What: Chad Brownlee with Jess Moskaluke and Bobby Wills
When: Friday, 9 p.m. (doors at 8)
Where: Distrikt nightclub (919 Douglas St.)
Tickets: $40
Note: Brownlee also performs Saturday at a barn party in Nanoose Bay at Arbutus Meadows Arena
For most of Chad Brownlee’s life, music took a backseat to hockey. But as he rose through the ranks, eventually making it to the minor pro level as a defenceman, his career priorities began to shift. Hockey went from being something he loved to something he did to pay his bills.
Finally, the Kelowna native switched professions. Music, which had been in his life in a limited capacity, became his biggest means of making a living, with country music his calling.
“Hockey was first and foremost,” said Brownlee, who was drafted by the Vancouver Canucks in 2003.
“I lived and breathed it, since I was five years old.” But over time, Brownlee said, his love for music “leapfrogged” over hockey. “I knew what my decision had to be.”
Brownlee, 30, quit playing hockey when he was 23, in part due to injuries, but also because of shifting priorities.
“That led me to what I call the easiest hard decision I’ve ever had to make, which is stop playing the game that I loved for so many years. If I didn’t have music, I probably would have ventured off to Europe to play the game, which a lot of people do. In my heart, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and that is what made it an easy decision, for sure.”
At one point, not playing hockey would have been unthinkable, Brownlee said. He was drafted by the Canucks the same year the club selected future all-star Ryan Kesler. That Brownlee was taken ahead of current NHL stars Joe Pavelski and Dustin Byfuglien in the draft says something about his abilities as a 19-year-old defenceman.
Brownlee’s hockey career was cut short following surgery on both shoulders, when he was playing for Minnesota State University. Brownlee was injured again while playing minor pro for the Idaho Steelheads of the East Coast Hockey League.
The month-and-a-half he spent on the sidelines while in the ECHL wound up being both a blessing and a curse.
“I just didn’t feel like the same player. I had lost some confidence. I lost the love for the game. I was counting down the seconds in a game, wanting to go home. That was an epiphany for me. I can almost pinpoint the game where I thought: ‘What am I doing coming to the rink if I don’t even want to be here?’ ”
So Brownlee quit hockey, but his career as a musician was just beginning.
His ascent through the country ranks was rapid. In 2011, he won the rising-star award at the Canadian Country Music Awards. He earned a nomination for male artist of the year at the same awards show in both 2012 and 2013, along with a Juno Award nomination in 2013. Along the way, he put seven singles in the top 10 at Canadian Country Radio.
“I’ve been doing this for six years now, but there’s some people I know who’ve been doing this for 15 years and they still haven’t had this opportunity,” Brownlee said.
“I’m extremely fortunate to be at this point so quickly, in retrospect.”
Brownlee doesn’t have a new album to promote — his last effort was The Fighters in 2014 — but he’s doing his part to promote a unique hockey-related contest that will send disadvantaged children to camp.
On tour, Brownlee is using a guitar made of Sher-Wood hockey sticks and wood from Canadian maple trees. Once the tour wraps, the unique instrument will be auctioned off in support of the Tim Hortons Children’s Foundation.
Brownlee is staging the auction with help from the Zebras Care Foundation, an arm of the NHL Referees Association. He laughed at the irony of a hockey player pairing with referees (“I definitely had a few games where we didn’t get along, that’s for sure,” he joked) but the parallels between helping children and shooting for the top in sports and music were too big to ignore.
“It doesn’t matter what level you’re at, there’s always something to improve on in life,” Brownlee said.
“Push yourself to be the absolute best you can be.”
