Dean Brownrout

Dean Brownrout was born in the early ’60s and raised in the Buffalo, NY area. By the time he was a teenager, with the entrepreneurial bent instilled in him by family, he was promoting rock concerts and managing local bands. It was the era of the burgeoning “new wave” music movement.

At 21, he moved to New York City to pursue a career in the music business. As a talent agent, he booked a pre-major-label Metallica into New York’s Roseland Ballroom for a seminal 1984 show; it led to their signing to Elektra Records.

His experience with the punk, hardcore, and metal genres motivated him to found Mercenary Records in the late 1980s. He signed the now multi-platinum Goo Goo Dolls to their first recording agreement, and released their debut album. In 1993, after a stint managing the US operation of German-based heavy metal label, Noise Records, Brownrout cofounded Big Deal, an independent record company, running it out of his Greenwich Village living room. The label, which focused on power pop and alternative music, was much more to his personal musical taste. In 1996, he sold Big Deal to an early internet startup. Brownrout continued to run Big Deal as it expanded; it eventually had a dozen employees and released hundreds of recordings worldwide. The combined business was purchased by cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. and then AT&T; he left the company in 1999.

In 2002, Brownrout moved back to Buffalo. He became an art dealer specializing in historically important art of the area. He represents the photographic estate of avant-garde film pioneer Hollis Frampton, and works with galleries and museums around the world.

Independent Book Review called his memoir, “No Big Deal: Chasing the indie music dream in the last days of the record business,” one of “the best books we read in 2025.”

“No Big Deal” earned top honors in the Music category at the 19th Annual Indie Excellence Book Awards (2025) and received a bronze medal for Memoir/Biography in the 2025 Axiom Business Book Awards. It was also named a Reviewers Choice finalist for Non-Fiction Arts in the 2024–25 Reader Views Literary Awards, and a finalist for Performing Arts (Film, Theatre, Dance, Music) in the 21st Annual Best Book Awards (2024).