I didn’t set out to make an album.
I set out to finally be honest with myself.
I eventually released that album under the name TJ Brown.
For most of my life, I became very good at presenting a version of myself that made everyone else comfortable. I worked hard, built businesses, filmed stories about other people, supported local communities and cheered on everyone around me. On the outside, things looked busy and full.
Inside, there was a part of me I kept carefully locked away.
I grew up loving country music. The honest kind. The storytelling kind. Songs about home, heartbreak, roads, family and belonging. The kind where a voice and a guitar could somehow say what a person didn’t know how to say out loud.
As a teenager I performed and sang publicly. I loved it. I even won a few local awards and sang on television, but over time I drifted away from it and convinced myself that part of my life was behind me.
As I got older, I realised why.
Country music also scared me.
It’s a genre built on tradition, identity and expectation, and for a long time I convinced myself there wasn’t a place in it for someone like me.
So I stayed quiet.
I built a life around creativity. Filming, writing and promoting other people’s passions. But I never quite allowed myself to step into my own. I’d record little ideas privately. A lyric here. A melody there. Nothing serious. Nothing public. Because public meant real, and real meant questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
Then something changed.
I met Mike.
He didn’t push me to make music. He didn’t try to turn me into an artist. He simply believed in me long before I was ready to believe in myself.
When I dismissed the songs as nothing, he heard something.
When I hesitated, he encouraged.
When I nearly gave up, he quietly kept me going.
He helped build a small home studio so the songs had somewhere to exist outside my head. He listened to rough demos that weren’t very good yet. He stood behind the camera for photos, helped shape arrangements, and sat through countless late nights while I rewrote lyrics over and over again.
A lot of this album exists because he refused to let me talk myself out of it.
More than that, many of the lyrics came from a place I hadn’t allowed myself to write about before. Love I was finally no longer hiding.
I realised the reason the songs kept coming back wasn’t because I wanted to be a musician. It was because I had things I needed to say.
The songs weren’t about charts or streams or becoming an artist. They were conversations I’d been avoiding with myself for years. Every lyric chipped away at a wall I had carefully built over a lifetime. Eventually I understood what the album really was.
It wasn’t a music project.
It was a moment of honesty.
The album became Under Southern Skies, and the name ended up meaning more than I expected. I live in a small Queensland community where people know each other, wave to each other and look out for each other. It’s the kind of place where you feel safe, but also the kind of place where you worry about changing how people see you.
Releasing the music meant I couldn’t stay anonymous anymore.
Because the truth is simple:
I’m a gay man who wrote a country album about my life.
For a long time those two things didn’t feel like they could exist together. It took me much longer than I ever expected to accept that about myself. I told myself people wouldn’t understand. I worried I would lose respect. I worried I’d lose relationships. I worried I’d make things uncomfortable for others. So I delayed it for years.
But the songs wouldn’t leave me alone.
They kept reminding me that the person I was protecting the most was actually myself.
When I finally decided to release the album, I wasn’t brave. I was terrified. I hovered over the upload button longer than I’d like to admit. Because pressing release didn’t just share music. It shared me.
And then something unexpected happened.
People listened.
More than that, people understood.
Messages started arriving from strangers and friends alike. Not about production quality, favourite tracks or guitar tones, but about feelings. About hearing themselves in the songs. About finally not feeling alone.
A few simply said, “I needed this.”
Then came something I never saw coming.
Videos began appearing online of line dance groups, not just locally but internationally, choreographing routines to one of my songs. People I had never met, in places I had never been, were dancing to words I once wrote alone late at night, unsure if anyone would ever even hear them.
It shocked me.
The music I was afraid to release had travelled further than I ever had.
That’s when I realised the album had never really been mine. It was for anyone who has ever felt they needed permission to live honestly and accept who they are.
Country music is often about home. For me, it became a way to explain a truth I had finally accepted.
I didn’t release the album to start a music career. I released it because I had reached a point in my life where I was no longer ashamed of who I was. Coming out didn’t happen because of the music. The music happened because I came out.
I became proud of the person I am, and the songs are simply the story of that moment in my life.
So why press release?
Because somewhere, someone is sitting quietly, thinking they’re the only person feeling the way they do. And if they hear one of these songs and realise they’re not alone, then every moment of fear was worth it.
The album didn’t change me.
I changed myself.
The music is just what happened afterwards.
Under these same southern skies, I hope it helps someone else feel they can do the same.
Listen to TJ Brown – Under Southern Skies on Spotify
TJ Brown – Under Southern Skies
Written by Tim Pasqualone.