I attended the two CMA Close Up shows last year, but I had waited until they announced who was going to be interviewed, and ended up with seats in the upper level. It was so much fun that I vowed that this year, I was going to buy the tickets when they went on sale and just hope that they'd have someone I was interested in seeing.
In early March, the tickets went on sale and Dianne and I ended up with the third row on the far right of the stage. Not bad. We didn't find out until 3 days before the show who was going to be at the show, and were pleased to hear that it was John Corbett, Diamond Rio and Josh Gracin.
We left Josh Gracin's party a little more than an hour before, and were excited to see him again, having gotten to meet him, and get an autograph and picture.
Lorianne came out on the stage wearing the same outfit as the day before. Apparently, there were some technical problems with a few things and they had to redo some of the lines. This was hilarious to watch her talking to someone that wasn't there. That done, they were ready to get down to the afternoon's taping, starting with Jimmy Olander, Marty Roe and Dan Truman of Diamond Rio.
When asked what they do in their time off, we found out that Jimmy skydives, and that Lorianne skydived with him.
Dan said that his time on the road may seem rather boring when compared to Jimmy's skydiving. He said while Jimmy will be talking about where he wants to skydive, he'll be asking Brian, "Where do ya wanna have lunch today?"
Before the group really started making any money, their wives sold cosmetics, and some of them worked at Opryland.
When asked "What is the secret for your longevity," Marty replied that they are like a family. They created this sound.
When asked how they get along on a bus together, they said they have TV and they watch a lot of shows together, like Cops, 24 and a lot of the History Channel. Lorianne said, and of course the TV is on GAC the rest of the time.
Jimmy said he found out what a mullet was, and that he had been wearing one for years. He would look in the mirror and think, "I look good."
Lorianne mentioned Rascal Flatts show their butts in their videos. Marty said, "You guys don't WANT to see our butts in our videos!"
When they first got popular Jimmy relayed that he and his wife, and Marty and his wife used to go for dancing lessons, and after their big hit came out, they would get recognized everywhere and they couldn't do that anymore.
When asked what the weirdest thing they had to sign was, Jimmy said he had to sign some guy's wooden leg. He plopped it down on the table and Jimmy noticed as he was writing on it, it was getting gunk all over his pen. The guy remarked, that's where I staple up my socks.
About their song "God Only Cries for the Living," Dan said that they didn't plan to record it, it just touched them so much when they heard it, and as a group, they all wanted to do it.
Marty relayed an embarrassing story about being part of the Merle Haggard induction into the Hall of Fame on the CMA Awards show. They had recorded a song with a bunch of other artists for a Merle Tribute album, and sang it on the CMA Awards show. When the song was over, Merle came over and shook Vince Gill's hand, but skipped over Marty, who had his hand out.