Jimmy Olander and Dana Williams of Diamond Rio join I Miss…90s Country Radio with Nick Hoffman and discuss how the band’s talents came together, how they feel about some of their biggest hits, and more. Tune in and listen to the episode in-full this Saturday (Dec. 11) at 8am PST / 10am CST / 11am EST or anytime on-demand on Apple Music Country here.
Jimmy Olander on when the lead singer of Diamond Rio (formerly Tennessee River Boys) changed
We get in the studio and our bass player is playing bass on the tracks, and I said, “Okay, Marty. Come here and sing the scratch so Matt can come and overdub on this and do the lead vocals.” And as soon as Keith heard Marty singing the scratch, he went, “Oh, we’ve actually got a different lead singer now.”
Dana Williams on joining the Tennessee River Boys (before they became Diamond Rio)
I was playing at the Grand Ole Opry for different Opry stars and I would go over between matinees and stuff like that, and go over and see the Tennessee River Boys. And unbeknownst to me that several years later, I would get a call from Jimmy Olander saying, “Hey man, we’re looking for a guy to play bass and sing.” So, one thing led to another and before I know it, I’m in the Tennessee River Boys now.
Dana Williams on when the band first sang together
You never know how three voices are going to sound together until you do it. And then when we sang together, it immediately was like, “Wow, that’s really tight. That’s really, really nice.”
Dana Williams on changing the band’s name to Diamond Rio
The first thing that we knew is that, hey, man, this name’s got to change. We can’t be The Tennessee River Boys. That kind of sounded gospel, bluegrass, whatever. So we went through that whole scenario of finding a name, which was absolutely a nightmare, but we went through several names, but we finally ended up on Diamond Rio.
Jimmy Olander on “Meet in the Middle”
So I can remember driving home and Marty and I just going, “Can you believe this piece of crap they want us to cut, this Meet in the Middle?” It started it all for us.
Dana Williams on “Meet in the Middle”
We went in the studio and we kind of recorded a little different. All of a sudden, these background voices started coming to the forefront. And now all of a sudden, buddy, when that trio hit, it was obvious, hey, this isn’t just a lead singer and these background voices, this is right in your face. It wasn’t going on in that time, man, people wasn’t recording like that. And I don’t even think we knew what we was doing, man.
Jimmy Olander on how the band’s talents came together
It came from all the individuals. Nobody was necessarily, “Hey, you need to do this. We need this.” That’s been one of the cool things about Diamond Rio is nobody ever told anything to anybody about their parts. They’d come in and they’d do their parts, and guys were smart and respectful of what was already on the tracks and found their place. We did weave a lot of stuff together.
Dana Williams on Jimmy Olander
Let’s put the final stamp on it and put Jimmy Olander and his Bender guitar. Talk about a stamp. As soon as you heard that boom, okay, you know what that is on the radio immediately.
Dana Williams on Jimmy Olander’s guitar playing
The interesting thing on Jimmy is he comes to town as a banjo player to set the world on fire, and he finds out real quick that there’s not many banjo players driving Mercedes around town. So he finds out that guitar is going be where it’s at. So he immediately switches gears. Man, Jimmy just took guitar to a different spot that really nobody had been doing.
Jimmy Olander on his guitar playing
The double bender guitar was the first guitar that I play, so it’s kind of a part of my guitar DNA and then being a banjo player, I applied that style of open strings. Now I’ve got these two benders and then I’ve got my passion for trying to come up with hooks.
Dana Williams on Diamond Rio’s second album
At that point, we had had four or five top five records and two of them being number one, and so we were on a roll. Now all of a sudden, they [the record label] say, “Hey, man. We’re going to need a new album from you guys. You got a month to do it.” Well, we had two years do the other one and fun stuff. Well, now all of a sudden, we got a month. We run in and recorded all this stuff and we said, “Okay, there’s the record.” The record label, they got it and they said, “No, I don’t think so. That ain’t it.” We had to kind of to take a couple steps backwards and go, “Hey, man. Maybe we’re not as cool as we think.” We found four other songs and we went and recorded them and I’ll be, if that ain’t where “In A Week or Two” came from.
Dana Williams on “Love A Little Stronger”
That song took on its own life, and we just hang onto it. Instead of the other way around, we’re just blessed that we’re the ones that got to do that. That’s just a special, special song that affects people in different ways. Lots of healing comes from that song, which sometimes is confusing, but it does.
