Brothers Osborne: Embrace The Unknown

TJ and John Osborne. Photo by Alysse Gafkjen

John and TJ Osborne have no idea how they write songs, and they prefer it that way. “The more you try to create some sort of formula for songwriting, the harder it becomes, and the more disingenuous your songs become,” says John, the guitarist in Brothers Osborne, who over the past five years have become one of the most unsuspecting and quietly subversive successes in mainstream country, delivering country radio a series of unfettered melodic rock singles, the only gimmicks being John’s unrivaled guitar chops and TJ’s yearning vocals.

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“There are so many different ways to go about creating and recording a song,” says TJ, John’s younger brother and the group’s lead vocalist. “Some days when it’s a cold rainy day and you think, ‘We’re gonna write a cold, rainy day song,’ but it’s the complete opposite.”

The duo adhered to this philosophy during the drawn-out writing period for Pawn Shop, their 2016 debut album that spawned four Top 40 charting singles, including the Top Five hit “Stay A Little Longer.” TJ wrote one of the album’s darkest, most intense songs, the post-breakup jealousy meditation “Heart Shaped Locket,” on a gorgeous summer day at a lake-house while his friends were out on boats.

After spending several years in and out of slick Nashville studios, the guitar-slinging duo wanted to further shake up their formula when the time came to record their follow-up. They decamped to producer Jay Joyce’s Florida beach house, where they set up shop for two weeks and recorded the entirety of their adventurous, multi-varied second LP.

The unconventional setting had such a large impact on the record that the band decided that its name should simply be where it was recorded: Port Saint Joe.

The group interspersed those two weeks of record making with drinking, hanging at the beach and listening to Bowie, Santana and Miles Davis.

Instrumentalists crowded in the living room alongside Joyce, who would occasionally jam on a clavinet, with Jay’s brother cooking burgers in the next room over. To listen to playback of their rough mixes, Joyce wired the monitors to the speakers on the back deck, where TJ and John hung out at night and listened to their work-in-progress under the stars.

“It never felt like we had even started making a record,” says John. “We just started playing music and by the end of two weeks, that was it.”

The resulting album stretches out the sonic parameters and sensibilities of the band’s debut. Slow-burning mid-tempo ballads like “I Don’t Remember Me,” “Tequila Again” and “Pushing Up Daisies” showcase TJ’s impeccable phrasing, while roadhouse raves like “Drank Like Hank” and the lead single “Shoot Me Straight” shine the spotlight on John’s guitar chops.

TJ and John help balance each other out by playing large roles in the composing and crafting of each other’s roles. TJ writes many of the riffs, and John is regularly coming up with vocal melodies and lyrics.

Both brothers go about their craft with a great deal of thoughtfulness. “As a baritone singer it can be challenging to have dynamic, so for me I always like variation,” says TJ. “I want the songs that have more of those yearning, whole-notes like ‘Stay A Little Longer’ to feel like a moment. Same thing with when I go low, like on ‘Slow Your Roll.’ I want it to be a moment.”

John approaches his guitar playing with similar intentionality. “As a guitar player, you should approach your playing as if you’re writing a song, whether you’re playing a four-bar solo, an eight-bar solo or a four-minute solo,” he says. “I love improvising and getting all jammy on blues songs, but when it comes down to it, you need to service the song and make a solo a little mini snapshot of a song.”

All of this attention to craft have caused some fans and critics to emphasize Brothers Osborne’s retro country bona fides, a label the duo doesn’t reject or resent so much as they simply disagree with it.

“We’re not traditional or throwback country, and I can say that because I’m a huge fan of traditional country and I know what it sounds like and what it entails,” says John. “Country music has definitely been sitting at the same dinner table for a long time. You can root everything back to the blues: rock and country music have the same ancestry, right? They sit very close together, so it’s hard not to mix the two. So that’s how I hear it: we’re a rock band but we also speak that language.”

As the group continues to explore new influences, they wouldn’t discount the possibility of any future left-field turns. “I never want to go into a writing room telling someone we’ve got to write an up-tempo, because then I’ve eliminated the possibility of writing one of the best ballads that’s ever been written,” says TJ.

For Brothers Osborne, the best type of songwriting and creativity comes from the embrace of the unknown, the unplanned, and even the incorrect.

“When it comes to art,” adds John, “perfection isn’t always improvement.”

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