With their third studio album, Skeletons, out today, we interview John Osborne of Brothers Osborne about the new record, the journey to its release and the evolution of their sound.
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Hello! Happy Album release day, how are you feeling about it?
I’m very excited, it’s been a long time coming.
I feel like you’ve had the world against you with this record, the tornado and now the pandemic. It must be nice to finally shed the frustrations and finally be able to release it into the world?
Yeah it is, we basically have been working on this for almost a year, so it’s good to finally get it out.
I know that you’ve said that it was nearly finished before the tornado. Has it changed since then, have you found that you’ve creatively restructured the record or anything like that?
Not really, we’re pretty stubborn people once we’ve made up our minds, not even a natural disaster can change that. By the time the tornado hit we had a pretty clear idea and understanding of what we wanted the record to be, after the tornado hit East Nashville which is where Jay Joyce’s studio is, we went to Zac Brown’s studio off Music Row, we only recorded three more songs, one of which did not make the record, so it wasn’t like we did the bulk of the work there. Then, when we got back to the studio finally, COVID hit, so it put the record back another month and a half. We had a pretty good understanding of what we were trying to achieve, it was just finishing it.
Pawn Shop was obviously the introduction and in Port Saint Joe you dug a bit deeper in your lyrics and what you wanted to say, what did you want to achieve with this record?
The most important thing that we wanted to achieve with Skeletons was creating a record that reflected our live show. Our first record was just a collection of songs that we had written over a few years that we just really liked, it wasn’t extremely cohesive but we’re really proud of the record. It summed us up because we’d had our whole life to write it. The second record was shot in a time when we got together, we set up a beach house in Florida and it really reflected that. The issue that we had was that a lot of the songs that we recorded on Port Saint Joe we couldn’t translate into our live show. Our live show is pretty big and bombastic and loud and it’s more of a rock show than a laidback country show.
Well ‘Pushing Up Daisies’ is one of my favourite tracks on that record and it’s much more of a muted feel.
I know, I love that song too, it’s one of my favourite songs we’ve ever written. I still kick myself to this day that we didn’t release it as a single. When we ran into the issue of not being able to incorporate those songs into our live show, TJ and I collectively agreed that we wanted to create a record that reflected our live show best, and at any time we could just close our eyes and pick a song off the record and it would fit right into our live show and that’s what we did.
That must be nice to be able to play the whole record live and have those deep cuts ready to play. I can’t wait to finally be able to hear ‘All Night’ live.
I know, our UK dates keep getting pushed back and I can’t predict anything. I will say that because it’s been album launch week and we’ve had to do a few live stream events and we have to learn to play the songs off the record with the band – they’re f**ing hard, this record is a lot more complicated than the last two records. They might not sound like it but there are a lot of little things going on, so I think that we overshot the runway a little bit. We are pushing ourselves, which is what you should be doing.
You’ve talked about just doing one take for your guitar parts. That’s fun but you’ve also got to replicate that…
That’s really hard. It’s hard because when you do it in one take, especially when it’s your first take – sometimes that’s where the magic one is – I’m not really thinking about it, I’m just reacting and it is just very natural and very improvised. It’s hard to recreate an improvisation, because then it’s not improvised any more. I’ve found that I can find little bits and pieces that I like putting in the solo and I make up the rest on the spot.
I think that’s one of the things that I’ve always liked about your music is that raw energy that you get from that improvisation. It feels like you’ve got that energy contained in your music, without being too polished if that makes sense?
Yes that makes perfect sense. That’s credit to our producer Jay Joyce who doesn’t want anything to be super polished, what he is looking for above all else is a performance, which sounds obvious but it’s not as obvious as you might think. If you do it too many times it becomes a recreation and a copy, the more perfect you get it, the less human it starts to sound. I guess the best example of what we would sound like is how we sound in the live show and the closer you can get to that the better. Of course, you want to fix little mistakes, you don’t want it to be anything that’s offensive to the ears, but at the same time you still want to capture the essence of who you are.
I feel like that’s what you get from this record. ‘All Night’ was the first single and that music video looked so much fun to record. It was wacky, it was weird and I loved it.
We shot that at a sound stage and that was the first video that our director had done in person since COVID started. Everyone was so excited, but it was odd you know? We had to all get tests, we had our temperatures checked when we arrived, we had to wear masks in the building, they kept everyone really far apart, there was minimal crew, the band was even six feet apart as we performed – TJ and I are close together because we’re together all the time, whatever germs I have he has. It was really strange, and that’s why we had a guy dancing by himself with those two live size marionette puppets, it was because we couldn’t have a group of people together.
By the way, I did not know how that was going to go when that scene happened… It could have gone one of two ways…
I know it looks like it was about to take a really dark turn… (laughs) I thought the same thing when we left it.
Another track you’ve also already released is ‘I’m Not For Everyone’ which reminded me a bit of the track you collaborated on with Maren. I loved that inclusivity message, but also about your own individualism. Where did the inspiration behind that track come from?
My brother and I are known for speaking our minds on a lot of stuff, especially on our socials – on Twitter. We catch a lot of s**t for it. Somebody needs to say something. It got to the point, where it’s just no matter what we said, people would just start throwing Molotov cocktails at us. It just occurred to me, ‘ok hang on, we don’t have to be everyone’s band, we just have to be ourselves.’ I bought that idea into a write ‘I’m Not For Everyone’ and I knew TJ would go for it because he completely subscribes to that philosophy as well. Honestly, after writing that song, it made me feel a lot better about just being who we are and not having to please every person, it’s ok if someone disagrees with us. Inversely, if someone says something we disagree with, that’s ok too, everyone can come to our shows, it’s a place for everybody, even if we don’t agree politically. At the same time, we have to accept that we’re not for everybody and in reality it makes it a lot easier once you do.
There’s a lot of fun tracks on that record, but that message is so important. Are there any other tracks on the record that you’re excited to hear fans’ response to?
We could usually gauge how the songs are doing by playing them live, there are songs that we play live that just don’t go over well so we don’t really incorporate them into our set. I’m excited for everyone to hear the song, ‘Muskrat Greene’ because it goes from that into ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ – it’s all one piece of music, but in the track listing it’s listed as two songs. The first is an instrumental, which is something that we’ve never done before. It’s a tempo, barn burner style song that we’ve never done before, I’m thrilled not only for people to hear that on the record but to play that live, because if we know our audience like we think we know our audience then they’re just going to eat that up.
I love that you’ve created a record in its entirety, thinking about the project as a whole…
There’s definitely schools of thought and I understand both of them, I mean people have the philosophy of ‘let’s record as many singles as we can, regardless of what it says about the bigger picture’ and then the other school of thought is ‘let’s record an experience.’ That’s what we try and do is record an experience, you press play and just let it play. They’re both correct, neither of them are wrong, they’re just different approaches but we grew up as musicians listening to records. I will still pop on a single now and then, but I want to hear what the record is about, I’m really interested in what the artist has to say and you can’t say everything you have to say in three to four minutes. I don’t think that’s possible. It gives us a chance to really show everybody what we’re about and what we sound like. I’m more interested in the four course meal instead of just the dessert.
I think this record is going to be so great when we finally get to hear it live, but for the minute the energy of this album makes up a little bit for that.
Yeah, you know you’re the first one to say that, so that actually makes me very happy, we accomplished what we were going for.
Complete the sentence…
Music is… oxygen.
Country music is… three chords and the truth (laughs) that’s not my line by the way…
Brothers Osborne are… stubborn
