“Big” and “rich” are not just adjectives for the band headlining the Saturday Evening Jam at the 2008 Pumper & Cleaner Expo. They are also the performers’ names.
Big Kenny (Alphin) and John Rich hooked up in 2004, and ever since then they have been lighting up the country music charts. Earlier this year, Big & Rich released their third album, Between Raising Hell and Amazing Grace. They arrive at the Expo at the height of popularity.
The term “country” hardly does justice to this duo and their backup band. “They play country music, but country music that has room for echoes of everything from the Everly Brothers to Limp Bizkit to Queen, from honky tonk to rock ’n’ rap,” says a profile on the About.com web site.
The Great American Country web site observes that the music includes “party songs and sober songs, drinking songs and thinking songs, songs about the legends of the West and songs about the casualties of our streets. Often as not, the songs fall into a few of those categories at the same time.”
Alphin and Rich call their offerings, “country music without prejudice.”
Different beginnings
The first Big & Rich album was Horse of a Different Color. They followed that in 2005 with Comin’ to Your City. Attendees are sure to recognize singles like, “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),” “Lost in This Moment,” and “Wild West Show.” The group was a 2007 Academy of County Music nominee for Vocal Duo of the Year.
Big & Rich could hardly be called an overnight sensation: Both founders paid more than their share of dues. The two met in 1998. Rich had played with Lonestar, then tried a solo career that went nowhere. Alphin became a full-time musician while in his 30s. He signed a record deal, recorded an album that failed, then started a group called luvjOi.
The two men met at one of Alphin’s shows in a Nashville club. Eventually they began writing songs together and jamming at each other’s shows. Soon they were heading up weekly Tuesday night jam sessions at the Pub of Love, a club in Nashville.
“We wanted to do it on the worst night of the week in the weirdest place in town,” says Rich in a Great American Country profile. “So that if anybody showed up, they’d be there because they wanted to hear music, not because they wanted to schmooze.”
The sessions came to be called the MuzikMafia, and they featured a wide range of performers. One of them was Gretchen Wilson, who became a country star in her own right. Soon the sessions began drawing large crowds, and Rich and Alphin began thinking they were on to something. Eventually, Warner Bros. took notice and signed Big & Rich to a recording contract.
Cast of characters
Big & Rich don’t fit the image of the slick, Stetson-wearing country singers. Alphin is a former carpenter “with a rep as Nashville’s universal minister of love and a backlog of songs ranging from country laments to psychedelic rockers ...,” says the profile on About.com. “Rich is shorter, slyer and younger, a Texan with an angelic voice and a wicked gleam in his eye.
“Big & Rich are throwing a party, and it’s important to them that you understand everybody is invited. They can be wild and wooly and uproariously funny, but there’s a method to their madness: These guys aren’t always serious, but you’re selling them short if you think they’re always kidding.”
Says Alphin, “We grab ’em with the humor and the happiness, but then we want them to feel every emotion. And you can do anything you want with a song. You can make people laugh, but you can also make them cry if that’s what you’re after. And when it’s all over they feel better, they feel hope, they feel bright, they feel love.”
Adds Rich, “And sometimes they feel like somebody’s slammed a lightning bolt upside their head, which we like to do every now and then.” Expo attendees should be ready for a rollicking time at the Saturday Evening Jam.
Opening act
Opening for Big & Rich is the John Corbett Band. Corbett is better known for his acting — among other roles, he appeared in the HBO series Sex and the City and in the hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Corbett released his first album, John Corbett, in 2005. The songs were written by top songwriters like Hal Ketchum, Jon Randall, Darrell Scott, Bernie Taupin and Mark Selby. Corbett has opened for performers as diverse as ZZ Top, Lisa Marie Presley, Buck Owens, Charlie Daniels, Josh Turner and Asleep at the Wheel.
“Music has always been central to my life, much more so than acting,” Corbett says on his web site. “Acting is how I make my living. Music has always been a passion — it’s something I love, something I can’t live without.”
