IndiePulse Artist Spotlight: Big Time Grain Company
KANSAS CITY BROTHERS CHAD AND BRET BOURQUIN CONTINUE TO DREAM BIG WITH COUNTRY-AMERICANA BAND BIG TIME GRAIN COMPANY’S LATEST SINGLE “SUNDAY MORNING”
As Chad and Bret Bourquin explain it, growing up in Colby, KS, guitars, banjos, fiddles and mandolins were part of their lives. Every holiday meal was followed by a hoedown style jam session. When their dad invented the Bourquin Weedpuller, the brothers went from hoeing weeds in the bean fields of the family farm to traveling with him in a motor home as he demonstrated it to prospective customers. Many years and musical incarnations later, Chad and Bret are back on the road as the driving forces behind fast emerging country/Americana powerhouse Big Time Grain Company.
In addition to performing regularly at festivals around their home base of Kansas City, they’ve toured in Colorado, Iowa, Oklahoma, Michigan, Ohio and Nebraska. With the release of their latest single “Sunday Morning,” they’re hitting those states and more in the coming months. The follow up to their acclaimed 2018 EP 401k, the infectious, hard driving old school track – a spirited ode to the joys and comforts of coming home to a loving family after extended time on the road – features Bret’s coolly inimitable low lead vocals, bass, acoustic guitar and keys and Chad’s old western alternate hook line plus some steel like modulations on electric guitar. One of the song’s key lines is “The fortune and fame is just a game…without you.”
Bret says, “I literally wrote the song on a Sunday morning after a string of gigs that had us out playing shows for a while. I reflect on what exactly was going down, sitting on the couch, with my wife getting up to take care of one of my two young kids, and all this life just swirling around me. It was inspired by the realization that I could go everywhere in the world but this is where my heart will always be.” Chad, who has three children of his own, adds, “We love going out and playing, but there’s a good feeling back home where everything is familiar to us.”
Both believe there is something magical that happens when brothers get together and create music. Yet Bret and Chad took a fascinating, circuitous route that involved years apart playing with other bands before circling back, coming home and finding magic like no other as the founders of Big Time Grain Company.
Both got serious about their primary instruments (Bret, bass, Chad, guitar) during high school. After playing in rock, funk and jazz band during high school and college, Bret spent his 20s playing with artists like Doug Kershaw and Daniel and Ray. During a four-year stint playing in Texas, he started writing songs, and later honed his craft as a singer/songwriter while leading worship bands, original acoustic groups and country ensembles. By his late teens, Chad was on the road with a touring rock band that ultimately spent five years with, performing 4-6 nights a week. Coming off the road, he began playing with the group LipRiddle, which Bret had started. They performed many types of shows, including a 30-date tour of middle and high schools in the Midwest sponsored by Sprint and the U.S. Army. When Bret left, Chad took over as lead vocalist. After years of rock and roll, Chad’s country roots emerged via tunes that didn’t fit the LipRiddle vibe.
Chad says, “My own decision to return to country, and ultimately start this new band with Bret, happened when the material I was writing for the rock band I was in didn’t fit the group’s sound. I finally admitted, with my wife’s encouragement, that my music had a country flair. Country is about storytelling, and that’s a comfortable place for me as an artist.” Chad adds, “Every time he would come through town and we had a chance to play together, the chemistry between us was instantaneous. Our influences, tastes and experiences led us to creating Big Time Grain Company at exactly the right time.”
Check Out Their Video for “Moonlight and Mistletoe”, a YouTube Holiday Hit !
Eager to encourage up and coming musicians and help them avoid some of the trials and errors they went through along the way, The Bourqin Brothers are about to launch multi-media (book and video) training program geared towards independent artists. Another way they give back is with their Dream Big series, where they perform at middle and high schools and help students figure out what their “zone of genius” is.
Music available at https://www.bigtimegrain.com/music
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