The next time you are eating in Beef O’Brady’s, keep one ear turned to the radio. You never know, you may hear a familiar voice.

That is because Dwayne Fisel – also known as Dwayne Langston on the music circuit – has been pulling double duty as the owner of Beef O’Brady’s locations in Andalusia and DeFuniak Springs, as well as as an up-and-coming country music singer.

Langston said his musical career began in earnest when he was just a child.

“My love of music began at the age of 6, singing old folk songs with my Aunt Carrie around the river-house fireplace on Saturday nights,” Langston said. “As an Air Force brat, my two brothers and I learned to play the guitar in Germany. While my stepfather was stationed in England, my brothers and I started a trio. After a few months of practice, we were winning talent contests on base.”

Langston said he continued writing and performing songs in the U.S., before settling down to raise a family.

“Upon returning stateside, I began writing songs and performing them with numerous bands throughout Florida, Georgia and Alabama,” Langston said. “In the late 1990s, my family and I moved to the Florida panhandle. Busy with life, I didn’t perform as much as I had in the past, but I continued to write.”

But while it was life that caused Langston to drift away from music, it was family, he said, that pulled him back in.

“I passed the music bug onto my son, DJ, who is a drummer and has played in several local bands,” Langston said. “He found an old 45 record I had done when I was in high school. We sat around and listened to it one afternoon and he asked me why I never tried to do anything with my music. That conversation with my son inspired me and lit a fire that I thought had burned out a long time ago. I went into a local studio and recorded a few of my newer original songs. I sent them off to several companies hoping to get someone more interested in the songs themselves than me as an artist.”

Langston said, instead, he was contacted by a label interested in both.

“In April of 2012, six months after submitting my first song, I got an offer from Tate Music Group out of Mustang, Okla., to perform on their label and to do an album of my original songs,” Langston said. “I flew out to Oklahoma in July of 2012, and completed the tracks for the album, ‘Someplace I’d Rather Be.’”

The album, Langston says, has opened up many doors.

“I have done live performances to showcase my album’s music, which include shows at Gilley’s Family Opry in Vernon, Fla., as well as a guest appearance and performance on Channel 4, WTVY’s morning show.”

Despite his success, Langston says he isn’t ready to slow down just yet.

“I am currently co-writing with several songwriters and will be doing some more demos in the near future,” he said. “I currently have a single song publishing contract with the James Donaldson Publishing Company on one of my songs, ‘Nothing Left Between Us But Goodbye.’ I have two new singles that I have just demoed. ‘Same Old, Same Old,’ written with Danny Busby, and ‘The Getting Down to It,’ which was a solo write.”

Langston said videos of his singles, ‘Same Old, Same Old,’ and ‘Nothing Left Between Us But Goodbye,’ are available for viewing on Youtube.com. ‘Someplace I’d Rather Be,’ was released nationwide on April 16, 2013, and is available at Amazon.com, Spotify, iTunes, and on the Tate Music Group website, tatepublishing.com.