NASHVILLE, TN. (Bellamy Brothers Official Website) - The
Bellamy Brothers have received nearly every music award there is to have, and they even hold the record in both the Academy of Country
Music and the Country
Music Association for the most duo nominations. They've written countless worldwide hits, crossed the globe like their music has crossed genres, brought reggae to the Grand Ole Opry, and recorded 45 albums. Now get ready for number 46, because here it comes...
Slated for release March 29, on Curb Records, Angels & Outlaws Vol. 1 could very well be the Bellamy Brothers most ambitious project yet, for its sheer size, scope, historical impact, and imagination. These beloved gents of country and crossover have rounded up many of Nashville's brightest and best to record 'duets with the duet,' as Howard Bellamy likes to call it – 20 superstars singing with the Bellamy Brothers on new versions of 13 monster hits culled from three decades of Howard and David's gold and platinum chart-toppers, including 'Let Your Love Flow,' the new album's possible first single.
Angels & Outlaws Vol. 1 marks the 30th anniversary of the No. 1 country rock anthem in 11 countries that took The Bellamy Brothers from Southeast regional performers to international dynamic duo, though David's clever three-million selling 'Spiders and Snakes,' recorded by Jim Stafford, was the single that set the tone of the songs to come.
The Bellamy Brothers produced all but one track on the album, which was three years in the works, owing to the logistical and legal complexities involved, as well as coordinating artists and scheduling studio time.
Says Howard, half-joking, 'It was like giving birth to an elephant. We laid out the songs and made a wish list of who we'd really, really like to hear singing them. You can't do an album like this in sequence, because of everybody's schedules, and who has to have a tape flown to London – stuff like that.'
Actual recording sessions, however, were sometimes all too brief for the amount of fun that David and Howard were having with their angels and outlaws, including Alan Jackson, Montgomery Gentry, Hal Ketchum and Lisa Brokop, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Pat Green, Trini Triggs, George Jones, John Anderson, Chris Hillman, Herb Pedersen and Rhonda Vincent, David Allan Coe and Tanya Tucker, Charlie Daniels and Bobby Bare and John Anderson.
With the pride of Nashville hooking up with the Grammy-winning bros for some history-in-the-making, a companion DVD to Angels & Outlaws Vol. 1 would definitely be in order, but regrettably, David explains, 'We wanted to film it every time we went into the studio, but we knew we'd run into a lot more legalities there, and it would become the most expensive country album in history.'
The Bellamy Brothers have a fascinating, well-storied past, but both agree that the recording of Angels & Outlaws is a tremendous highlight of the last three decades.
Howard recalls, 'The creative parts of this album were a lot of fun and the easiest. For the most part, even the crazy things that happened were funny and entertaining.'
David adds, 'The legal aspects – we didn't have a clue they would be this crazy. If we had known you couldn't do this, we probably wouldn't have. Fortunately, we went into it naive, so here's where we're at.'
Of course, the 'Vol. 1' part of the album title implies that there is more on the way. Indeed, the Bellamy Brothers have already consorted with other angels and outlaws for Vol. 2. And while they're not naming names, they've hinted that the next set of duets with the duet are outside of the Nashville city limits, which makes perfect sense because the Bellamy Brothers slip into musical styles like a pair of cowboy boots – easy, comfortable, and always feeling good.
Here's to another 30 years of letting the love flow.
