{"id":82722,"date":"2025-12-10T04:44:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T04:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/82722\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T04:44:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T04:44:22","slug":"he-helped-shape-austins-music-scene-now-battling-als-hes-still-playing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/82722\/","title":{"rendered":"He Helped Shape Austin\u2019s Music Scene. Now Battling ALS, He\u2019s Still Playing."},"content":{"rendered":"

Rich Brotherton had been playing the guitar for more than five decades before he ever had a problem with his hands. Then, in September 2024, Brotherton\u2014who, at 65, had worked with everyone from Robert Earl Keen<\/a> and Patty Griffin<\/a> to Scottish folkie Ed Miller and Lubbock cowboy singer Andy Hedges\u2014was recording in his Austin home studio, using the Travis picking style he had executed tens of thousands of times: his thumb playing the alternating bass rhythm while his other fingers picked the melody. It was a fast, intense song, and while his fingers were doing fine, he realized that his thumb just wasn\u2019t pushing the strings very hard. \u201cMy thumb was not speaking,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was weak.\u201d He finished the session\u2014and since he didn\u2019t have to play another fierce picking song for a while, he didn\u2019t worry about it too much.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Come April of this year, he was playing a show with his Americana gospel group, the Purgatory Players<\/a>, and his pick kept slipping from between his thumb and forefinger. A couple of weeks later, he was at the Loch Norman Scottish festival, in North Carolina, and couldn\u2019t hold the pick at all. He put on some finger picks\u2014which offer less precision and control\u2014and finished the gig. When he got back to Austin, he went to his doctor, who sent him to a neurologist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She had terrible news. \u201cI hate to say this,\u201d he recalls her saying, \u201cbut I think it\u2019s ALS.\u201d Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease, is a condition that attacks a part of the nervous system, leading to paralysis and death. Brotherton was devastated, and he got a second opinion. It confirmed the first. \u201cI was in a deep, dark depression,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brotherton plays several times a week in Austin clubs, and he knew he wouldn\u2019t be able to hide his condition for long. So in August, he posted on Facebook. \u201cA tough day,\u201d he began. He then broke the news. \u201cThe version that I\u2019ve been diagnosed with can sometimes take longer than regular ALS to run its course, but also sometimes it doesn\u2019t. Conventional wisdom says ALS lasts between two and five years. It always involves nerves and muscles becoming paralyzed, along with the loss of ability to swallow, talk, and breathe, though your brain keeps functioning. And always ends in death.\u201d He went on to say that he was taking meds to slow his decline and was going to keep performing, now with finger picks. \u201cMy aim is to keep playing shows and making music in my studio as long as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three months later, Brotherton sat in his studio eating a peanut butter\u2013and\u2013jelly sandwich and drinking a big glass of whole milk. His hair had always been short; now it was short and gray. He looked tired\u2014and thin. His T-shirt was draped loosely over his torso. He\u2019s lost 35 pounds in the last year. \u201cI\u2019m dealing with trying to put weight on and trying not to be tired right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

His studio was cluttered with acoustic guitars, a banjo, a mandolin, a drum kit, and some amps. In the last few months, Brotherton\u2014whose work ethic has led him to always have at least one production going and another in the works\u2014had finished playing on and producing three projects, including one for his band \u00dalla<\/a>. But since the diagnosis, he has been turning down jobs. \u201cI can\u2019t play like I used to play,\u201d he said, speaking slower than he once did, as the disease has affected his voice. \u201cIt\u2019s hugely frustrating.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brotherton does have one big project coming up, though it\u2019s not in his studio. Tomorrow evening, at Austin\u2019s Paramount Theatre, dozens of singers and musicians he has played with over the last forty years, including Lyle Lovett, Charley Crockett, and Loudon Wainwright III, will play a benefit for him<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sold-out concert\u2014the proceeds of which will help him outfit his home for his coming physical challenges\u2014was put together by \u00dalla bandmate Andrea Magee. Brotherton was bewildered when she said she wanted to do the show not at one of the clubs where he regularly plays but at the regal Paramount, which seats 1,200 people. \u201cRich, you are not normal,\u201d she told him. \u201cYou are a special human and a world-class musician. There is a lot of love out there for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not natural for a sideman to step out in front, and Brotherton\u2019s friends know he\u2019s loath to be the main attraction. \u201cRich is a guitar player and doesn\u2019t expect any special adulation for it,\u201d said his friend Jud Newcomb, who will play at the concert. But on a night demonstrating how one man shaped the musical identity of an entire city, he just might get it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"performance\"performanceRich Brotherton (left) performing with \u00dalla. Will van Overbeek<\/p>\n

Brotherton was born in Augusta, Georgia, in August 1959, the second of seven kids. His was a musical family. When he was just eight, his father, who played the guitar, showed him some things, and soon Brotherton was performing and singing in front of people\u2014first in an offshoot of a church folk choir and then as a teen playing solo folk, bluegrass, and pop tunes in local restaurants. After studying music at Colorado College, he spent a summer playing in Doolin, Ireland, and then wound up in Boise, Idaho, where he performed folk songs with local singer John Hansen for three years. At the time, he was influenced by both fingerpicking acoustic players like Leo Kottke and lyrical electric players like Richard Thompson.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Around 1985, Brotherton was looking for a new place to live and play music when he saw a video on TV of an Austin punk band with a pedal steel player. That was cool, he thought\u2014but it wasn\u2019t until he heard \u201cPretty Little Lights of Town,\u201d by Austin group the LeRoi Brothers, that he made up his mind. The song, from the group\u2019s 1984 album, Forget About the Danger Think of the Fun, is an ebullient rocker with a pop melody and a country feel. \u201cThis is Austin,\u201d he remembers thinking. \u201cThat\u2019s where I\u2019m going.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He loaded up his truck, headed south, and ended up crashing on a friend\u2019s floor in South Austin. He quickly fell into the Irish-music scene at a local jam, and he began going out to hear rock bands. Soon he was playing at hoot nights<\/a> and after-show parties, meeting and playing with locals like avant folkie Kathy McCarty, pop songstress Kris McKay, and songwriter David Halley. Brotherton was friendly but intense; at jam sessions, he was the thin, wiry guy who knew all the songs\u2014old Scottish murder ballads, mid-seventies folk songs, contemporary pop hits\u2014and all the chords. He also played mesmerizing solos, starting with the song\u2019s melody and then blazing off into his own territory. Nobody played like Brotherton; by the nineties, he was regularly in the running, and sometimes winning, Best Acoustic Guitar in The Austin Chronicle\u2019s annual music poll.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1988, Brotherton helped found local bluegrass band the Barnburners. He then backed up English expatriate rocker Ronnie Lane and wound up playing with Toni Price at her legendary Hippie Hour shows<\/a> at the Continental Club. He sang high harmonies, played solid rhythm guitar, and often served as a de facto band leader. Even in that role, said Newcomb, he was always collaborative. \u201cRich is so accomplished and so capable, but also so encouraging. He knows he\u2019s very skilled, but he\u2019s open to others\u2014he likes playing with people who have their own take on things.\u201d<\/p>\n

By this point, Brotherton had set up a little studio in a back room of his South Austin home\u2014where he lived with his wife, Kathy\u2014and began producing other artists, starting with Ed Miller. This led to more work recording and playing with musicians in the bubbling Austin music scene. Newcomb remembers that Brotherton wasn\u2019t just about the musicianship. \u201cHe loves to be turned on by a great song. He\u2019s always like, \u2018Man, have you heard this?\u2019 I remember being over at his house and staying up late, and the new Tom Waits record had come out\u2014just all of us gathering around and listening to it in pure delight.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1993, Brotherton\u2014whose daughter Ailie had just been born\u2014joined Robert Earl Keen\u2019s band. Keen was getting popular, and he took care of his group, giving members health insurance and retirement accounts. When Brotherton wasn\u2019t touring, he was producing artists in his studio: acts like Caroline Herring, the Barbers, and Ana Egge. He also produced two of Keen\u2019s albums. \u201cThose two are two of my very favorite records,\u201d said Keen about Farm Fresh Onions and What I Really Mean. \u201cRich had a way of being able to pivot and grab ahold of stuff.\u201d Once, said Keen, he and Brotherton were working on the song \u201cTrain Trek\u201d when they realized they needed a particular guitar sound. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018What do we do, Rich?\u2019 And he\u2019s looking around at this wall of guitars in the studio, and he goes, \u2018This baritone guitar right here.\u2019 And he just plugs it in and runs the track, and it\u2019s a stunning piece. And he just did it totally on the fly.\u201d<\/p>\n

After 25 years with Keen, Brotherton left the band and dove back into the Austin scene, performing with Newcomb and others in the Purgatory Players as well as with recent Irish expat Pat Byrne, which led to the founding of \u00dalla, a traditional Irish group that breaks out occasional covers of Fairport Convention and Kris Kristofferson<\/a>. Along with Byrne and Magee, Brotherton\u2019s younger daughter, Maddy, plays fiddle, which has been particularly fulfilling for Brotherton. Sometimes, he says, they\u2019ll be playing along behind one of the singers\u2014dad on guitar and daughter on violin\u2014and find themselves playing a similar riff. \u201cOur brains seem to work the same way. It\u2019s nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then came the diagnosis\u2014and the despair, especially at being unable to do the astonishing things that had once come so easily. Brotherton\u2019s doctor prescribed Prozac, which he\u2019d never taken before. Then Brotherton started talking to a therapist\u2014also a first. He played her some videos that he and his siblings had made for their parents, singing songs in harmony during the COVID pandemic. Her advice: Put together a playlist of music that calms you. Brotherton had spent most of his life seeing the effect his music had on other people, but he was in such a dark place that he\u2019d failed to see he could do the same for himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t ever dealt with the calamity and the stress and the depression and the anxiety that go hand in hand with this disease that I have,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know how to put that stuff together.\u201d To do so, he started gathering songs he loved: lush and melancholy pop tunes like \u201cNot Strong Enough\u201d by Boygenius and \u201cFriday Morn\u2019\u200a\u201d by Uma. He loved the sounds, especially the harmonies, but he discovered he was gathering lyrics that meant something to him\u2014and that many, like the ones in \u201cFuneral\u201d by Phoebe Bridgers, were about death. \u201cThe notion of dying is a real thing for me now,\u201d said Brotherton, \u201cso it\u2019s almost like standing up to it, confronting it, not backing down.\u201d He finds himself listening to some of the songs over and over. \u201cIt\u2019s surprising how calming it is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

His August Facebook post brought hundreds of responses from friends and fans. He got a card from a couple he\u2019d gone to college with. \u201cShe wrote, \u2018Last year, I turned 65, and when I did, it just made me think that I have had a magnificent, wonderful life up till now, and whatever else there is, it\u2019s kind of gravy and there\u2019s not much to regret.\u2019 And I just went, \u2018Thank you for that. Yes, that\u2019s the truth.\u2019 The world is kind of doing what the world does, and I\u2019ve got nothing to regret.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s never had to get ready for a show like the one tomorrow at the Paramount. \u201cIt\u2019s a little frightening that there are so many people that are going to be there, and so many of the folks performing are just my pals.\u201d Brotherton plans to play with some of them, though how much he participates will depend on how he feels the night of. \u201cThis thing saps me like crazy. And if I run out of steam, I\u2019ll go catch my breath somewhere.\u201d He can still play melodies, but not as fast or as fluidly as before. Some chords\u2014like the B minor\u2014are harder now. \u201cI\u2019m improvising and playing different versions, accommodating what I can do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brotherton has always found a way to make music\u2014to improvise, to don finger picks, to do whatever it took to support somebody else. Now, in his hour of darkness, his friends are returning the favor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read Next<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rich Brotherton had been playing the guitar for more than five decades before he ever had a problem…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,631,39964,39965,278,13473,39966],"class_list":{"0":"post-82722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-death","12":"tag-disease","13":"tag-guitar","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-musicians","16":"tag-robert-earl-keen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}