Few groups have covered more diverse musical territory over the last four decades than the Oak Ridge Boys. From their gospel roots to their award-winning country career, Duane Allen, William Lee Golden, Joe Bonsall and Richard Sterban have thrived on reinvention. Along the way, they have carried their devoted fans with them on a colorful musical journey, but never have they delivered a more eclectic, more adventurous set than their new Spring Hill Music album The Boys Are Back.

 

Produced by Los Angeles-based visionary Dave Cobb, the diverse album features such straight ahead country fare as “Mama’s Table,” John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom,” Neil Young’s “Beautiful Bluebird” and a cover of the White Stripes “Seven Nation Army,” which is the first single from the record. The title track was written especially for the Oaks by Shooter Jennings. 

 

“I was very blown away with what [producer] Rick Rubin did with Johnny Cash. We wanted to do something similar to that,” Oak Ridge Boy Duane Allen explains. “We had met Dave Cobb when we recorded ‘Slow Train’ with Shooter Jennings on Shooter’s last album.  Shooter had written that song for us to back him up. We met Dave at that point, but there was no talk of anything about what we wanted to do until later on.”

 

The catalyst for the recording of the new record came when Jennings (son of country legend Waylon Jennings) played a show at City Hall, a popular rock venue in Nashville, and invited the Oaks to join him. “He called us and invited us to come down and work with him, to sing [“Slow Train”] and do ‘Elvira.’ He had a real young crowd there. They were all standing. Those kids knew our songs. They sang right along with us and just rocked out. We got off stage and just kind of looked at each other and said, ‘We can do this!’ There’s a whole age group of people that loves what we do. We’ve just got to find a way to give them something that will be relevant to them.”

 

Allen says they wanted to find a producer who would help them get back to basics. “I [wanted] to find a producer who would be honest to the Oak Ridge Boys and our history and help us find the magic in our voices again,” he says. “We wanted to just go back to the bare roots of it all and start with a simple work track, put our voices on there, work our voices all together, not one at a time like we’re accustomed to do, but go down live in the studio together, find the magic, walk right out into the studio and put it down and that’s what we did.  We just literally recreated ourselves without all the bells and whistles.”

 

Cobb understood the Oaks’ vision for the new project and was excited about working with the legendary group. “When I heard there was a chance to be working with them, I couldn’t believe it because they are my dad’s favorite group of all time. I grew up on the Beatles, Rolling Stones and The Who, but the Oak Ridge Boys were always there,” says Cobb, whose production credits include Waylon Jennings, Brooke White, The Strays and Rock ‘n’ Roll Soldiers.  

 

“I was sitting on the bus and Dave called, and we talked for two hours,” Allen recalls of his initial conversations with Cobb. “I loved talking with Dave and I realized that this guy had picked up on the vision of what I see and what the Oak Ridge Boys see as a place that we would like to go, and he’s a leader that knows how to take us there.”