Two team up for America's Song 911

After eight years of obstacles and setbacks, Lamont Brown is finally able to recognize the impact of the Sept. 11 attacks in the way he's always wanted.

Brown, an executive producer in the music industry, recently completed his work on "America's Song 911," which is now available on iTunes.

"This is not necessarily a 9/11 song. This 9/11 stands for America's Song - emergency," said Brown, a Pomona resident. "This is basically a song for us to join together and not take anything that is not above-board as a country - mend together."

Brown, who has worked with artists such as Gladys Knight, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson, decided to record a song with "true Americans" who are in the music industry but may not be well known.

His first attempt at the record was before the second anniversary of 9/11, when he made a demo recording with co-writer Norman Dozier at a sober living house in Florida.

Several years later, after dealing with divorce, relapse and incarceration, Brown met Robert Leak, owner of A1 Conditioned Air Co. in Upland.

Until the economy took a turn for the worst, Leak gave recovering addicts a chance in the air conditioning business. He met Brown at one of his sober living houses.

Brown has been sober for more than four years and is working on getting his song heard.

He and Leak recently teamed up to re-establish Brown's former business, ASMOOVE Entertainment Group.

As a means to offset decreasing profits in the air conditioning business Leak agreed to work with Brown on the song's production by offering financial support to the project.

"We're 50 (percent), 60 percent off any type of profit at all in the last couple of years," Leak said. "Me and Lamont have been sitting down for weeks trying to decide how to make some money. We're entrepreneurs. Getting a job doesn't work for us."

Brown and Leak will also be lending advice to song writers and producers who are looking for projects.

"To me that's where your biggest stories are made, when you fought through everything to get to the end - and I can't say enough how important this man has been in my development," Brown said.

The two grew closer after Brown's girlfriend, Taffy Beasly, was diagnosed with Stage 4 brain and lung cancer.

"Right before the diagnosis it just held me back over here and we started doing different endeavors. Long story short, a lot of crazy stuff has happened to us in the last few months," Brown said.

Brown enlisted the help of producers Dale Thompson, also on guitar, and Albert Lee. He also worked closely with Flip Matrix, also known as Floyd Wilcox on the song's production. It was completed in two sessions at a home in Baldwin Hills.

"I saw it as being a `We are the World' type of project and planned on going and getting people I have affiliations with that I have worked with in the past," Brown said.

"Especially here in the recent past, I was like wouldn't it be rather unique to do a project like this and go get true Americans that are still having to get up and go to work and go punch that clock, that happen to be singers that have been in this business before, like myself, and either had their rise and fell off or (are) newcomers."

A video for the song has also been made. You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OGEpmc3BUc

People involved in the song's production:

Dale Thompson on guitar; Alwaz Carey Rap. Mixed and mastered an additional Vocal production by Flip Matrix, aka Floyd Wilcox. Performers: Michael Speaks, Marko Polo aka Mark Pollar, Dre Boogie Wilson aka Andre Wilson, Briana July, Dr. Bo Williams, Alex Mauricio, Amara Jean, Britt J, Lisa Bello, Dale Thompson, Tanja Henderson, Soniq aka Shinika Tolbert, Keaira Lashae.

Special thanks to: Jerry Lingle, Debra Ware, Marshal Starr, Taffy Beasly, The Leak Family, Holly Ware and Danyale Ware.

Executive Producers: Lamont Brown, Dale Thompson and Robert Leak.

Associate producer, Alwaz Carey

Producers: Lamont Brown and Albert Lee.

Written by Lamont Brown and Norman Dozier.