Biography

Dailey & Vincent
Brothers from Different Mothers
Street Date: March 31, 2009
Rounder 11661-0617-2

1. Head Hung Down 2:57
2. You Oughta Be Here With Me 2:22
3. Your Love Is Like A Flower 3:26
4. When I’ve Traveled My Last Mile 2:49
5. Years Ago 2:34
6. There Is You 2:24
7. Girl In The Valley 2:45
8. Please Don’t Let Our Sweet Love Die 3:44
9. Oh Ye Must Be Born Again 2:25
10. Winters Come & Gone 2:16
11. When I Reach That Home Up There 2:48
12. On The Other Side 4:31
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Produced by: Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent

Adam Haynes – Fiddle
Andy Leftwich – Mandolin
Bob Mater – Percussion
Bryan Sutton – Guitar
Darrin Vincent – Bass, Arch Top, Mandolin, & Vocals
David Angell – Violin
David Davidson – Violin
Harold Reid – Roadhog
Jamie Dailey – Guitar & Vocals
Jeff Parker – Mandolin & Vocals
Joe Dean, Jr. – Banjo & Bass Vocal
John Catchings – Cello
Kris Wilkinson – Viola
Ron Block – Banjo
Stuart Duncan – Fiddle
Tim Crouch – Fiddle

Produced by Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent
Recorded by Mike Latterell and Steve Chandler
Assistant Engineers: Ben Terry, Matt Legge, Rory Rositas, Sarah Emily Parish and Stoker White
Recorded at Adventure, Fool On the Hill, Omni, Sound Kitchen, The Bunker, and Trinity Sound
(all located in Nashville, TN)
Mixed at The Bunker by Neal Cappellino
Mastered by Hank Williams at Mastermix, Nashville, TN

Special thanks to:
Richard Landis, Steve Tevit

1. Head Hung Down
(Robert Gateley/Berwick Trail Music, BMI)

2. You Oughta Be Here With Me
(Roger Miller/Roger Miller Music, BMI; Sony/ATV Tree Pub., BMI)

3. Your Love Is Like A Flower
(Michael Hazelwood/Hay Holler Music, BMI)

4. When I've Traveled My Last Mile
(Henry J. Donohue, Copyright 1941 by Stamps Baxter Music
And Printing Co. Copyright renewed 1969)

5. Years Ago
(Donald Reid/Songs of Universal, Inc., BMI)

6. There Is You
(Donald Reid and Harold Reid/Songs of Universal, Inc., BMI)

7. Girl In The Valley
(Jamie S. Dailey/Top O' Holston Pub., BMI)

8. Please Don't Let Our Sweet Love Die
(Ron Spears/Chrisbob-jacker Music, BMI)

9. Oh Ye Must Be Born Again
(Bo Bullman/Bill Robinson Music, BMI)

10. Winter’s Come and Gone
(Gillian Welch and David Rawlings/Cracklin’ Music, BMI; Irving Music, BMI; Say Uncle Music, BMI)

11. When I Reach That Home Up There
(Jamie S. Dailey/Bluegrassambassador Publishing, BMI; Julie Ann Publishing, BMI)

12. On The Other Side
(Jimmy Fortune, Kevin Denney and Tom Bodkin/Melrose Nashville Publishing, Key Brothers Music, BMI)


Jamie thanks:
My Dad, J.B. Dailey and my Mom, Judith Nevins, I love you so much!! My stepdad Jimmy Nevins, my brother and his family Johnny, Allison and Cade Painter, my granddad Fred Heady, Willene Heady, and Julie Huffines and Josh Nicholson.

Thanks also to Terry and Cindy Baucom and Darren Beachley. To my childhood heroes The Statler Brothers--Jimmy, Don, Harold, Phil and the late Lew DeWitt--we have learned a lot from y’all! To Grandstaff, Langdon and Wil, our buddies. AND LAST but not least... The old Roadhog himself! We are honored to have you on our record. To our band-- Jeff, Adam, and Joe-- you guys are family and we love and appreciate you. To Don Light, we could never thank you enough for your direction, friendship and wisdom. To Julie Penell, who works so hard for us in Don’s office. To Karen Byrd for your hard work and for keeping Darrin and I in line. To Thomas Bates and Jan Spencer, our business management team, you are a blessing and we thank you! To David Crow, our attorney and friend—you are the best! To Ken Irwin and everyone at Rounder Records—there is nowhere else we would want to be! To Eric Blankenship and All Access, we could not have done this without you! Also to Steve Reeves for building a GREAT guitar!

Darrin says:
I'd like to thank all of you for purchasing this album. The past year and a half has been overwhelming for my family and me. The love and outpouring of support is beyond words. Thanks to those we met who took the time to share deep, heartfelt and sometimes painful testimonies, especially you veterans. God bless you!!! I hope you enjoy our CD, and I pray you feel joy, love, and the spirit of the Lord throughout this recording. We love you.

Dailey & Vincent would like to thank all our sponsors who help us perform our best each and every day: D’Addario Strings, Shure, Huber Banjo, Bourgeois Guitar, Show Case, All Access Coach, Weber Instruments, Williams Fine Violin, Tour Supply, Rack N Roll Studio Rentals, Tammy Simms Embroidering, Frank Daniels, Joe Knight, Guitar Center


Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent became the most heralded new act in the bluegrass music field in 2008, as their debut album and busy tour schedule introduced them to wildly appreciative audiences. Their first recording, Dailey & Vincent, was named Album of the Year, one of seven awards the group took home in an unprecedented feat at the 2008 International Bluegrass Music Awards Show. Never before had an act been named Entertainer and Emerging Artist in the same year.

Both men were raised in musical families and have played bluegrass since the age of three – Jamie in Tennessee and Darrin in Missouri. They apprenticed with legendary acts, Jamie with Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, and Darrin with his sister Rhonda Vincent, the late John Hartford, and Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder.

One of the great surprises and blessings a person can experience in life is meeting an unrelated soul-mate. Dailey & Vincent met at the 2001 IBMA Awards show in Louisville and discovered an uncanny harmony in their vocal blend, as well as their attitudes toward music, business, and their Christian faith. Says Darrin, “Although we’re not brothers, we discovered that our voices blended pretty naturally. We’ve worked on vocal phrasing and pronunciation to make the blend even stronger.” Jamie and Darrin talked, prayed, and planned for five years before committing to the closest thing to brotherhood: a musical partnership.

Brothers from Different Mothers presents the band at a level of synergy that only comes from constant live performing. It exudes the enthusiasm of a venture still fresh for all its participants. Paradoxically, the album also reflects moods of the gathering economic recession in which it was conceived.

Regret, nostalgia, and hope for better times (in this world or the next) were also artistic themes of the 1930s. In that decade, the “brother duet” was the dominant form in country music. Although many of the most influential acts of this type were brothers by blood, an equal number were, like Dailey & Vincent, fraternal only in their close vocal blend and approach to music.

The Brother Duet Phenomenon

The brother duet phenomenon in country music probably began on remote farms. In an era before radio, records, cars, television, computers, or video games, brothers sang to entertain each other as they worked or rested after a long day of toil. Notable brother duos in vaudeville, pop music, and minstrel shows may have set a pattern for rural musicians. There have been similar acts of females, mixed genders, trios, and quartets, but at the heart of the brother duet phenomenon lies a country-oriented male duo, known primarily for its harmony singing.

In the field of recorded country music there have been a number of influential brother duets. In the 1920s, there were Darby & Tarlton and Mac & Bob. At the peak of the phenomenon in the 1930s were the Delmore Brothers, Carlisle Brothers, Dixon Brothers, Karl & Harty, Wade Mainer & Zeke Morris, Monroe Brothers, Blue Sky Boys, Callahan Brothers, Morris Brothers, and Shelton Brothers. The 1940s brought to the fore Roy Acuff & Oswald Kirby, the Bailes Brothers, York Brothers, Bailey Brothers, and the Sauceman Brothers. By the 1950s, brother duets were waning, despite the wide popularity of the Louvin Brothers, Johnnie & Jack, Homer & Jethro, Lonzo & Oscar, and the Everly Brothers. Trailing-edge male duos in the 1960s included the Wilburn Brothers and Buck Owens & Don Rich.

Early brother duets accompanied themselves with guitar and mandolin or two guitars. As times improved, ensembles grew to include more backing musicians and instrumental styles.

After the 1930s, other harmony forms began to compete with brother duets for the country music spotlight. Popular trios included the Sons of the Pioneers, the Osborne Brothers, the Browns, Tompall & the Glaser Brothers, the Gatlin Brothers, and Shenandoah. By the 1970s, male-female duets became the rage -- notably George Jones & Melba Montgomery, Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton, and Loretta Lynn with singing partners Ernest Tubb and Conway Twitty. Quartets, a style most common in southern gospel, crossed over with the Jordanaires, the Statler Brothers, and the Oak Ridge Boys.

Perhaps another reason for the eclipse of the brother duets was the stellar artistic achievement of the Louvin Brothers, Ira and Charlie. Their act, which ended in 1963, reached heights in the evolution of two-part country harmony that seemed to leave no further territory to explore.

Although almost extinct in modern country music, the brother duet style lived on in bluegrass, a form unusually conscious of musical and thematic roots. Memorable two-voice recordings with full bluegrass backing were made by Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt, the Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin, Jim & Jesse, Reno & Smiley, Jimmy Martin and Paul Williams, the Lilly Brothers, Earl Taylor & Jim McCall, Vern & Ray, Joe Val and Herb Applin, Lester Flatt with Mac Wiseman, Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley, and the Whitstein Brothers.

In the very recent past, there has been an upsurge in bluegrass acts distinguished for their brother-style duet singing, including Dailey & Vincent, the Gibson Brothers, Dudley Connell and Don Rigsby, Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen, and Jimmy Gaudreau & Moondi Klein.

Moving Harmony Singing Forward

With so many superb examples of harmony singing in the country and bluegrass legacy, it would seem audacious to attempt advancement of that art. Dailey & Vincent are equal to the challenge. They have a tireless love of singing, lifelong vocal experience in demanding ensembles, remarkable individual voices, a talent for arranging, and Jamie’s endless tenor range (Darrin teases him: “It takes a real man to sing like a girl.”)

Brothers from Different Mothers is a catalogue of various approaches to harmony singing. There are duets, trios, a quartet, part-switching, call-and-response choruses, unexpected intervals, suspensions and resolutions, fancy endings, a variety of ways to stack the voices, and dizzying changes in vocalization during a single song. Even the most knowledgeable listener will find it difficult to decode who is singing what, or how these arrangements are constructed. But it all sounds natural, fresh, and appropriate… like Dailey & Vincent and no one else.

Letting the analysis go, it is fun and deeply rewarding to simply luxuriate in the pleasure of listening. These voices – like hard and polished gemstones sparkling in a jeweled stream – never fail to satisfy and delight.

A Bluegrass Album, and More

Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent have been bluegrass musicians throughout their careers, and never depart from that core sensibility on Brothers from Different Mothers. But, like the earliest icons, they also push the bluegrass envelope. There is music on this album that will be familiar and attractive to southern gospel, country music, or folk-oriented listeners who don’t yet recognize themselves as bluegrass fans.

In addition to Jamie Dailey on guitar and Darrin Vincent on string bass, guitar, and mandolin, the recording and touring ensemble includes Jeff Parker on mandolin and vocals, Joe Dean on banjo and vocals, and Adam Haynes on fiddle. Guest contributors on Brothers from Different Mothers include Statler Brother Harold Reid in his comedy alter ego of Lester “Roadhog” Moran (the first time he has recorded with anyone except the Statler Brothers and Johnny Cash), Ron Block on banjo, Bryan Sutton on guitar, Tim Crouch and Stuart Duncan on fiddles, and Andy Leftwich on mandolin.

Only a few of the numbers on this album have been performed on the road, and those were met with enthusiastic appreciation. The ones that haven’t are waiting to become new audience favorites, on this CD, on the radio/satellite/internet, and in live performances for years to come.

–Fred Bartenstein

Fred Bartenstein is a bluegrass music historian, journalist, and broadcaster. His father and uncle sang and played in a 1930s brother duet on Wildcat Mountain in northern Virginia. David Freeman, George Gruhn, Tom Mindte, Neil Rosenberg, and Dick Spottswood contributed to the outline of the brother duet legacy.

THE SONGS

1. Head Hung Down
Jamie: “We were in the studio, about finished, and needed a barn burner to open the album. I called my friend Robert Gateley, who said he’d just finished one. We listened to it, arranged, and recorded it the same day.” Darrin: “We thought how great it would be to have Harold Reid do the judge’s line in his deep bass voice. Up to now, he had only recorded with the Statler Brothers and guested on Johnny Cash records as part of the Statlers, but he agreed to do it.” Harold tags the track in his comedy character of Lester “Roadhog” Moran. (Lester and The Cadillac Cowboys were a dimwitted local country band, and cult alter egos of the Statler Brothers on 1974’s Alive at the Johnny Mack Brown High School.)

2. You Oughta Be Here With Me
Sung as a high-lead trio on the verses, with an even higher tenor line on the choruses, this is a classic country song of loneliness, complete with double entendre title. It originally appeared on Roger Miller’s self-titled album in 1969, but has also been covered by the Statler Brothers and by George Jones. Jamie brought it to the band: “I thought the word ‘lonesome’ and the clean melody made it perfect for a bluegrass harmony treatment.”

3. Your Love is Like a Flower
Perhaps an intentional spin-off of Flatt & Scruggs’ “Your Love is Like a Flower,” this number was heard at a jam session during Doyle Lawson’s Denton, NC festival in 2008. Jamie: “I thought it would be a good solo for Darrin with a brother duet chorus.” Darrin: “We put it up into the key of B and our voices locked right in.” The Larry Stephenson band first recorded the song for a 1991 album.

4. When I’ve Traveled My Last Mile
Jamie: “My Dad, J.B. Dailey, had a gospel group, the Four J’s, who sang in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Kentucky. I found this on one of their records and we sing it here as a duet.” Darrin: “I love the tight harmony on this one. My family loved anything with harmony, especially the Louvin Brothers.”

5. Years Ago
The Statler Brothers had a #12 country single in 1982 on this clever tale of a jilted lover’s regret and bitterness at his ex-sweetheart’s wedding. Jamie: “For my ninth birthday, my Dad bought me a boom box and a bunch of tapes by the Statler Brothers. They were my childhood heroes.” The unison and harmony chorus arrangement, borrowed from the Statlers, is rare in bluegrass music.

6. There Is You
Darrin: “That’s another Statler Brothers song. It intertwines a duet on the verses with a trio on the choruses. We sang ‘Do You Know You Are My Sunshine’ at the Statler Brothers’ Country Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and we’ve corresponded with them ever since. We’re also friends with Harold Reid’s son Wil and Don Reid’s son Langdon, who have a group called Grandstaff.”

7. Girl in the Valley
Jamie: “I wrote that on a napkin in the break room while I was making heavy duty filters on an assembly line at Cummins Engine to save money for college. Five or six years ago, I recorded it with Doyle Lawson, and we’ve had a lot of requests to do it with Dailey & Vincent. It’s not about a particular girl… I have a big imagination.” Darrin: “It’s Bluegrass 101.”

8. Please Don’t Let Our Sweet Love Die
Darrin: “This came in at the last minute, but I’m so glad we found it. “ Jamie: “Ron Spears writes great songs. I remembered hearing that on a CD he gave Doyle Lawson during the two months we overlapped in that band. We sat around and learned it in the studio. I heard an arrangement in my head that was different from Ron’s.”

9. Oh Ye Must Be Born Again
Darrin: “I heard that a long time ago on a CD by the Far City Boys, and remembered it when we were looking for an up-tempo gospel number.” It features a call-and-response trio chorus.

10. Winter’s Come and Gone
The classic brother duet arrangement sounds as old as the Carter Family, but this song was first recorded in 1998 by its writers. Jamie: “We’re huge Gillian Welch and David Rawlings fans, but we hardly ever get to see them.” Darrin: “This gives a different feel to the record and lets us use the Weber archtop guitar I play.”

11. When I Reach That Home Up There
This is the only quartet on the album; Jamie sings the verses. Darrin: “Jamie wrote that a year and a half ago, just before we started the group. We’ve been closing shows with it.” Jamie: “I was watching Fox TV news at midnight and the Lord sent it to me. I grabbed a guitar and a pen and had it down by 2:00 a.m.”

12. On the Other Side
Darrin: “Jimmy Fortune came with us on a road trip to Shepherdsville, Kentucky, and played us a CD of songs he had just written with two of his friends. All three had in common the death of their fathers.” Jamie: “In three miles I was bawling, and begging him to let us record it. We brought a classical string quartet into the studio to underscore the deep emotion in the song.”

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