Brian Pounds. The Real Deal.

Brian Pounds has the voice of a young, hip Austin James Taylor. 

And, watching him perform, you get the feeling that he doesn't make the songs- -the songs make him.  He's just the door for the stories. 

Brian Pounds at Gruene Hall opening for Bob Schneider

He left college two semesters shy of graduation to surrender to music. Seeing him play live at the Saxon Pub, I can see why. It's just his thing- -music is his marrow.

The gripping thing about watching him play is that he's so completely vulnerable. He takes the stage without ego. It's just him, his songs, his hat, and his guitar.

He talks about waiting tables at the Olive Garden and the trials of trying to make it as a song writer.

He talks about sending his work to a big deal Tennessee music dude just to be told it’s not what radio listeners want to hear, "It’s too long." 

Yet, like a true artist, he laughs it off and turns anger into a song. 

He sings "Mississippi Highway" songs and songs about what it's like to be done with the road. I can't look away. I just put down my phone, and all of distractions because well, this artist, is leaving it all on the stage.

The "Death of Me," the most grippingly relentless song, was written about a friend with drug problems, he said.  He said, I felt "anger for a long time, then the song just came out," and he was able to just let go. 

He said, "I don’t care if you like this song or not; I’m gonna just keep playing it." He goes on to talk about writing music for others and eight years in Austin.

I find myself laughing as he sings about the New York chick he was head-over-heels for and the invisible “metaphoric restraining order” that followed.

He talks about writing songs in the Austin airport while waiting for a girl and knowing it wasn’t going to end well. He says these lyrics allude to spending a week’s worth of money for her arrival and knowing he’d wake up alone. 

True vulnerability comes with lyrics about memorizing the girl’s shadow because he knew she was going to leave anyway.

And, he describes the space in between. Lyrics whisper about not wanting to be on the road anymore and, yet, not wanting to go back home.

Pounds says he tries to write a new song every week, and he usually ends up writing it on the way to the Pub.

Glad I took the time to put down my damn phone. And, I'm glad he made it here too.  

Brian Pounds