Comprised mostly of Price and Owens hits, from “Invitation To The Blues” and “Heartaches By The Number” to “Under Your Spell Again” and “Foolin’ Around”, the as-yet untitled collection sets the brothers’ singing to elegantly simple, classic arrangements featuring pedal steel, upright bass (by Opry staffer Billy Linneman, a longtime friend), and the fiddle of current band member Buddy Griffin, who has internalized the stylings of masters such as 1950s session ace Tommy Jackson (whose kickoffs and breaks were an integral part of the Price sound).
“I thought everything might have been too much alike,” Jesse laughingly says about the preponderance of shuffles.” “Of course, we threw a couple of things on there, like a new tune that’s a little bit different, and ‘Loving Machine’, but other than that, you can’t say it’s not country.”
Though they’re slightly apprehensive about the reception a Jim & Jesse country album — the first in more than two decades — will get from the bluegrass audience, both men feel good about the decision to make one. “Of course, every now and then we get some criticism on what we’re doing,” Jim laughs, “but that goes back to doing your own thing. We’ve always tried to come up with a sound — of course, I guess one of the most different things we have is the mandolin style — but if we sing somebody else’s song, we try to put a little touch to it that people would think it was Jim & Jesse doing it. I think that’s the greatest thing any artist can do, is something to try to create their own identity in the music world.
“A lot of the fans that come to these festivals, most of them are Grand Ole Opry fans,” he continues. “They talk to you around the record table. I used to ask them, ‘You just buy bluegrass records, I guess,’ and they’d say ‘Oh, I buy a few Loretta Lynns,’ or ‘I bought some George Jones,’ or Merle Haggard. And when they changed country music so much, all the people who were supporting those artists, they’re going to go somewhere, and a good portion of them are going to these festivals. It has really helped to make the whole thing successful.”
“We know what we’re going up against, we’ve done this before,” Jesse concludes. “The country radio stations will say, ‘We don’t play bluegrass.’ This is not bluegrass; we’ve had promotion people argue with radio stations when we’ve put a country thing out, and when the programmers say ‘We don’t play bluegrass,’ our people say ‘Well, if you listen to it, it’s not.’ But they say, ‘It’s Jim and Jesse, it must be bluegrass.’ But whatever they call it, I think it’s a good project. I enjoyed doing it, and it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”
ND contributing editor Jon Weisberger was named the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Print Media Person of the Year in October 2000, but says it won’t give him the big head.
