He Found Sanity On A Valley Ranch

Scott Brownlee commutes to Los Angeles, where he teaches two days a week as a professor of film at UCLA.

What’s more, after talking with this adventurous man for an hour, he’ll convince you that it’s no big deal.

A few years ago, when he first started making the Spokane-to-L.A. commute, Brownlee was putting in 16-hour days, six day weeks, doing audio post-production work with major film studios, including Disney.

“And teaching, somewhere in there.” And coming home on weekends.

“I think I aged 10 years in that two years,” says Brownlee.

Which wasn’t the idea at all, when Brownlee, his wife Pamela and children Olivia, now 14, and Pendergraf, 12, moved here in 1992.

They moved from California in order to have a sane home, a ranch for their horses, and the kind of small-town life that both Scott and Pam grew up in, he says.

They created that bit of sanity on what they call the Rockin’ B Ranch. It’s about as far east as you can go in the Spokane Valley before you get to Idaho. Almost anyone who’s driven Interstate 90 toward Coeur d’Alene will remember the white farmhouse and red barn just south of the highway, at the State Line exit.

That’s the Rockin’ B. This summer, the Brownlees are sharing the ranch with families looking for an evening of barbecue, “good, clean humor” and live country music by the Riders of the Rockin’ B. The Rockin’ B Ranch will open for business the first weekend of June. The chuckwagon evenings will run Fridays and Saturdays until September.

In keeping with the Brownlees’ emphasis on a family orientation, the business will sell no alcohol.

“That was a big decision, a hard decision,” he says.

Call this Brownlee’s latest adventure.

When the family moved onto the ranch, that picturesque red barn was actually an indoor riding arena. Now, it’s decorated with touches of the Old West and sturdy picnic tables. The horses have lost their home.

“A friend of ours walked in here and said ‘I see a concert in here,”’ Brownlee says.

The first concert was for friends and members of the Brownlees’ church, Opportunity Presbyterian. People sat on hay bales. They liked the music. They liked the atmosphere. “Someone said ‘This is perfect. It looks like Disney designed it - even the cobwebs!”’ Those spiders have had to survive the installation of indoor plumbing and a kitchen, plus the rewiring that’s being wrapped up.

Brownlee wears a lot of hats on the ranch, he says. There’s the garden, the barn - “It’s our passion” - and there’s the guest house/studio where he does some audio work.

In addition to teaching at UCLA, Brownlee still does audio postproduction work. And just what is that?

Once film has been shot, Brownlee coordinates taping a soundtrack that is error-free - no jet planes overhead, no one bumping into the microphones.

He also composes music. Songs for television’s animated Muppet Babies are by Brownlee, for instance.

His love for music goes back to his childhood in Colorado, and it’s been a huge influence in his life. Scott and Pam met at a music school in Los Angeles.

Pam, a Northern California native, now teaches chorus for the Freeman School District, where the two Brownlee children go to school.

“She can be there every day, with the children,” Brownlee says.

Strike two, for sanity.