© Provided by Entertainment WeeklyNatalie Osborne
Ask any musician about how difficult it has been to be off the road, away from their bandmates, crew, and fans - not to mention their merch and ticket receipts - during the pandemic, and you can hear the pain in their voices.
T.J. and John Osborne, a.k.a. CMA- and ACM-winning country-music hitmakers Brothers Osborne, are no exception. The recent release of the duo's kinetic third album, Skeletons, is only making the spinning of their wheels at home in Nashville, instead of on their tour bus headed to a venue near you, that much more difficult.
"We made this record to play live," says John, who at 38 is the older Osborne brother by three years, and the fierce fretwork foil to his brother's beguiling baritone. "The concept going in was Let's do something that we could play front to back at our live shows and our fans would absolutely eat it up."
They will no doubt want to have their cutlery at the ready when fans of the Maryland-bred band hear the rip-roaring Skeletons. From the fire and spice of the Eric Church-meets-the Allman Brothers opener "Lighten Up" to "All the Good Ones Are," a mash-up of '80s hard-rock riffage that would make Eddie Van Halen grin, with an acoustic bridge fit for Supertramp, the brothers - with help from longtime producer Jay Joyce (Keith Urban, Little Big Town) - cover a lot of ground. The swampy title track gets down low, and the high-octane instrumental "Muskrat Greene" sounds like the lost score to a rollicking Smokey and the Bandit chase scene.
© Natalie OsborneFacing exhaustion and a scary bout with tinnitus, the sibling country stars welcomed the pause that came with the shutdown - but they're ready to press play again.
"We knew we wanted to do something different than Port Saint Joe," says T.J. of the pair's acclaimed but more meditative 2018 album. "Unfortunately, the irony there is that we set out to do that and now we're not playing any shows. But we'll be playing next year, and it'll make it even more sweet once we do."
But the forced break has also been a blessing in disguise for the genial siblings, who have been working nonstop since well before the release of their 2016 debut, Pawn Shop, which included the prerelease hits "Rum" and "Stay a Little Longer," and touched off the nonstop record-promo-tour churn that accompanies success. "John and I are not good at stopping," says T.J. "We always feel guilty for taking any time off because we just grew up in a blue-collar family. Once we had the time off, it was great."
Particularly for John, who was experiencing some health issues. "I was just overworked, burned out, and then tinnitus showed up," he says of the frightening condition that causes ringing in the ears. "I had to say, 'All right, stop.' We were about to go in and start the record in September and I couldn't do it. I was like, 'I can't sleep. My ears are keeping me up.'"
Mercifully, he says, "it's gotten better, but I still struggle with it. But [the break] allowed us to understand how you can still maintain a level of success career-wise without killing yourself in the process. You forget sometimes that you can take time off. And it made us rethink our approach: If it doesn't really seem like a super-obvious thing to do, let's just not do it. It's okay. We've got the wheels on the road and we're moving, everything's fine. The wheels are not going to fall off anytime soon."
Brothers Osborne are in the running for Vocal Duo of the year at tonight's CMA Awards on ABC and will be taking part in the multi-artist tribute to the late Charlie Daniels.
A version of this story appears in the November issue of Entertainment Weekly, available here. Don't forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.
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