ian call it protest musicf you wanted to. i just, i wasn't hearing a huge amount of it in the kind of ssic that i was-- that i making. >> brownr grew up with american blues and soul music. >> my dad was a gig musician. just a live mund of gigging cian, really, full time. i remember hearing, like, soul music for the first time. i was always drawn to voices. i was alwaysand i was a singer before i could play anything else. i had fallen in love with the voice of pple like nina simone and billie holiday. and voices like howlin wolf and muddy waters. me, that was music that was that was music for men and women. and i think peers were listening to what i felt was music for boys and girls. that's just how i felt about it. it makes everything eem trivial. >> brown: soon, he was following in his father's footsteps. >> the first band i was in, when i was 15 years old, covering soul music; coring booker t. and the m.g.s; playing, like, community halls or, like, ck gardens, like, you know, with local punk kids. >> brown: and you were covering booker t... >> yeah, we were an odd sight. ♪ ♪ >> brown: fast forward to fast fame-- but it was