Lowdown Brown invites you to the Street Party

By Grayson Haver Currin

When Jimbo Mathus called Leonard “Lowdown” Brown late in the summer of 2024 to talk about making his second album for Music Maker Relief Foundation, the producer had his customary questions at the ready: Did he need any songs? Did he need any help sorting through his catalogue? Did he have any questions about the band? Mathus quickly realized that the answer to everything was no, that Brown was ready to roll tape as soon as he could.

“I usually start with a mechanical drum beat, and then I’ll add some drums, maybe percussion,” Brown says of his home studio in Houston, where the 32-track mixing board he’s owned for more than a decade allows him to build full demos by himself. “And then all the other instruments, I lay them down one at a time. I’ve got everything I need.”

So Brown instead asked Mathus for his address and sent him a CD-R, filled with the 10 songs he was ready to cut. Just weeks later, they rendezvoused at Music Maker’s studio in Fountain with the backing quartet Mathus had built. They recorded every tune in first or second takes, with minimum overdubs, during three days of early-morning sessions. “He is just a real together artist. He was so confident and made it real easy,” remembers Mathus. “I got to sit back and play some rhythm guitar. Leonard had it ready.”

Brown had it ready, in part, because his records are active documents of his life. His 2023 debut, Blues is Calling Me, chronicled the adventures and misadventures of a new septuagenarian, from a run-in with a “French Quarter Woman” to a trip down to the “Juke Joint.” He grew up on the rural edge of Gary, Indiana, where friends would turn a block into a party with barbecues and boomboxes. He captures those good old days on the shout-along title track, “Street Party.”

But he left Gary and its blues-rich bigger neighbor, Chicago, in 1981, moving to Houston for a job with General Electric. He found the blues again in the city’s clubs, a process he documents in the inquisitive and cool “Houston Bound.” The songs inspired Mathus to think of Isaac Hayes’ soundtracks and turn a riff Brown had into “Theme,” like the opening tune for the movie of Brown’s life.

Despite his confidence in the studio and the verve of Street Party, Brown is not shy with his vulnerability, either. These are his blues, after all. He asks for help, promises to do his best to help those who need him, and worries over the state of the world in “News With Blues.”

“Every morning when I wake up, I listen to the morning news on a local radio station, KPFT, and I hear all this stuff that’s usually negative,” Brown explains, noting that he’s grateful that KPFT has been so kind to his career. “I’m just always wondering if there is any good news out there?”

Here, then, is some good news: At 72, Brown has made the record about and of a lifetime, his experiences, enthusiasms, and anxieties coiled into 10 tracks that are an honest celebration of seven decades. “I’m so grateful to Music Maker for letting me be part of this family,” he says. “And with Jimbo and the backing band he put together this time, everything was right.”

Street Party arrives Friday, September 12, 2025.

Grayson Haver Currin is a longtime music journalist and former newspaper editor from North Carolina. He has written for Pitchfork, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, and The Washington Post.