Review | Brothers of Other Musical Mothers

What’s in a family name? Sometimes, telling insights into musical eras and attitudes. In country music, you’ve got your Osborne Brothers, famed Nashville bluegrass band whose ‘60s hits include classic “Rocky Top.” Then you’ve got Brothers Osborne, the rock-fueled country band from the new Nashville by way of Maryland, who broke into higher public circulation starting with the major 2015 hits “Stay a Little Longer” and “It Ain’t My Fault.”

Naturally, both big, hooky career-launching songs were audience favorites when the band paid a return visit to the Santa Barbara Bowl last Friday. Needless to say, no “Rocky Top” in this set.

As it happened, there were Santa Barbara angles in the margins that night, once removed. Brothers Osborne’s young bassist, Pete Sternberg, hails from here, and impressive opening act Madeline Edwards spent her early childhood here, before the family hightailed it to Houston, Texas. After coming on strong at concert’s opening, with her bold, whiskey-toned voice making its soulful commanding presence known over her band Painkillers’ swamp-rocking foundation, her Santa Barbara love and lore became a running theme of her set (a generous one, by opener standards).

For one, she sang the praises of not only this city but of this storied stage, where she remembered hearing Norah Jones and Chick Corea around the ripe-eared age of 7. Late in her set, drawing heavily from her debut album, Crashlanded, she let loose with a well-placed expletive, then half-jokingly added, “When I come back here, I can tell I’m from the South, because I’m crass, tatted, and classless.” And musically ripe and ready to move up the roots-country-rock ranks.

As Brothers Osborne kicked into gear and the brothers appeared in heroic form on the top tier of a layered stage setup, the band came on strong and stayed that way, built around the rich tones and range of singer TJ and the limber country-into-rock-and-back guitar prowess of John. For starters, they leaped into the energized hits “Might as Well Be Me” and the every person empowering “Nobody’s Nobody,” from their third and latest album, last year’s eponymous-titled Brothers Osborne.

Twang factors were in the mix, in varying degrees, though the night, but just as often, the brothers draw energy from a post–Southern Rock source, and while there is a pedal steel guitar in the mix, the classic sound is barely discernible in the guitar-based sound stew. Well-versed in the rock trade, they didn’t skip a genre beat when launching into a ripe cover version of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” (triggering instant memories of the night when Petty played on this stage many years ago).

We get a sense of self-recognition of the Osbornes’ code-switching in the course of a diverse set, or in a clever song like “I’m Not for Everyone,” a concert highlight cut on their 2020 album Skeletons. With tongue only partly in cheek, TJ belts out the self-examining chorus: “I’m like scotch and zydeco bands / I’m like B-side Townes Van Zandt / I’m always speaking my mind / When I’m better off biting my tongue / I’m a bad joke at the wrong time / Hell, I’m a legend in my own mind / I’m good for some but I’m not for everyone.”

The song, which was controversially pulled by country radio gatekeepers, is now a rallying cry of independence, warranting the sudden one-song appearance of a giant flying middle finger prop on the stage for extra defiant measure.

Ping-ponging between subgenres and historical touchpoints within the country-music landscape is a feature of this band’s operation. For encores, the band kicked into the country classic made famous by Don Williams, “Tulsa Time,” but they closed the show with a whole ‘nother kind of song, the introspective ballad “Younger Me,” which earned the band its first Grammy Award, in 2022. The tune, a gentler, kinder concert-capper, represents a very different deviation from old school country norms, as part of the inner reflection of TJ’s coming-out as gay in 2021. He was the first major country artist to do so, and this song is about the suppressed impulse to flee the closet in his “younger days.”

Suffice to say, Brothers Osborne ain’t your father’s country, although there are plenty of buried and repurposed roots in the garden.