Interview: Kane Brown

Kane Brown spent much of his 2022 touring year outside of the United States to promote his latest album, “Different Man.” But since then, fans on these shores have been getting their turn to catch Brown in person, as he’s following up a 2023 run with an extensive spring/summer tour this year.

And one thing that seems certain is there’s no musical place Brown would rather be than on stage. That’s not something he would have said in years past.

“When people used to ask me what is your favorite part about music I would always say the writing process and being in the studio,” Brown said during a recent phone interview. “I wish I could be the artist that could just record and not ever have to get on stage. And now the stage is my favorite thing. I probably wouldn’t do music anymore if I wasn’t on stage.”

So what has changed for Brown when it comes to doing concerts?

“I think it’s just getting comfortable. I’ve found like another person that’s not me when I’m on stage,” he said. “The Kane on stage is very talkative, outgoing. My team tells me the way I hold the microphone, they can tell if it’s about to turn into a comedy show or not. Yeah, I just feel like it’s almost like a therapy session to me when I’m on stage. It’s super fun.”

It makes sense that Brown hadn’t hit his stride as a live performer until the fairly recent past.

He didn’t spend years playing bars or relocate to Nashville to play at clubs there before coming into the public eye.

Instead, Brown, who moved around northwest Georgia and the Chattanooga area of Tennessee while growing up, started out in 2013 by getting chosen for the TV talent show “X-Factor,” only to drop out after producers wanted to put him in a boy band. Determined to be his own artist, Brown decided to post videos online of himself singing covering country songs, hoping the clips would go viral.

The strategy worked. His version of George Strait’s “Check Yes or No,” posted on Sept. 30, 2015, caught on in a big way, racking up seven million views. A couple of weeks later, Brown, then just 22, posted a video of his original song, “Used to Love You Sober,” and saw it amass more than a million views in three hours.

Brown then used a Kickstarter campaign to finance a 2015 debut EP,” Closer.” After “Used To Love You Sober,” was released to radio and reached No. 2 on the Country Digital Songs chart and was followed by two more singles that also had considerable success, Brown was signed by Sony/RCA.

Sony/RCA launched Brown’s major label career with the EP, “Chapter 1,” before a full-length self-titled debut followed in December 2016.

Two initial singles from “Kane Brown,” failed to catch on at radio, but the third single, “What Ifs,” was the charm. Featuring Lauren Alaina, a friend from Brown’s school days, the song went to No. 1 on “Billboard” magazine’s Country Airplay chart. The follow-up single, “Heaven,” did even better, simultaneously topping all five of the main country charts – a first by any country artist.

Brown’s second album, 2018’s “Experiment,” became another blockbuster, spending 13 weeks atop “Billboard’s” Country Album chart, going double platinum and spawning the chart-topping country singles, “Lose It,” “Good As You” and “Homesick.”

Now, “Different Man” has kept Brown rolling. It has generated five more chart-topping hits -- “Like I Love Country Music,” “One Mississippi,” and “Thank God,” “Bury Me in Georgia” and “I Can Feel It.”

This latest album went through a bit of a journey. As early as 2019, Brown said he had gotten started on the project, co-producing the project with the producer of his first two albums, Dann Huff.

At one point, Brown intended to make “Different Man” a full-on country album, a departure for an artist who has shown diverse musical influences. The son of a white mother and a father who was part African-American and part Cherokee Native American, Brown listened to country music as a boy, became more interested in hip-hop as a teen, came back to country in high school and absorbed rock and pop influences as well.

Country has been his predominant sound, but Brown has done songs that draw on his other influences as well, particularly on his 2020 EP, “Mixtape Vol. 1,” which included collaborations with John Legend, Khalid and Swae Lee.

Eventually, Brown decided to expand on the country direction of “Different Man” by including several songs that didn’t fit the country mold, including “Grand” (a hip-hop-flavored track), “See You Like I Do” (a sleek R&B/pop tune), “Riot” (a punchy rocker) and “Bury Me in Georgia” (whose thumping beat and thick guitar riffs add rock to its rustic country sound).

This fits Brown’s general approach to his albums.

“When I release an album it’s just a bunch of songs,” he said. “I feel like a lot of artists, they try to make like a theme of their album. That’s not me. My album is, I write a bunch of songs I think can be singles. I don’t care what they sound like and then put an album together.

“I think it (“Different Man”) definitely made people realize you never know which direction I’m going to go,” Brown said. “I do like that.”

From the sound of things, fans will get to see where Brown’s music takes him next in the not-distant future. First up is a newly released collaboration with Marshmello on the song “Miles On It,” which in early May became the most added song on the pop and country charts -- a feat accomplished before only by Taylor Swift and Beyonce. Brown said more music is on the way.

“We’re about to release two new songs and have a bunch more that we’ve been working on for the new album,” he said. “Right now, I’m doing a lot of listening to what we’ve recorded to see what fits and makes sense and what I fall in love with again music-wise when listening to it as a finished track versus the demo. It’s been fun to find new songs and write a lot for this one.

For now, Brown is back on tour, bringing out a big visual production and changing up his set list.

“We’ve got a lot more production and elements we haven’t been able to include before, and with the mix of arenas and stadiums now for the tour, we really thought through how is this going to look great for fans in both of those venues,” he said. “What can we do so that every seat gets an amazing experience? It’s been really fun in rehearsals to add new music to the set too. We have not been out on the road a lot since ‘I Can Feel It’ went number one and it has been amazing to hear the crowd sing it back when we do get to.”

In addition to the tour, Brown has been exploring acting. Last year, he had his first acting role on television as a guest star on the series, “Fire Country.” He enjoyed the experience and wants to do more acting.

“I’ve been reading a lot of scripts and just trying to immerse myself more in that world,” Brown said. “I had such an amazing experience on ‘Fire Country’ and I feel really lucky to have been a part of that experience.

“(There’s) lots of stuff in the works, but I can’t talk about it just yet,” he said.