Austin Brown is celebrating his marriage to his wife, Amberly, with a sweet new song, out now. The Home Free member just dropped “I’ll Go First,” which says in part, “I’ll go first / And hold the door / Speak my truth so you don’t have to be unsure / It might just be three little words / But if you’re scared / I’ll go first.”
“This song was a labor of love,” Brown captioned the tune on social media. “It took about three years and a whole village to feel like we got it right. Might be what feels like my most complete piece of art to date and I’m grateful to everyone who helped us find it.
“And yes, those are our rings,” he added, referring to the cover art of “I’ll Go First.”
Brown and Amberly shared a platonic friendship for years, before their relationship evolved into a romance.
“We became friends, and we were just casual friends. She friend-zoned me for a long time,” Brown recently told Everything Nash. “And then, turns out, we friend-zoned each other. And then three or four years ago, COVID started, and we came home.”
“He invited me over to go fishing, and then kissed me over the fishing pole,” Amberly added with a laugh. “And we’ve been together ever since. Yes, it was magical. We still fish together. We have a YouTube channel that we kind of do that on now too.”
It might be Brown’s voice on both his solo songs and the music with Home Free, but the talented singer makes it clear his wife has an equally important role in his career.
“She runs our business, and she is the face of my music,” Brown explained. “Literally I put her as the cover art for one of our recent singles. I don’t enjoy self-promotion, but when I’m promoting us it feels like something so much more. Getting to put her front and center of what I do — ’cause all the music that I write is about her, it’s about our walk together — and seeing other people resonate with that makes me want to do it more.
“And getting to celebrate her online, that’s my life purpose at this point,” he added. “I just want to make more content with her, ’cause it’s so much fun. And we’ve worked together so well that I don’t know how I’ve ever been doing anything else before.”
Amberly will join Home Free for the upcoming 2024 Country Music Cruise. The five-man group has also been added to the lineup for 2025 as well. Find all of Brown’s music, including “I’ll Go First,” at AustinBrownMusic.com.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of CMA / Katie Kauss