Brent Rowan

Brent Rowan spent twenty years establishing himself as one of Nashville’s most reliable session guitarists, contributing to albums by Alabama, George Strait, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Shania Twain, Olivia Newton-John, Sting, Neil Diamond, Randy Travis, Alan Jackson, George Jones, Conway Twitty, Chris LeDoux, and Brian Wilson, among many others. That body of work brought him five Country Music Association nominations for Instrumentalist of the Year. He also released a set of original acoustic-guitar pieces called Bare Essentials and appeared on the soundtracks of more than a dozen motion pictures. Such achievements stood in sharp contrast to his arrival in Music City during the 1970s, when he was still a sheltered, church-raised young man who had never heard rock & roll or seen a movie.

As a boy Rowan experimented with whatever instruments he could find, among them harmonica and piano. His parents gave him an acoustic guitar at age ten, and a year later he switched to electric. After the family moved to Colorado, the surrounding landscape became an important source of creative stimulus. Throughout his teens he concentrated on trumpet and even weighed enlisting in the Navy, yet the pull of Tennessee proved stronger. Once there he joined the gospel ensemble the Kenny Parker Trio, earning barely enough to survive while constantly traveling. The dependable income available to studio musicians eventually drew him into session work, and he decided to remain in Nashville. Even then, steady employment was slow to arrive; Rowan often offered to play without pay simply to demonstrate his ability. His first real opportunity arrived when producer Bud Logan booked him for the John Conlee single “Friday Night Blues.” Conlee was sufficiently impressed that Rowan became the sole lead guitarist on every subsequent Conlee session.