The Daily Times

She now calls Minneapolis home, but it was in East Tennessee that singer-songwriter Chastity Brown found herself.

Saturday, she’ll return to the town where she grew into her own person, got her start in music and began a journey of transformation that has led to a new album, “High Noon Teeth.” It was released earlier this year, but Saturday night at Preservation Pub in downtown Knoxville, she’ll share it with new fans and old friends, some of whom she considers her mentors, she told The Daily Times this week.

“Being raised in the Bible Belt with a certain ideology, the musicianship and the heartbeat of the artist community there really affected me,” Brown said. “I’d never seen people who had such high moral character outside of the church. People in Knoxville were just the realest people I ever met �" way more real than anyone I had ever been introduced to and going deeper than just creativity.

“One of the things I love about Matt (Urmy, a former Knoxville singer-songwriter now living in Nashville), for instance, is that throughout our years of friendship, I never felt like he was trying to get me into what he’s into. He was just really solid into his own interests, and that makes people want to figure out what their own passions are. So when I left Knoxville, I didn’t leave it because I was in love. I just felt like I needed to find my own path and figure out what I needed to sound like.”

On “High Noon Teeth,” she’s done just that �" combining the Southern spirituality of her gospel upbringing with urban soul and the folk flourishes that thrive in Minneapolis, home to bands like The Jayhawks. On the album, Brown’s voice pours forth like warm honey, a sweet and rich concoction of melody and passion that captures a young woman’s fire for life and all of the joys and sorrows a journey through it will encompass.

“Growing up down South, I’m a huge fan of folk music, but I also have jazz running in my veins,” she said. “But the set-up of a song is the story, which is a basic folk music element, and then it’s just the delivery of it. I guess it took a couple of years to realize I was actually a soul singer. It never really hit me outright; I just realized I could never cut that off, that that’s just how it comes out.

“And I feel like that’s what attracts people. Something about soul music taps into people in a way that there aren’t words to describe, and ‘High Noon Teeth’ is a lot different than any creative work I’ve put out. Vocally and instrumentally, I definitely took some leaps out of my comfort zone. I pushed further from the more acoustic sounds of the past to having some blues guitar in there and organ and stuff like that. It’s a bit different than what I’ve done before.”

Change, however, has been a hallmark of Brown’s musical career. Raised in West Tennessee, Brown’s upbringing was steeped in the Pentecostal tradition, and while she dabbled in songwriting by the time she was 15, she originally set out to become a music minister. After her first year of college, however, she withdrew from school and moved to Knoxville. She was 19, and she was beginning to question all of the religious dogma and doctrine with which she was raised.

Seeking out music and musicians, she struck up friendships with people like Casey Jones and Jodie Manross and the members of Dixie Dirt. It was Jones who first called Brown up to the stage, asking her to perform during the set break of one of his shows with Manross. As she talked with and learned from local musicians, however, she felt the urge to explore her own path.

“They’re all amazing writers and singers, but I didn’t want to be anything like them,” she said. “As much as I love them, I wanted to figure out what I was supposed to do and what I was supposed to sound like.”

A self-described wander with “a nomadic tic,” she jumped at the chance to move with a friend to Minneapolis. Once there, she plotted out her fledgling career accordingly.

“I didn’t play out at all for the first year that I lived here,” she said. “I just worked on stuff and played and wrote at my house. I went to a lot of shows and checked out the scene and the open mics, but I didn’t even play an open mic until being there pretty close to a year.”

Throwing her hat in the ring at a long-running open mic, she performed, turning heads and making connections. At places like Acadia Cafè and the Global Market, she said yes to any venue that would offer her a spot, and along the way she made some music and learned some lessons. Her debut album was well-received, but a business relationship with her former manager quickly soured. It only made her stronger, however, and after a 2007 live album, she returned with “Sankofa” in 2009, a CD that earned her strong press and a larger following �" so big, in fact, that Minneapolis is a place she plans on staying, at least for a while longer.

“It’s been good to me, and regionally there have been a lot of cool things that have happened �" the press has started writing good things, and I’ve gotten invites to open for national and international acts,” she said. “I keep saying that I’m going to move back to Knoxville, or somewhere between Knoxville and Asheville, but it’s just not time yet.”

Coming back to East Tennessee, she said, feels good �" especially with “High Noon Teeth” in tow. It feels as if she’s coming back as a different person, an artist transformed who’s grown into that singer-songwriter who first emerged in the clubs and listening rooms of this area almost a decade ago.

“I definitely feel more grounded and more rooted,” she said. “I feel like I’ve gone through these periods of realizing something that I believe and then asking myself if I taught myself that belief or if it was taught to me, and if it was taught to me who did so and if it’s actually something I want to live by. I definitely just accept myself in all the multiple layers that I find that I am, and it’s so much more peaceful that way.

“I accept what I don’t like and what I do like, and my life seems to be more balanced than before. And I feel really thankful, because there’s a lot of pain and jacked-up (stuff) going on in the world, and as a musician contributing in one of the ways I know how is being of service to my community through that. I feel like that’s a really big foundation in my life.”

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