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.”

 

It was Cobb who suggested the Oaks cover “Seven Nation Army.” “When I first started talking to Duane, he asked me if I was a song man. I’d never been asked that question and I was like ‘I guess, sure I’m a song man’ because I wanted to do the record,” Cobb confesses. “I started throwing out these crazy songs like the White Stripes song. They heard it and [said] ‘Let’s try it!’ They never had any objections, and they were always open to everything.  I think that’s why they’ve been around as long as they have is because they are professionals.  They’re willing to go anywhere.”

 

The record company is expecting The Boys Are Back to broadened the Oaks appeal to a younger demographic, but Cobb says the goal was simply to make honest music. “I don’t think we thought demographic when we did the album,” he says. “We were trying to produce a record that felt really honest, even with the White Stripes song, they did that and it felt like them.  They were trying to make it for music lovers no matter what age.  We wanted it honest and real and we hope people will see that.”

 

Each time the Oaks record an album, Allen takes great pains to find the best songs possible, and he’s pleased with the material he and Cobb recruited for The Boys Are Back. One of his favorite tracks is “Hold Me Closely,” a song written by Brent Cobb, Dave’s nephew. “Brent wrote this song when he was 16, when his grandmother passed away,” says Allen. “His grandmother was the biggest supporter of his music and he wrote it about her, but it’s not really identified like that in the lyrics of the song, so I sang it as a love song. When I heard the song, it was so simple and so raw. I called David and said, I love this song!”

 

Allen says the song reminded him of Jessi Colter’s country classic “I’m Not Lisa.”  “I asked Dave ‘Do you remember the way she played the piano?’ and he said ‘Of course, that’s the most important part of that song other than her voice.’ I said, ‘Well that’s the way I hear this song.’  It’s very simple. It’s not complicated, but just so warm that you  feel like you’re right there in the room. Well when it came time to record it, in walks Jessi Colter! David had flown her in from Phoenix to play on the song.”

 

Allen admits he has a tendency to be a perfectionist in the studio, but Cobb taught him to relax and enjoy a different approach. “We are a group that’s filled with a bunch of different personalities. We all bring in our different energies and sometimes it’s in perfect harmony and sometimes it’s not, and that is really what David wanted to capture,” says Allen. “He wanted to capture the honesty more than the perfection. It’s hard for me to let perfection go when we have so much technology today that could help you get there. I let it go and when I listen to this record play through, there’s a part of me that says ‘I wished I’d fixed that,’ but then I got past that because it wasn’t the goal. The goal was to capture the magic, the magic of the moment. I think in the end run, we captured more of our soul in an honest way.”

 

   

    

   

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About the Writer 

 

Deborah Evans Price has covered Christian/Gospel music for Billboard magazine since 1994. She also contributes regularly to Country Weekly, CMA Close Up, Devo’Zine, Christian Single, HomeLife, BMI Music World, and other publications. 

 

A Nashville resident since 1983, Deborah has held editorial posts at Radio & Records, Country News,  American Songwriter and Billboard. Amy Grant, Trace Adkins, Brad Paisley, Charlie Daniels, 3 Doors Down, Third Day, Don Henley, Bon Jovi, Chris Rice, Sandra Bullock, Mercy Me, Alan Jackson, Smokey Robinson, Carrie Underwood and Steven Curtis Chapman are among her many interviews. Additionally, she's a sought-after music industry analyst who has been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC, TNN, The Today Show, and ABC PrimeTime Live, among other outlets. 

 

Deborah is a member of the Gospel Music Association's board of directors and a graduate of Leadership Music. She resides south of Nashville with her husband, Gary, and 19-year-old son Trey.