Local singer/songwriter Brooke Graham is about to hit the big time and it all comes down to a painting her grandmother painted.
Mary Lou Loehr’s parents, Bob and Flo Loehr, were very close friends with Brooke Graham’s grandparents, Jake and Dot Barfield. At some point during their friendship Dot gave Bob and Flo one of her paintings. All of these people are now deceased, but Mary Lou hung on to the painting because she wanted someone in the family to have it.
So last year when Brooke and Katy Graham operated The Local Taco at Caffey Corner, Mary Lou was finally able to present her with the painting, keeping it in the family.
As it turns out Mary Lou had become friends with Tex Whitson, the manager of none other than country music legend Merle Haggard. Whitson has a Vietnam war buddy in this area named Barry Parker and Tex often came to Rockdale to visit him. He liked to eat at Becky’s Sandwiches & More, where Mary Lou worked at the time, and that’s how they met.
This year Mary Lou introduced Tex to Brooke and things took off like a shot.
Brooke said, “Since Mary Lou connected me with Tex Whitson, Merle Haggard’s lifelong manager, things have progressed quickly! We got a phone call a week ago that a new song I wrote called ‘Deja Brew’ is a Grammy hit song and they are flying me and Katy to Nashville April 11 to record it.”
They originally recorded the song in Lubbock, but after Tex listened to it many times he decided it needed to have the “Nashville Sound,” hence the upcoming trip.
Two of the people who will be on the recording are Lloyd Maines, father of Dixie Chick Natalie Maines, and Terri Hendrix, a Texas-based singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and independent artist.
“They are also pitching my song ‘Salty Situation’ to Kenny Chesney’s camp,” she added.
EARLY BEGINNINGS—Brooke said her first recording was in 2013. Her mom, for her 60th birthday, asked for a disk of all the songs Brooke had written. She hooked up with Duke Davis in Fredericksburg who told her, “This needs to be an album, not just a present for your mother.” That album became Pedigree (pictured here).
Two weeks after Pedigree came out she was nominated for female vocalist of the year by the Academy of Texas Country Music.
“That album did well on the radio and I recorded my second album, Look at the Moon, in 2017,” Brooke said.
One of the tracks from that album “Me Time” went to No 1 on Florida radio and stayed there for over a year and gained her Song of the Year from the Trop Rock Music Association, which is several genres of popular music that incorporate elements of rock and roll, country, Caribbean, reggae or other musical genres to create a laid-back or “escapist” state of mind.
Two more tracks also went to No. 1 in Florida, “Double Rum” and “Hey Friend.”
“One cool highlight off of my second album is the song, ‘Raindrop’ which landed me a spot on the Songwriters Across Texas Television Show, and went nuts on radio,” Brooke said.
“I’ve always wanted to be the songwriter more so than the performer. That’s finally happening too. Because of this, I’ve been invited to join songwriter sessions in Nashville, Georgia and California, writing for folks like Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Jimmy Buffett and George Strait. I guess now, I just hang onto the reins and pray!”
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