The former voice of public radio's popular "Marketplace" belongs to a man who looks like he could be the rebellious lead singer in a rock band.

So it's fitting that this summer David Brown left his gig on the business-focused radio show (heard daily on KUT-FM. 90.5), settled in Austin and created a new program for KUT that celebrates Texas music.

In July, Brown, who at 43 still wears his black hair rock-star long, left the show he had worked on for five years, moved from Los Angeles to Austin and married his sweetheart of 12 years, KUT news director Emily Donahue. He's also starting the next phase of his career — which includes getting a doctorate in journalism and teaching at the University of Texas, and launching "Texas Music Matters," which debuts today just before the 7:30 a.m. newscast.

"Texas Music Matters" is also designed to establish KUT as "the authority on Texas music," and to give it national visibility; its regular five- to 10-minute segments most likely will be syndicated to other public radio stations, as will longer programs that will be produced a few times a year. It will run at least once a week, although Brown expects to crank out several a day during the Austin City Limits Festival next month.

In the first segment (a two-parter; the second segment airs just before the 7:30 a.m. newscast on Friday), Brown talks to venerated Austin bluesman W.C. Clark. In upcoming programs, Brown will rub shoulders with plenty of his own musical heroes, including luminaries such as ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons. But this isn't just another interview-and-performance series.

"We're not thinking of it in terms of a show; we're thinking of it as a project that will include several different aspects," says Brown. "The idea is to take the style and format and attention to substance that public radio journalism brings to coverage of daily news events and apply it specifically to Texas music, and do it in a more consistent, focused way than it's been done before."

The point, Brown says, is to "tell stories that connect the music and the people who do the music with the people, the culture, the place that is Texas."

"We're trying to get these things to be a kind of prism, not just a music report, not just a music review or an interview with the artists, but something that puts Texas music into a broader cultural perspective."

It's hard to think of anyone more perfect for the job than Brown, who dreamed of being a rock star before graduating high school in 1980. He fell into radio journalism by accident — nudged by a father who insisted he find a "real" job before heading off to college.

"I decided I was going to sabotage this job search, and put my résumé in places where I knew I wouldn't have a hope of getting a job," Brown says while sitting in the kitchen of his new Southwest Austin home. "And one of them was a radio station in McDonough, Georgia."

The station needed a weekend staffer for various tasks, which included "rip-and-read" news delivery from the wire service machine. On his dad's orders, Brown accepted the job and soon found himself speeding down the highway from Georgia State University in Atlanta, still in stage makeup from performances with his already-successful denim-and-leather hair band, Phoenix, to spend Sundays on the air.

Then one Sunday, a weather report turned his part-time job into a career.

"Well, we had a tornado warning," he relates in his rich, radio-honed voice. "And I remember the AP (Associated Press) machine used to just sit there silent because we didn't have a license for anything except alerts. And so, chingchingchingchingching, it started clanging away."

Filled with a sense of importance, Brown interrupted his broadcast to read the special advisory from the National Weather Service.

"Talk about the romantic image of radio," he recalls. "I could visualize the radio tower and the beams, and the people listening. . . . I'm thinking, 'Wow, this is radio!' So the bug had bit."

He changed his major from music to journalism, managed to score a job at a "real" Atlanta radio station — top of the market, no less — and thus began a career that evolved into "the best job in the world" at "Marketplace."

Before he got there, he also managed to get a master's degree in classics/great books from St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., and a law degree from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va.

Law school was something he did after working for Monitor Television and Monitor Radio, the now-defunct electronic news services of the Christian Science Monitor. (He and Donahue met while both were in Boston with Monitor Radio.) The producers of "Marketplace" — a program that debuted in 1989 — tried to recruit him before he went but had to wait for three years while he studied.

"I really had just a glorious time. (It) was one of the most fun things I've ever done," says the admitted academia junkie and former Monitor London bureau chief.

Brown moved to Los Angeles and became senior producer of "Marketplace" in 2000. Although he enjoyed working on the innovative money-matters show (during his tenure, it won the Peabody Award for overall excellence in broadcast journalism), he decided in 2003 to move to Austin to be with Donahue, who had moved here to join KUT. As soon as he announced his departure, though, his "Marketplace" coworker, David Brancaccio, resigned and Brown was offered the hosting gig. He canceled his moving plans and started racking up frequent-flier miles.

That all changed this summer, when he decided to finally make the move. Kai Ryssdal, formerly of "Marketplace Morning Report," replaced Brown.

Now Brown's here, settling in with Donahue and his other loves: their two cats, Sugar and T.T., his two Triumph motorcycles, his eight-track tape and Bob Wills album collections ("I am a Texas swing freak," he declares) and a refrigerator full of Tab (yes, he still guzzles Coke's original diet soft drink, and considers himself a connoisseur of sugar-flavored fizz).

"You know, it's been funny, because as my career moved from one thing to the next, I've always thought, 'Wow, this was the greatest thing ever,' " Brown muses. "It's just been from one great, very cool thing to the next."

Vince Winkel, "Marketplace" Web editor and producer, has known Brown for 20 years, since they both worked at Monitor Radio in the 1980s and '90s. He's excited about Brown's latest gig.

"It will be a great show. He could do a show on the price of soybeans, and it would be a great show.

"David has a set of pipes to be envied, and the fact that he's brilliant only makes it all that much better. I only wonder if he's still drinking a six-pack of Tab every day. . . ."