Could have had a career in the music business if the whole racing thing didn’t work out.
Tyler Reddick is one of the hottest drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series right now. The driver of the #45 car for 23XI Racing, which is co-owned by fellow NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin and NBA legend Michael Jordan, is currently leading the points standings and has already won five races this season. (In fact, his worst finish of the season so far is 15th).
It was announced yesterday that Reddick had signed a multiyear contract extension with 23XI, and while we don’t know exactly how much he’s getting paid, it’s safe to assume that the team had to drop the bag and make him one of the highest paid drivers in the Cup Series.
Though he’s only 30 years old, Reddick has been around cars all his life. His grandfather, Benny Brown, owned a car dealership in Corning, California, just north of Sacramento. But Brown also had a side gig that came from his love of country music.
As he recalled during an interview with Country Aircheck, being an independent car dealer meant spending a lot of time driving around the country listening to the radio. And Brown thought he had a pretty good ear for new country artists, so in the late ’80s he decided to try to help a singer he heard on television in Northern California get connected with a manager in Nashville.
While visiting with Jack McFadden, a manager who worked with artists like Keith Whitley, Lorrie Morgan and Buck Owens, Brown saw a bathtub full of cassette tapes that were demos from new artists hoping to get recognized. And unlike McFadden, who had no interest in the tapes, Brown wanted to listen to them.
With his interest in the music industry growing, and demo tapes from artists in hand, Brown decided to buy Legends Studio, a recording studio in Nashville that had previously been used by legendary artists like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and many more.
Brown wanted to use the record studio to help develop up and coming artists. But he quickly realized that didn’t always translate to support from record labels: As he admits, he became frustrated when he would help artists record songs and develop a catalog of music, only to find out there was no interest from the labels.
So he decided to start his own.
In 1999, Brown launched his first record label, Broken Bow Records. Two artists he had previously been trying to pitch to labels, Joanie Keller and Damon Gray, released Broken Bow’s first two albums. And…well, you probably don’t recognize those names, because they didn’t have much success.
But in 2002, Broken Bow signed a new artist named Craig Morgan.
Despite the rest of the industry warning Brown against it, and even the executives at his own label trying to talk him out of it, the label head decided to release “Almost Home” as Morgan’s second single. And despite being told that it was “career suicide,” it ended up being a massive hit, peaking inside the top 10 on the charts and giving credibility to the new, independent record label.
Not long after their first hit, Broken Bow signed another new artist named Jason Aldean. And Tyler Reddick admits that although Aldean wasn’t necessarily his grandfather’s type of music, he had learned enough by that point to spot a successful artist:
“I remember meeting Jason very early on, and my grandfather just not loving his – I gotta be careful how I say it – my grandfather was big on traditional country music, the clean shaved guy, the cowboy hat, the ’80s and 90s cleaned up country look.
And then when he found Jason, Jason was your kind of rock country guy, the chain on his wallet, you know, the tore jeans, the loud shirts, the loud personality, the earrings, everything, right?
And so I remember when Jason kind of came into the mix, I was like, we asked our grandfather if he was okay because, you know, this goes against everything that he was kind of trying to build these artists up to be.”
But after trial and error, Brown knew that it wasn’t just his opinion that mattered: It was the fans and listeners. So he would convene meetings of employees at his car dealerships in California to ask them their opinions on new artists, and apparently he knew that Aldean was going to be a star.
In 2009, Broken Bow launched a sister label called Stoney Creek Records, and in 2015 launched yet another imprint with Wheelhouse Records.
The trio of labels, now known as BBR Music Group, was acquired by BMG in 2015, and these days boasts a roster including Lainey Wilson, Jelly Roll, Blake Shelton and Brantley Gilbert, among many others.
And as for Brown, in 2020 he launched another label, Quartz Hill Records, as well as a sister label, Stone Country Records. Then in 2025, he launched his own publishing company called North Chapel Publishing, while also acquiring powerhouse Nashville publishing company Wide Open Publishing and its roster of songwriters.
It’s not a stretch to say Brown is one of the most influential veterans of the music industry these days. Just like it’s not a stretch to say that his grandson is one of, if not THE, best driver in the NASCAR Cup Series right now.
I guess success just runs in the family.
