CMA Fest: Brothers Osborne Praise Multi-Cultural Music Event

Brothers Osborne have nothing but love for the four-day CMA Fest. The duo — made up of brothers [...]

Brothers Osborne have nothing but love for the four-day CMA Fest. The duo — made up of brothers John and TJ Osborne — is impressed with not only the large amount of fans that come out each year, but how far they are willing to travel just to see some of their favorite artists perform.

"I think it is a testament to the format and how the format's growing," TJ Osborne told PopCulture.com and other media at CMA Fest. "I think you can see the health of the genre by the health of this festival. There's a time where it was for a select few people and then their friends liked it and those friends told two friends. And those two friends told two friends. And now it's like the international genre that we all know and that everyone across the world loves."

The two add that when they were in east Nashville, they came across a couple of fans from London — at least TJ thought.

"Some Canadians and Australians," interjected John Osborne.

"We were there," continued TJ. "They were an intense, international group of people. This is amazing that this genre is spreading globally, and it was nice and humble on the fairgrounds. But, I mean, it's just a big genre and it also shows just where Nashville's going itself. You know, it's just getting bigger. It's becoming grand."

Brothers Osborne performed during Thursday night's concert at Nissan Stadium, where they brought out Brooks & Dunn to perform "Hard Workin' Man" from the duo's recent Reboot album.

"It's crazy," TJ said. "I remember, first, we were asked, 'Are you guys fans of Brooks & Dunn?' and I thought that was just a ridiculous question to ask us. If you're not a fan of Brooks & Dunn, you shouldn't be in this genre. So, then it was what song are we going to do, and it was a little tough because Ronnie's voice is so high and, obviously, I have a baritone voice. Trying to figure out something that would work for both of our strengths. And then something that had a lot of guitar parts was 'Hard Workin' Man.' It became pretty obvious that that was a really great song."

Brooks & Dunn wanted Brothers Osborne to do their own version of the iconic song, while the siblings wanted to honor the original version. The result, said TJ, became a perfect combination of both acts.

"We wanted to do it like Brooks & Dunn did it because we just love the song," TJ said. "They wanted to do it like we would do it. It was a really interesting thing. And I think the way it turned out was really great. I'm really proud of it. And I think it really is a perfect kind of mix of us both."

Photo Credit: Getty images/Jeffrey Mayer

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