To look at Gregory Brown, he’s a man fully capable of living life to the full. It’s his voice — a soft, dry rasp that’s barely above a whisper — that signifies what the cancer is doing to him.

“They’re saying six months to a year with treatment,” he said. “And six months to a year without treatment.”

Up until about Labor Day, Brown was living the life of many Lower Alabama musicians, hopping from gig to gig. His home in Foley put him him close to coastal clubs and restaurants catering to vacationers, making it easy to capitalize on the busy summer season.

Over the years he’d occasionally made his mark in bigger ways. In 2002, as Mobile celebrated its tricentennial, he paired up with Charles Weinacker Jr. and set Weinacker’s poem “Ol’ Mobile” to music. It got some airplay on WZEW-FM 92.1 and became, in Brown’s words, kind of an unofficial album of the tricentennial. No doubt a few listeners will remember that ode to the charms of the area.

Life went on. He lost his wife, Melanie Brown, to cancer in 2004 and remarried, to Lisa Darlene Brown, in 2018. His ability to make a living through music remained a constant until the closing days of August.

He’d noticed some swelling in his thyroid, so he set up an appointment with an endocrinologist. He kept playing six shows a week, but by the end of the month, he noticed his voice starting to get a little rattly.

That didn’t alarm Brown at first. He just saw it as something that happens when you’re singing a lot. “But then on September first, the voice was just gone,” he said.

It took a little while to narrow things down. Biopsies were inconclusive. Surgery removed most of the tumor, but the news was still bad: Doctors found that what they’d removed was Sarcomatoid Anaplastic Thyroid Carcinoma, a rare and very aggressive cancer. Information from the National Institutes of Health says the disease “constitutes less than 5% of clinically recognized thyroid malignancies but it accounts for more than half of the deaths for thyroid cancer, with a mortality rate that is over 90% and a mean survival of six months after the diagnosis.”

Brown lost some gigs because he couldn’t sing anymore, but he kept a few where venues were okay with instrumental performances. He’s also teaching guitar lessons, though anything that makes him use what’s barely left of his voice is exhausting.

But with the summer season over, Brown had plenty of time to face up to the situation. Medicare helps with the medical expenses, he said. But with his wife unable to work following an accident a couple of years ago and three children living at home, paying the bills weighs heavily on his mind.

He’s hoping to see the bread that he’s cast on the waters over the years come back to him now, in his time of need. There’s a GoFundMe drive he set up in October. He’s hoping to raise $100,000. As of early Dec. 4, he had a little over $5,000.

“My biggest concern at this point is I can’t work because I don’t have a voice.”

“I’ve always given it to the community—my time and my music— and I’m just hopeful that the community could give back,” he said.

“Who’s ever asked me to do fundraisers, to do charity work, it was never a question,” he said. “It’s what musicians do. We don’t usually have money extra, but we give of our time to help raise that money for others.

Some of those benefits have been for fellow musicians. He remembers being of many who rallied around Hank Becker, a pillar of Mobile’s music scene, before his death in 2012. “God, I think about him a lot,” Brown said.

“There’s no 401k, there’s no savings. It’s gig to gig,” he said. It works, when you’re young and healthy. “But age creeps up on you all of a sudden.”

Brown said he’s found his perspective changing, and that’s something he’d like to share with his fellow performers.

“Especially with family, you know, you let your family go to the back burner,” he said. “You let your family go to the back burner because there’s gigs to play, there’s work to be done, there’s money to be made. And in the end, none of that really matters. All that mattered was your family. And I wish I had spent more time on that. I think that’s the thing that I think of most, because at the end of all the gigs and the money-making, you still end up with no money. And here I sit wondering how the hell I’m gonna take care of the kids for Christmas, and my wife, for Christmas, and how we’re gonna pay the bills.”

He’s still working, despite it all: playing a weekly instrumental gig at Wolf Bay Lodge in Orange Beach, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesdays. He’s hoping to line up a few more things in the new year.

If nothing else, his prognosis has at least given him time to put things in order, and to brace for tough choices.

“Right now I don’t hurt,” he said. “I just get exhausted trying to talk. But I don’t hurt.”

“You try to make things right with everybody that you can,” he said.

“I hope that I’ve given everyone a smile that saw me play,” he said. “I hope that my music has just been part of the Gulf Coast, which I love.”

Fellow musician Wes Loper has weighed in to say that Brown has done that and more. “This friend of mine has always been so encouraging and supportive of me and my musical journey,” Loper said in a Facebook post urging people to donate. “His smile is so infectious and his songs are uplifting and positive. A true reflection of the light of the world.”

Brown said the treatment path for his cancer is harsh: radiation that will be hard on his throat, leaving him on a feeding tube for a while, along with chemotherapy, all followed by months of recovery – with the likelihood it’ll only add a month or two to his life.

“I don’t know about that,” he said.

For now, he’s got the time he’s got, and he’s got a message to share.

“The most important thing — As a musician, we’re busy all the time,” he said. “We’re either gigging globally or regionally or nationally. We’re always working and we tend to take family for granted. I did. What I would like to tell people is to put family first, put your wife and kids first. Your job’s important. But it’s not that important because life is short. I think that’s what I’ve learned.”

For more information, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/thyroid-cancer-scare.