He poured his extra time into music, jotting down lyrics in journals and divining chords with Kaylin. After starring as an offensive lineman at USC, playing briefly with the Chargers, then detouring to Washington, D.C., to play in the short-lived XFL, Chris was ready to put football behind him. Over the last year, friends and family say, Chris seemed to settle on his path. So when Chris was home, for days or weeks at a time, he would clean the stalls, feed the horses and cattle and work the land. “If you’re gonna be country, then you gotta live country,” Bob would tell his son. Life on the offensive line is marked by cadence, timing and rhythm - snap, step, hit. He had a stage name, Chris Ryan.Ĭhris Brown and USC’s offensive line try to play sweet music together He dreamed one day he would grace the stage at Stagecoach, a country music festival in Indio he attended every year. He toted his acoustic guitar around like an extra appendage. He loved cowboy hats and cut-off tank tops, line dancing and country western bars. But no one in the Brown family - not his older brother, Nick, not his younger sister, Kaylin - took to the ranch quite like Chris. into a family sanctuary and cowboy’s paradise, complete with a saloon, horse arenas, equestrian training grounds, a party barn, a wedding venue. He planned to turn the California Ranch Co. Bob bought these 53 acres of desert wine country in Temecula in December 2019, fulfilling a promise he’d made to his wife, Erin, on their first date decades earlier.

The ranch was at the center of that future.

Since last spring, when the pandemic brought Chris back home, this was where father and son would talk - about the ranch, about music, about everything in between - dreaming up plans until the beer was gone and the sun was setting over the nearby hills.

It still feels like yesterday he and Chris were parked on the edge of this pasture, drinking Coors Lights and watching the horses roam. But the solace is always only temporary, giving way to waves of sorrow that most days seem as inevitable as the tides. It’s a rare moment of peace for Bob, who for the past two months has done everything in his power to stay busy and to fill the silence. The distant din of live country music blaring joyously from the barn barely registers over the dry, desert breeze. Bob Brown sits in the driver’s seat of his red Polaris ATV, staring out over a paddock of horses.

Chris brown deuces l