Rest assured that getting big and rich hasn't made the groundbreaking and multi-platinum duo Big & Rich any less freaky or fun. "Success hasn't spoiled Big & Rich one bit, it just loosened the chain," explains John Rich. "Everything we've experienced so far has just given us even more room to do even more stuff." And as Big & Rich's much-anticipated and mind-blowing second album Comin' To Your City proves loud and clear, sometimes more really is more.
The first album told the world who we are, and we are most definitely A Horse of A Different Color," says Big Kenny. "Now the second album tells you what we're going to do next -- we're Comin' To Your City, every nook and cranny."
Produced once again by Big Kenny, John Rich and Paul Worley, Comin' To Your City -- released on November 15, 2005 -- is a brave and bold album that promises to put "a little bang in your yin yang" to borrow a memorable phrase from the album's title track. Comin' To Your City also shows exactly how far Big & Rich have come in the past two years since they first brought a much-needed blast of fresh air into a country music scene that was becoming too stale and safe for its own good. And so the massive success story of Big & Rich is an unusually heartening one and the result of a tremendous "Leap of Faith," to quote the title of one of the album's many standout tracks.
"When we were making the first album Big Kenny was in debt $140,000 in credit cards, living in a little farm house out in a field, driving a broke-down truck," John Rich recalls. "And I wasn't doing much better. We were two guys trying to make this outrageous album for country radio, and wondering, are we just completely pissing in the wind? I was what I'd call a two-time loser. I'd got fired from the band Lonestar. Then I made a solo album that didn't do anything. So Big & Rich was my third chance and if you get three chances in this business, you're pretty damn lucky. This time around, we didn't worry. We just went in and cut what felt good to us. The biggest thing we've learned so far is that if it's turning on me and Kenny musically, it will turn on our fans."
On Comin' To Your City, Big & Rich and company sound even more turned on to be making their own open-hearted, open-minded brand of "country music without prejudice."
For Big Kenny, "Our mission this time around was to step it up again and make Act 2 -- to make great songs into a great record, start to finish. Being Big & Rich, the only thing success has done is allow us to do more for more people and to make more music for ourselves. We're not resting on our laurels or kicking back for a moment. We have to have all extremes. See to John and me, records are more like mix tapes. We take it to all extremes and then make it all fit together - the idea is to never get bored. We just try to find great moments wherever we go - that's what keeps our yin and yang working, that's what keeps us Big & Rich. Hopefully what we're doing will just keep encouraging more and more people to be themselves and be real."
