal!

I was born in Washington DC and had my early childhood in Dale City, Virginia. My Dad was in the Air Force and he moved us out to Colorado in 1999 and that's where I went to middle and high school. I tried to balance my time in school between WAY too many extra curricular activities. I was a year-around athlete, competing in track and cross-country:

I was passionate from a young age about music. In high school I played drums in a lot of terrible rock bands, including Get Up Chuck, Funk Vibe, The Muffin Men (pictured below), Transcend, Before Tomorrow, and Claymore Disco:

I went on annual trips to a Russian orphanage with my church:

And all sorts of other activities like summer jobs, Taekwondo lessons, and the occasional attempt to blast through some homework and studying as well. I grew up in a down to earth family, full of love and support. Two older brothers, (one of which is actually a MASTER steemit blogger, @biophil, and I owe him a lot for showing me this amazing community) and two musician parents. My family has always been hard workers and I followed suit from a young age, for better or worse. I was a driven kid, constantly feeling responsible to succeed and constantly stressed.

Because of my innate sense of responsibility and work, I would overwhelm myself with commitments. I found myself looking in some wrong places for relief from the stress I was causing myself. In late high school I tried shaking the weight off my shoulders by rebelling against my own expectations for myself. I stopped going to church with my family and started staying out nights with friends to drink and try to find parties where we could hit on girls. I practically lived with three friends in a van we bought together and lost steam in my running career. The rebellious stage thankfully didn't last forever, but tasting the freedom from the release of responsibility left a long lasting affect on me. I developed a VERY strong sense of wanderlust. I thought of traveling constantly when I was still "trapped" in school, of getting out of my town and away from the anchors of relationship and commitments. When high school finally ended, I decided to succumb to my wanderlust, and within a few weeks of graduation, I left home and started experiencing the world.

For three glorious, challenging, dirty, wild, eye opening years I traveled, vagabonded, and lived free. I spent 4 months in Uganda, a month in Russia, 5 months in Canada, and a month in Germany, doing a myriad of different things but mostly missions work and attempts at starting university study. I spent all told about a year traveling all over the United States, mostly by hitch-hiking and freight train hopping. I was a hobo through and through, playing music on street corners, sleeping homeless, constantly moving around. I worked on farms, made a lot of friends, saw a lot of crazy stuff, and learned some hard but good lessons.

I wouldn't change a thing about my years as an adventurer, those three years hold some of the best memories and experiences of my life. But it had to end sometime. I couldn't sustain the transience forever, it caught up to me. I remember the first time I was gripped with the desire to let go of my wanderlust and settle down. I had been attempting to hitch my way across Canada and had gotten stranded about half way. I was homeless out in the hot summer, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, I couldn't get a ride, and I was out of money. I had some loose change to call home on a payphone and got through to my parents. Even after all the pain I put them through with all my dangerous wanderings, they delivered me from that situation. They purchased me a greyhound ticket (the town I was in was miraculously the last greyhound stop before leagues of farmland and small towns) back to Colorado, the bus ride was a 72 hour ride. Three days and nights on a bus! But the whole time I rode, I was feeling at peace to leave my wanders out there in the heat and come home. I was ready to grow some roots and give life in community a shot again. That was in 2013, and I have stayed in Colorado ever since.

Somewhere along the way, I caught the gardening bug. Maybe when I was baling hay and doing farm work in the midwest. I worked for a multitude of trades since I moved home, mostly in the green industry, but last year I bucked up and started my own business gardening business, Brown's Greens. I have a steemit blog for that business as well, @brownsgreens.

And of course, I reunited Smith House, which at the time was a duo that included Barrett and I, and over the years we have grown into a four piece band. Smith House has been and always will be my soul food endeavor. Though we work hard at music and gigging, we also work hard at keeping it fun and passionate. We do music because we can't live without it.

It's been a rocky road coming home, adjusting to life in community and growing roots, but I am SO GLAD I did it. I am calmer and happier than ever now, and eternally grateful for the blessings that settling down has given me. One blessing in particular that I would have been devastated to miss, my sweet sweet wife Brittany! We are having so much fun setting up our life together, growing food together, playing music together, and eventually having a family together.

Thanks for reading, folks! That's Zach in a quick nutshell, hope you enjoyed. Stay tuned for more openmics, band profiles, and fun posts from Smith House!