Nathan Brown strides into Culley's, a dank dive just off the town square in Springfield, Mo. The Fort Worth musician's lanky, 6«4ý frame and Christ-like hair, beard, and sandals attract curious glances from a couple of the bleary-eyed regulars at the bar.

"Hi, I'm wondering if you can help me out with some information," he says to the bartender. "I'm on a tour -- I played Little Rock last night, and I'm playing Lawrence on Friday. I was wondering if there was anyplace here in town where they might let me play at the last minute."

It's a spiel I heard often during a week on the road with Nathan back in early September, the first leg of a three-month tour. It was his sixth time on the road since July 2002 -- he's made five trips as a solo act and one with his three-piece rock band, Pretend King. I was along to play guitar -- and to document the Nathan Brown experience.

If living in your van and with friends and searching out last-minute gigs in strange towns seems a precarious way of making a living, Brown would probably agree with you. God knows his friends would. The lifestyle sets Brown -- already one of a kind -- apart even further from most folks. But it also marks him as that rarest of commodities -- a musician who has given up his day job, regular income, settled address, and most of the other things that make our lives comfortingly predictable, in order to seriously follow his art. He's played music since childhood. At 30, he decided to cut loose from the moorings that bind most humans and set off on a course few others would follow. Now, in a very real sense, music is his whole life.

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