Changes with the group since its inception have been personal as well as professional. Since their last release, Jay has gotten married, Gary has had his second child, and Joe Don has moved into his new Nashville-area home. The three carved out a little time at home during the brief break they took to record Feels Like Today, but since then, they have gone straight back to the road reality that has been their admittedly welcome lot in life for half a decade.
"We originally vowed never to be gone longer than 14 days," says Gary, "and I think we've got it down to 12 now, even on some of the West Coast runs. It's something our families all know how to deal with, and it's at the core of what we do."
It's something they have done extraordinarily well since joining forces years after their boyhood dreams of musical success first began taking shape.
For Gary and Jay, it began in Columbus, Ohio, where the second cousins learned to love music during frequent family jam sessions. Jay took his voice and instrumental skills (he plays guitar, bass, keyboards, mandolin, and others) to Nashville in 1992, earning his first record deal as part of a Christian group called East to West. In 1997, he finally convinced a reluctant Gary to leave behind his job with the Ohio Department of Mental Retardation and follow his musical dreams as well.
"We started writing together," says Jay. "We caught up on lost time and sang every chance we got. We just hit it hard. We'd stay up endless nights writing music and playing together."
Jay met Joe Don when both landed jobs in Chely Wright's band. Joe Don had grown up in tiny Picher, Oklahoma, gleaning influences from his brothers and sisters, whose tastes ran the gamut of musical styles. As he and Jay worked in Wright's band, Jay and Gary were working in a Printer's Alley club with a part-time guitarist. When he couldn't make it one night, Jay invited Joe Don to sit in. A few bars into the first song they sang, they knew they had something special. They recorded some demos, which caught the favorable attention of Lyric Street Senior VP of A&R Doug Howard.
With their first album out, they hit the road hard, gaining thousands of new fans and opening for the likes of Alan Jackson, Jo Dee Messina, and Toby Keith. Their star rose dramatically from the outset and reached dizzying heights with the release of I'm Movin' On, a phenomenon that still leaves band members shaking their heads.
I'm Movin' On became bigger than us," says Jay. "It's one of those songs with such a powerful message it can move anybody in any phase of life. If you're 12 and lose a parent, 35 and going through a divorce, or 70 and losing somebody to cancer, you've got to face moving on. It's a universal song that really did more than we expected. It's turned our lives upside-down. We're still catching up to it."
The milestones kept coming. They played the Grand Ole Opry, appeared on the soundtrack of We Were Soldiers, and recorded Walk The Llama Llama, a song penned by Sting for The Emperor's New Groove soundtrack. Along the way, they were the subjects of two one-hour live television concerts and were voted the ACM's 2001 New Vocal Group of the Year.
The hit songs and relentless work ethic drove them inexorably toward platinum status and a host of awards and milestones. Their debut CD was one of only three million-selling debuts in half a decade, and it spawned four top-ten singles. They toured with Brooks & Dunn, then headlined their own CMT "Most Wanted Live Tour." They received the 2002 CMA Horizon Award, the ACM's Song of the Year award for I'm Movin' On, and the CMT Flameworthy Favorite Group or Duo Award for the These Days video.
Through it all, they have seen a great deal change in Nashville, often for the better. "Some of the people we used to bring on stage during our early club gigs, like Billy Currington, are out there getting hits of their own now, and it's great to see," says Gary. They remain delighted for their friends, and amazed and grateful at their own continuing success, which they see as a prod to further excellence.
"I try to remember that it can be gone in the blink of an eye, and we never want to become complacent," says Jay. "We keep pushing each other to get better than we were the day before."
The result has been a relentless drive for self-improvement applied to the best songs they can find.
"Each of the songs on this album, like each of the singles we've released, has got a different thumbprint," says Joe Don. "They've each been a little different from the next one. It's been a great rule to live by, and I think it's why we're still here."
The task at hand, adds Gary, is its own reward. "We're going to continue to try to cut songs that move people. We're having the time of our lives and that's what will enable us to keep the ball rolling."
