Jay Brown

Bass & vocals (and "signing" on "Happy" (Home Is Loud, 2005))

Real name: J. Brown

Age: Tiftorian or Gregorian?

Sign: walk/don't walk

Movie: Spring Break Shark Attack

Jay, who isn't really from Buies Creek North Carolina, was on the skids after losing an audition for his namesake's touring band to Bootsy Collins in 1967. Twelve years later, he thought he'd had his big break late one winter night in a Village bar when he found himself serving countless shots of Turkey to Johnny Ramone and Olivia Newton-John, who were waxing increasingly enthusiastic about a side project called Xanadoom until they began berating their startled fellow patrons about not having a "pace flayer", at which point our hero volunteered that he "flayed pace"; but shortly thereafter the stars winked out and Brown would shake 'n' serve another five years before Uncle Sidestep's Big Ol' Honkin' Love Show On Rollerskates pulled him out the double doors and showed him his seat on the bus. Jay stuck with the Love Show until the now-notorious night in Reno when the bookies, the dealers, and the sheriff (who turned out to be the father of that girl who'd said she was eighteen) all caught up with Uncle Sidestep in the men's room at the Full Moon Saloon. Out of a job and stuck in the desert, Jay took night work as a research assistant for a zoologist, gathering kangaroo rat feces for minimum wage. It wasn't glamorous but he was two paychecks away from his own used Airstream when he reached down for some rat scat and came up with a sidewinder hanging from his thumb. Five weeks in the hospital later, he was alive but the ring and middle fingers on his left hand were fused together. Thinking he'd never play again, Jay admits now that he came close to selling his soul to Satan, who offered him a sales position with ClearChannel. He was leaving the hospital with impure intentions when a tiny, frail old woman stepped in front of him, racked him as hard as she could with her walker, and as he lay seized up in a fetal position on the cold hard floor, dropped a tattered softcover book in front of him and ker-thunked away. Squinting through the pain, his eyes swimming, he finally made out the title: You Can Play Like Django Reinhardt. After his direct personal salvation by God, it was all cruisin' for Jay. He did learn to play like Django, and was consistently in demand on the 1940s French gypsy jazz circuit. As the early '90s boom in 1940s French gypsy jazz radio took off, Jay was approached by French Gypsy Jazz Records, and signed a two-album deal with them. The records did well, and Jay was able to have his damaged hand expertly repaired. On his way home from Duke Medical Center, he stopped for a coffee in Chapel Hill, where a short energetic blond walked up to him and said, "You're Jay Brown-may I have your autograph?"

(Please note:  None of the above is true, except that Jay plays bass and does vocals, and was credited with "signing on 'Happy'" in the liner notes to Home Is Loud, which was a typo that we thought was funny.  We made all the rest of it up.)