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Chili expresses displeasure at being relegated to the back seat.

Besides food, a lot of the van's load consists of musical equipment: two Korg keyboards, a couple of drum machines, a Peavey 2x12 speaker cabinet, a cheap 50-watt bass head for the drum machine, a 100-watt Peavey bass amp, a Lab Series guitar amp, a keyboard stand, a Hondo II electric guitar and Fender bass, a classical guitar, a portable recorder and digital audio tape recorder, two hefty bags of electrical cords, Nathan's c.d. player and c.d.'s of other folks' music, and my borrowed guitar, amp, and effects pedals. He also takes along blank c.d.'s and cases plus labels and slicks for his new disc, Dirty Bird. The album includes some harder-edged material than his first, with Nathan singing in his natural voice rather than falsetto, and one track ("Sooner or Later") that's the best song Al Green never recorded. Then there are personal items: a photo album full of snapshots of Nathan's friends and family, suitcases, bags of toiletries, a sleeping bag, two pillows and a blanket.

"There's nothing quite like the feeling of leaving town in an efficiently packed vehicle," said Nathan.

History Lesson

Brown grew up with music on both sides of his family. His mother played piano, and his father, a trombonist, taught college in towns from Lawrence, Kan. to Ithaca, N.Y. (where Nathan was born) to Austin (where Nathan's sister Melissa followed him into the world four years later). When Nathan was 9 years old, his dad moved the family to Fort Worth and joined the TCU faculty. Nathan's parents were divorced when he was 12, and he lived with his father until his junior year of high school, when his dad left to take a job in California and Nathan moved into his mother's Arlington home.

His first musical epiphany came while playing saxophone in middle school, when his music teacher mistakenly gave intermediate-level arrangements of a couple of pop tunes -- "She Works Hard for the Money" and "Neutron Dance" -- to the beginning band. "There was a sense of urgency about it," said Nathan. "I thought that if I learned to play the melodies, she'd let us play the arrangements." That night, he practiced the tunes relentlessly. The next day, he went to see his teacher after class. "I played for her with all the passion a sixth-grader could muster," he said. "She told me, 'Good job' " -- but she still picked up the sheet music.

Brown entered the band wars relatively late, after sitting out high school band because he didn't want to march. During his senior year, Karnes presented him with a bass and a drum set. Soon after that, his job of delivering pizza in Arlington introduced Brown to guitarist Ken Jones, and the two started a "doomy psychedelic garage band" called Solarium 25. "Nathan started out as a drummer, but over the years, he reinvented himself as something else," said Karnes. "I watched it happen. It took a long time."

Next, Brown played with Cerebral Paisley, a "funk-metal bullshit" outfit that evolved into Spoonfed Tribe. "I used to switch off on bass and drums with Jerome, who was then known as Brandon," said Nathan. "I quit when we were getting ready to play at a party, working on this tired bluesy rock-type thing. We all had hair down to our butts in ponytails. Brandon had the brilliant idea of stopping in the middle of the song, taking our hair out of ponytails, looking around at each other, and shaking our heads, rocking out."

Brown even played a couple of shows with an early Spoonfed lineup. "The Spoonfed guys used to come to our practice room. We had it decorated with Christmas lights. I was into [King Crimson drummer] Bill Bruford and had this huge 6x6 percussion rack made of 5-foot metal pipes I'd get from construction sites, a weight bench, and some other stuff -- about 700 pounds of percussion. They seemed to be dazzled and always wanted me to sit in."

Instead of joining the Tribe, though, Nathan elected to play bass with Carrierwave, a droney, Velvet Underground-influenced band that also included Doug Feagin and Andrew Kenney, future members of The Theater Fire and American Analog Set. It was Kenney who gave Nathan the idea of forming bands with less-experienced musicians, like a rehearsal-only outfit that included Brown's sister Melissa on bass. "I want my music to sound arranged and precise," said Nathan recently. "You don't always get that when you have a bunch of musicians who just play really well."

Over the years, Nathan's bands have included musicians of the caliber of saxman Michael Pellecchia; his longtime friend Karnes (on guitar and trumpet, not drums); drummer and Tommy Lee look-alike Shane Faw Faw; and Muffinhead/Bindle/Goodwin co-conspirators Daniel Gomez and Matt Hembree, both of whom occupied the bass chair at different times. "Nathan upset Matt's idea of balance and order in a band," said Gomez, citing incidents like the Wreck Room show in which Brown hung a bunch of bananas above the stage and swung from the rafters screaming like a monkey. "I just put my head down and played," said Hembree.

After Carrierwave, Brown spent the balance of the '90s immersed in avant-garde and experimental music, starting in 1994 with Anne Hand, a band whose rigorous approach reflected both fleet-fingered guitarist Bill Pohl and keyboardist Kurt Rongey's interest in modern classical music and Brown's affinity for "Bill Bruford clatter-drumming." The band played long, flowing sets, stringing together four or five composed pieces with a good deal of improvisation. "You'd have people playing in different time signatures in a way that it all syncs up at some point," said Nathan.

The intense creativity of Anne Hand flamed out after a few months, and Brown, in college by this time, hooked up with Ohm, a group that befuddled Cowtown club owners and audiences with its mixture of space-rock and free jazz. In Ohm, Nathan would occasionally play drums, bass, and keyboards at the same time -- a harbinger of his later musical direction. Once, while playing outside the Coffee Haus, he used Ohm's P.A. system to heckle '60s retreads Iron Butterfly as they played in Sundance Square.

In August 1998, Brown and Karnes went on the road with Tony and Tina's Wedding, a musical Karnes had worked in while attending the Berklee School of Music in Boston. Brown signed on as bass player in the show's "wedding reception band." "I was a little worried about the jazz tunes, but we were playing really superficial versions," said Nathan. The show was semi-improvised and included interaction with the audience. Throughout his tenure, Brown stayed in trouble with the show's management for boredom-relieving antics that included "being unable to play because he gave himself an orgasm onstage by rubbing his foot against a Cheez Whiz can" (Karnes swears he saw the write-up), playing an entire show from under the stage ("My character had the biggest case of stage fright"), and swapping jackets with half the men in the audience before one of them received an emergency phone call and had to leave in the middle of the show.

After receiving his walking papers from Tony and Tina's Wedding, he bought two eight-track digital recorders and started writing and recording seriously. Brown had been writing music since his Carrierwave days: first "Wayne Shorter-type jazz tunes," then progressive rock, then R&B. While still in Ohm, Brown had started hearing "sissy-sounding melodies and pretty choruses" in his head, influenced by the "chord-pop" he grew up listening to: artists like Prince, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, late-period Genesis, even Hall and Oates. "I gave into it," he said. At first, Brown tried to enlist Pohl for his new project, but the two clashed over the musical direction. "When the solo sections came, I wanted to dig in and play, and he wanted tongue-in-cheek stuff," said Pohl.

Brown spent four months in early 2002 as Goodwin's drummer before he was fired for calling singer Tony Diaz an idiot from behind the drums and berating a crowd at Club Dada for applauding during a break in a song. After finishing his first album that summer and playing a final band show at the Ridglea, Nathan hit the road as a solo act.

T.J.'S Little Rock

As soon as we left Dallas, heading toward Little Rock on I-30 through the beautiful rolling hills and big trees of Arkansas, I remembered why a road trip can be a good thing. It sounds corny, but what the hell: Once you get away from the familiar that you take for granted, the beauty of this country can be awe-inspiring.

The Whitewater Tavern in Little Rock looks a little like the old Hop on Berry Street -- lots of wood on the walls, and they serve food, too. On Tuesday night after Labor Day, there were as many people in the house as you'd find at the Wreck Room on a typical Saturday. When I mentioned this to the bartender, he replied, "We're a little slow after the holiday weekend -- this is about a quarter of what we'd usually have on a Tuesday." This was one gig Nathan had arranged before leaving Fort Worth -- the Whitewater has become the customary starting and ending point for his tours.

The Whitewater's popularity has a lot to do with the efforts of one T.J. Deeter, a musician who books the Tuesday night bands there. The crop-haired, wiry 30-something publishes a local music fanzine called The LocaList that he hopes will eventually enable him to stop delivering pizzas. Running on sheer enthusiasm, he's managed to pull together a community (he prefers the term to "scene") of metalheads, punks, and hip hoppers -- it's a diverse crowd at the Whitewater.

"I love music, I love hanging out, I love Little Rock, and I love people," said T.J. "I want to include everyone without introducing a new conformity. There are no style-Nazis here." He talked about a couple of punkers who write for The LocaList. They recently formed a band called Tomatoski with a couple of metalhead kids to force their crews to hang out together. I was as impressed by that attitude as I was by the fact that T.J.'s able to pay three bands while charging only a dollar a head at the door. (We played second and made about $60.) It's a no-brainer: Keep the cover low, and more people will come and drink. The club owner's happy, and the bands get a place to play.

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