One of my favorite secret places in Arizona not far from my home
- I'm a story teller. My folks named me Neal Virgil Brown. There's plenty of Neals and Neils in the music business, so I go by my middle name.
- I am both Canadian and American. I got my start playing guitar as a kid in a family who all sang and played an instrument of some kind. In my young life I worked as a logger, a fisherman, a radio disc-jockey & newsman, and as a taxi driver on the mean streets of Vancouver. All the while I was writing my own songs and performing them in coffee houses and nightclubs.
- Eventually I was based out of Seattle where for many years, I was on the road playing whatever music I could get payed to play. In the 1980's I toured the far-east with a rock-n-roll band called The 57s, and in the 1990's it was Europe, with stops in Amsterdam, Prague, Berlin and Munich.
- I spent a year in Paris, where I performed in the clubs and recorded an album of my own songs called Smoke Rings. In a simple twist of fate the album was warmly received back in Canada, most notably in the province of Alberta. In 1999 I criss-crossed the western provinces on the Midlife Chrysler Tour '99, named for the most popular song on the album.
- I spent a couple of decades being a father and working as a coffee roaster. I've spent the last few years writing, recording and drifting. I found my way to the warm sunny desert, and the time to look back. I've written and recorded a collection of new songs, and a series of short stories that chronicle my journey.