Ian W Brown
About Ian...
Daniel Mays plays a better-looking version of him in the Fisherman’s Friends film and Gregor Fisher’s downtrodden manager character in 2003’s Love Actually may have been based on how he transported an ex-prog rocker to the top of the Christmas charts in real life in 2001.
It’s 20 years since Ian gave up the muddy life of a farmer having decided he stood a better chance of being happy and making a living by swimming against the tide in the shark-infested waters of the music business while trying to save the world with a song.
In those two decades he has managed artists, co-produced films, released records, co-written a number one single and the lead song in a West End hit, written many songs for film and TV, toured the UK.
Last year saw the incredible true story of how he signed and managed the Fisherman’s Friends to a ‘£1 million major label record deal’ and into the top ten album chart in 2010 turned into a heart warming film that was the feel good hit of the year. What’s more, he still manages and is very much friends with the fishermen.
The film featured several of his songs.
He co - wrote some songs that feature in Wild Rose, an acclaimed British musical drama starring Jessie Buckley and Julie Waters about a singer from Glasgow who dreams of country music stardom.
September will see the release of Blithe Spirit a film staring Dame Judi Dench, Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher and Dan Stevens which again features many of his songs.
He occasionally takes to the stage to play some of his songs that have graced the charts and so many more that haven’t. His finely-honed everyman tales and self-deprecating musical outings are interspersed with tall tales from the music business, life, love and the universe, some of which will grace the pages of his eagerly awaited musical memoir/manual on how to survive in the music business.
Let’s face it, there’s plenty of material to draw on. As well as co-writing Sandi Thom’s number one single ‘I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker’ and the lead song in the long running West End musical ‘Dreamboats and Petticoats’, Ian has written songs for many other artists, from folk acts such as the Fisherman’s Friends and Show Of Hands and Thea Gilmore, to pop stars like D-Side, Simon Webbe, Michael Ball, Shawn Escoffery, Cassidy Jansen and Pixie Lott, he even had dance cuts with Drumsound & Bassline Smith, Junge Junge and Don Diablo.
In the last year Ian's songs have played on BBC Radio 1, 2, 4 and 5. He is working on something for BBC Radio 3, once he has mastered the nose flute.
His proudest moment, however, is performing ‘The Five Foot Two Inch Giant’, an anthem to his wife, on the Model Village Stage at Wimborne Minster Folk Festival… he could make this stuff up, but he doesn’t have to!
Ian W Brown is the only known pig farmer to be nominated for an Ivor Novello Award.