Brooks Newton was born in Ponca City, OK on June 15, 1971. At the age of nine, he began playing his mother's acoustic guitar. At 11, he got an electric guitar and a keyboard synthesizer. After two years of violin, a few months of guitar lessons and one piano lesson, Brooks quit all formal training and began playing solely by ear at age 13.

While musical illiteracy is a tremendous disadvantage in the song world, it also has its perks.

All of Brooks' songs were composed out of a love for sounds, not out of a comfortable familiarity with a certain set of patterned symbols on the printed page. There are common themes in Newton's music and poetry, but each work holds a separate spell over the listener.

After graduating from high school in Tahlequah, OK, Brooks traveled to the University of Oklahoma for college. Weird new music, interesting people, and the warming glow of collegial openness brought about a fertile period for the writer /singer/musician. Many of the songs on Newton's first album, Beatnik Picnic (1996), were first conceived during this undergraduate period (1989-1993).

After receiving an English masters degree from the University of Kansas in 1996, Newton set out to record Beatnik Picnic and begin work on his second album, Output.

The soundscape laid down on Output was a marked change from the sparse acoustic canvas Newton recorded in Beatnik Picnic. Always wanting to "drop the hammer," Brooks experimented with electric guitars to plow a sonic field furrowed in rock riffs. From 1996 to 1998 Brooks Newton worked on the material for Output. During this same period, he played numerous live shows and performed poetry readings in Oklahoma and Kansas. In October, 1998, Newton recorded Output.

Newton's third album, Blue Heaven Sessions, was released in late 2003.  Contact Brooks through this Web site for purchasing details.