About
Brothers Osborne
“I’m good for some, but I’m not for
everyone,” TJ Osborne sings on Skeletons, Brothers Osborne’s third studio album.
That lyric might as well be the group’s mission statement: a proud declaration of
uniqueness, delivered by a band of brothers whose boundarybreaking country songs
have always mixed the twang of southern music with the groove and guitar-driven
swagger of rock & roll. At the same time, it’s hard to look at the Osbornes’ long
list of musical milestones — including six Grammy nominations, four CMA Awards, five
ACM trophies, and more than a half-dozen hits — and imagine anyone turning up their
noses at a sound that’s taken the siblings from the blue-collar beach bars of their
Maryland hometown to some of the biggest stages across the world.
Skeletons
is a celebration of that sound — a melodic, muscular album that builds upon the
hooks of the band’s career-launching debut, Pawn Shop, as well as the
forwardthinking adventurousness of their sophomore release, Port Saint Joe. More
than anything, it’s a sound rooted in the excitement and electricity of Brothers
Osborne’s concerts, packed with songs that could all serve as crowd-rousing encores.
Recorded with multi-platinum producer Jay Joyce during a time of global turbulence,
Skeletons is a celebratory album for a world in sore need of uplifting
music.
“Our concerts are big, loud, rock shows” says John Osborne, whose
acclaimed approach to the electric guitar — a unique style that touches upon blues,
bluegrass, country, rock, and everything in between — remains one of the band’s
touchstones. “We wanted to make a record where, no matter which song we cherrypicked
from the tracklist, we’d be able to do it during our show.”
From the ZZ
Top-worthy strut of “All Night” to the classic country storytelling of “Old Man’s
Boots,” Skeletons is more than worth the price of admission. The Osbornes aren’t shy
about wearing their influences on their sleeves — the bar-band bombast of “Back On
The Bottle” pays tribute to Merle Haggard, while the barn-burning “Dead Man’s Curve”
nods to southern rockers like Marshall Tucker and the Allman Brothers Band — but
they’ve never sounded more self-assuredly original than they do here, confidently
rolling a diverse range of inspiration into their own singular sound.
“We’re
not afraid to take risks and just be ourselves,” John adds. “If Pawn Shop was our
introduction, and Port Saint Joe was like the first conversation we had with someone
over a beer, then Skeletons is the moment where you start getting down to the real
stuff and showing who you really are. If you really want to get to know us, this is
the record to do it.”
\John and TJ attribute that distinctive sound to their
modest upbringing in the small town of Deale, Maryland, tucked into a corner of the
Chesapeake Bay. Acoustic jam sessions became a regular occurrence in the Osborne
household often lasting well into the night. For TJ and John, those informal gigs
were a chance to cut their teeth as musicians, with TJ earning his earliest fans as
a deep-voiced singer and John standing out as a firstrate guitar picker. Decades
later, the siblings have sharpened that dynamic to a fine point, broadening and
boosting their sound with help from a touring band of honorary
brothers.
Skeletons marks TJ and John’s first time recording an album with
their entire road band. The result is a true family affair, filled with inspired
performances that shine a light on the chemistry generated by years of nightly shows
(including the three sold-out shows featured on the band’s 2019 release, Live at the
Ryman), communal bus rides, and backstage hangs. The boys kick up some serious dust
with “Muskrat Greene,” a blast of electrified bluegrass that doubles as the band’s
first full-blown instrumental song, and ride a funky, greasy groove with “Lighten
Up.” They temporarily remake themselves into a jam band with “Hatin’ Somebody,” a
swampy salute to togetherness, then turn up their guitar amps for the album’s big,
burly title track. You can’t fake this kind of countrified connection. In a town
filled with some of the world’s best studio musicians, Brothers Osborne have
distinguished themselves once again by turning inward, creating an album that
showcases not only the songwriting talents of TJ and John, but also the instrumental
slash-and-burn of their band’s full roster.
While Brothers Osborne holed up
in Jay Joyce’s recording studio to record the strongest album of their career,
though, the world outside turned strange and uncertain. A tornado blew a deadly path
through Nashville in March 2020, barely missing Joyce’s studio by several blocks.
Days later, as the coronavirus swept across the globe, the city — along with the
entire country — closed down. Throughout the process, TJ and John faced their own
challenges, too, their physical and mental health worn down by the demands of
touring behind a Grammy-nominated album for nearly two years. Those struggles lent a
seize-the-day immediacy to Skeletons.
“We were working against all odds — a
pandemic, illnesses, a tornado – and you can really hear that fight in the record,
in all the best ways,” John says. “We approached it as though we were making our
last record ever.” That said, Skeletons certainly won’t be the last Brothers Osborne
album. The boys have truly hit their stride, finding a sweet spot between the
undeniable radio hits of Pawn Shop and the mature, career-building charisma of Port
Saint Joe. They’ve been building momentum since 2014 — the year Pawn Shop’s first
single, “Rum,” introduced a band of country-rockers who were ready to chase down
mainstream success on their own terms — and these new songs find them picking up
even more speed. With Skeletons, they’ve never been so full-blooded. “We want this
record to show people that we’re here to stay,” says TJ. “We are a part of the cloth
of this genre. Ultimately, what we love to do most is play live, and Skeletons is
setting us up to do that even better.”
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