When it comes to Big & Rich, there’s no need for a typical
bio. You can get a telling of their early career -- separate and
together -- from the folks at Warner Bros. Nashville, or by Googling the
dynamic duo. Their back story hasn’t changed, so why retell it?
I’m more interested in the biography of the choices they’ve made as
Big & Rich. In their mixing of traditional country sounds with hip-hop,
rock, and the occasional Native American yell. Their employment, in
their Muzik Mafia troupe, of a painter who works on a canvas during B&R
shows, and of a former Foot Locker salesman, called Cowboy Troy, who’s
become the most prominent black country performer since Charley Pride --
with one major difference. Troy raps. In Spanish, sometimes. As does Big
Kenny, doing a little “hick-hop.” And then there’re their social
messages, including “Love Everybody,” flashing on big screens behind
them, and emblazoned on the back of Big Kenny’s guitar.
I’m curious, too, about the whole Muzik Mafia thing. That was the
informal jam session they set up in Nashville, a town notoriously not
interested in looseness -- at least not when it comes to the music
industry. Kenny Alphin and John Rich grew it into a scene and,
ultimately, into a stable of talent, with several of the participants
joining them in the leap onto the radio, the charts, and concert stages.
Gretchen Wilson, anybody?
And so, one recent morning in Beverly Hills, in a hotel suite that
could only be described as big and rich, and with two video cameras
rolling, I asked the guys about their place in life and music. That
place just happens to be the title of their third CD: Between Raising
Hell and Amazing Grace.
John looked natty in black and blue -- black hat and sport jacket;
blue shirt and jeans. Kenny was all over the place, with patchy,
fashionably tattered jacket and pants, along with his trademark top hat.
This one was smaller than the usual, however. “It’s medium,” he said,
“but it should be extra large, because my cranium is constantly pulsing
with imagination and creativity welling up in it. It’s about to
explode.”
As John moved, ever so slightly, away from Kenny, I asked why the
call sheet for the session requested: “Please Not Sloppy.” Rich cast an
eye at the publicist from Warner Bros. Nashville. “She might’ve meant
‘sloppy drunk,’” he said. “I think the beauty of the real us shines
through,” said Kenny, “no matter what our bodies are clothed in.”
Lest you think that Big & Rich live only to jest, the new album will
set you straight. Sure, there’s some of the “I throw Benjis out the
window all day” bravado of their first two disks, but there’s far more
grace -- in words and music -- than hell-raising.
The album’s theme, Kenny said, came from a conversation he had with a
friend, “and the realization that between raising hell and ‘Amazing
Grace’ is that fine line that we’re walking on all the time, trying to
live life to its fullest and at the same time knowing that every day of
our lives is a blessing. And I feel like, to those given much, much is
expected. We’ve gotta reach out there and help those that need our help
right now.”
Spoken like the son of a preacher man. Well, actually, it was John,
who comes out of Texas and Tennessee, whose father was a preacher -- a
guitar-playing preacher, at that. But Kenny’s mother was the pianist at
their church in Virginia. Both Big & Rich had spiritual grounding; both
did a lot of Sunday singing.
And both credit their fathers for their love-everybody,
help-thy-fellow-artist values.
“Everything that’s happened in my life has guided me to be the person
I try to be now,” says Kenny. “My father’s one of the most incredible
people I’ve ever met. He’s a saint by all means, always trying to help
his neighbor, anybody that he could.” As a musician, Kenny struggled, to
the tune of huge credit card debts. But, he says, he continued to
believe, “no matter what, that you’re gonna come out the other end and
climb a top of a mountain. I’ve definitely felt that heartache enough
times that it makes me truly compassionate.”
As a kid in Amarillo, John experienced poverty. He and three sibling
lived with their parents in a trailer, and they went to the food bank
for help. Still, he recalls, “I watched my dad take guys in off the
street. He didn’t have anything to help anybody with, but he’d do
whatever he could do to help people out.”
Kenny and John must’ve had heart transfer operations somewhere along
the way. Although they began their Muzik Mafia jams before they broke
through, they now use their power to help fellow artists. “When you see
somebody who’s got the goods, you want for them not have to go through
the same mistakes we had to go through,” says Kenny. John adds: “We all
share our momentum and our contacts. That’s why we’re being rewarded so
greatly, is because we’ve been so selfless with it.”
Flash back to Nashville, circa 1998. Suffice to say, both John and
Kenny are struggling. Join the club. John’s been fired from the
soft-country band, Lonestar, and is pitching songs left and right.
Kenny, who’s anything but soft, is playing clubs all over town, drawing
female admirers. One of them was dating John Rich.
“She wanted to go see him; her girlfriends were all going to see him,
they were all in love with this guy Big Kenny, and I went OK, I’ll go
check him out. He’s up there in all his bigness, doing country, rock and
roll, and… Queen. It was very odd music, but it was good stuff.” After
the show, a mutual friend introduced them. “She said the two of you
should get together and write a song. There’s no telling what you all
will end up writin’ because you’re so different.” Rich agreed to give it
a shot. “It might be a complete fiasco,” he thought, “but I hadn’t seen
anybody else do the kind of music he was doing; it interested me enough
on a writing level to go, ‘OK, let’s see.’”
Rich didn’t know it then, but His Bigness was relatively new to
professional music. He was building homes in Virginia when, one
beer-soaked night, he agreed to go on stage at a pub and sing a song --
the only song whose lyrics he knew: “Peaceful Easy Feeling” by the
Eagles. Soon after, he bought a guitar, taught himself to play, and
moved to Nashville. “I was listening to a lot of country music; it was
the dominant music on construction sites and in farm shops. But a lot of
those same people love rock and roll. I grew up as a real appreciator of
all shapes and forms.”
So there you go. Kenny’s “bigness” referred to his range of musical
interests. John Rich appreciated that range, and, after they began
writing, and in 2001, while they were going nowhere slow with their
respective careers, hit on the idea of an informal jam session on
Tuesday nights, dubbed, for no good reason, “Muzik Mafia.”
“We realized that there was this whole bunch of us that were making
all different kinds of music in different joints in town,” said Kenny.
“We were all writing songs together, no matter what kind of music we
were predominantly making, and we wanted to play them more often. So we
decided, why don’t we get together one night a week and find us some
little place where we can make music and not have to clean up
afterwards?”
They got a club -- The Pub o’ Love, capacity maybe 75 -- and never
promoted the jams to the general public. But they caught on quick.
“Within a few months they had to bust out the back wall. Other artists
would show up. It was acoustic driven; we’d have percussionists come and
play boxes or shakers. It was like sitting in a living room, learning
from each other.” Among the students was a bartender, Gretchen Wilson,
who’d take a night off to be there for the party, and “Cowboy Troy,”
who’d drive down as often as he could from his shoe sales job in Dallas.
The Muzik Mafia has grown into a mini-empire. “The thing is, we still
do Mafia jams in Nashville on Tuesday nights when we’re there,” said
Rich. “There’s still no cover; we still don’t advertise it, but we’ll
pull the tour bus out in front. It gets a little wilder. We’ve had
everyone from Bon Jovi, Jewel, and Stone Temple Pilots, to hard-core
country acts drop by. We’re still together. When you’re selling millions
of records, when you’ve got a Tuesday night off, why aren’t you home? We
still like to jam.”
Big & Rich made a lot of noise by incorporating rock and rap on their
first albums. This time around, there’s soul and reggae, by way of John
Legend, who does a cameo on “Eternity,” and Wyclef Jean. Rich went to
see Jean, strictly as a fan, at the House of Blues in Los Angeles and
wound up being pulled onto the stage. The crowd had no idea who Big &
Rich were, he says, but Jean told them, “There are no boundaries. They
tell us there are boundaries just so we don’t run past them.” Then, John
said, “He starts free-styling about Nashville and Charlie Daniels and
us, and how it’s all the same.”
Wyclef then indicated to John: “Your turn.” Rich froze for a moment,
and then, over the reggae beat, went into “Folsom Prison Blues,”
followed by “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy.” Suddenly, the House of Blues
audience was his.
“The audience is not segregated,” says Rich. “The only segregation is
happening at the creative level and on the marketing level of music. The
audience is listening to everything, so why can’t a John Legend audience
buy a Big & Rich album, and why can’t a Big & Rich audience buy a John
Legend album? Probably because they’re not even allowed to hear it.”
While Big & Rich appreciate any radio airplay they can get, they’re
also proactive in other media, appearing on shows ranging from Nashville
Star to Dancing With the Stars; issuing special-edition DVDs, and, now,
publishing a book, alongside the new album.
Entitled Big & Rich: All Access, and including -- see? -- a DVD, the
book offers “a real behind-the-scenes look at our lives since we met,”
said Kenny. “How yin and yang came together and went ‘BANG!’” As in the
line from “Comin’ to Your City,” the title tune of their last album: “If
you want a little bang in your yin yang; if you want a little zing in
your zang zang… come along!”
Not that Big & Rich are repeating themselves. Last time out, they had
Kris Kristofferson introducing a song. This time, they have President
Harry S Truman opening the album with a call for unity, from a speech he
delivered to farmers in 1935. They do AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night
Long,” with a pronounced twang. They’ve got John Legend and Wyclef Jean
crooning and riffing. They’ve revved up their message, from “Prejudice
should not exist in music” to “Prejudice should not exist anywhere on
earth.”
And if, indeed, Between Raising Hell and Amazing Grace has Big & Rich
leaning towards Grace, that’s the idea, to take you to a “zone,” as
Kenny would say. “Here’s a feeling we’re going to stay in, and thoughts
we’re gonna express in a certain style for awhile. And then we’re gonna
switch gears and rock your balls off.”
Jeez, Kenny. You’re the loving son of a church pianist; the
self-proclaimed “Universal Minister of Love.” And the video cameras are
still running. Take two:
“We’ll do it like you’re listening to an album. Here’s the first
side; it’s got this mood to it. Then you flip it over, and it’s got this
mood to it. And we leave it on a happy note. We love our country, and we
love it loud.”
