Mike Estes & The Brave New South

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Mike Estes (White Bluff, TN) is known as a guitarist, singer and songwriter from bands like Skinny Molly, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blackfoot and Drivin' Sideways. Mike recorded an album with his band Brave New South with songs written by Mike and his band members. The album was released physically in October 2001 in Finland and Sweden with the song "When The Goin Gets Tough, The Tough Go Fishin" released as a radio single. Mike did several tours in Europe, first tour with All Points Bulletin and then with the Finnish band, Rubbish Brothers as well as a promo tour in Finland and Sweden with Finnish musicians performing on radio and tv-shows. Mike has released several albums with his southern rock band Skinny Molly and is still touring both US and Europe with the band.

The Background

Mike came up playing the old club grind that all guys trying to "make it" in the music business were playing: the-six-nights-a-week-school-of hard-knocks-and-bad-food-circuit.

Mike's band Helen Highwater (named by Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins) had played about every club and opened for almost every national Southern rock and outlaw country band throughout the Southeast and Midwest for ten years. Mike had struck up a friendship while in high school in 1982 with the guys in the Rossington Collins Band, which was founded by surviving Skynyrd plane crash survivors. So when the Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute Tour began 1987, Helen Highwater opened some shows for them. Mike began writing songs and playing them for people in the Skynyrd organization.

In 1992, he began going on the road with Skynyrd to write songs, and in 1993 signed a publishing deal with Skynyrd guitarist Ed King's publishing company, "I Can't Read Music". He wrote songs for the next year when guitarist Gary Rossington offered Mike the guitarist spot in Skynyrd vacated by Randall Hall. Mike accepted, and spent the next two and a half years touring, writing and recording with his favorite band.

After he moved to Tennessee in 1995, Mike co-wrote a song with Rossington and Johnny Van Zant for Sony Music's "Hotter than Asphalt" CD called "White Knuckle Ride" that led to his interest in stock car racing. This, and an unresolveable at that time conflict in Skynyrd led to Mike leaving and starting his own band, Drivin' Sideways. Drivin' Sideways signed their own deal and put a record out of Nashville. Their songs are staples at the race tracks and radio as well. Mike has done many TV and radio appearances, including HBO, MTV, CMT, TNN, CNN, Entertainment Tonight and Primetime country.