Noah’s abilities extend far beyond being a very good electric and acoustic guitarist. He also plays bass, mandolin, dobro, banjo, keyboards, bass and percussion. If that is not enough of a repertoire, he possesses excellent engineering skills. Jesse is the primary songwriter and his rich deep vocals are going to break a lot of women’s hearts when he serves up songs such as “You Got The Wrong Number,” and “Santa Ana Winds.”
There
is a gold record hanging on their studio wall, the result of a Danish singer
named Wenche covering Jesse’s tune, “You’re The World,” which also appears as
the fourth track on Nowhere Revisited. When I spoke to the duo several weeks
ago, there were rumors that a Swedish singer was also thinking of doing a
cover version of the song.
As hard hitting as some of their songs can be, Jesse and Noah have the ability to slow things down to a nice waltz, as evidenced by the beautiful and gentle ballad, “The Best Thing That I’ve Ever Known,” a song that Jesse also counts among his favorites. Noah lays down some of the prettiest guitar chording that you will hear in country music.
The brothers made a concentrated effort to keep their self-produced album Nowhere Revisited from sounding too slick, too studio engineered. “We wanted it to sound like a performance,” says Noah.
Jesse adds, “We wanted to keep the sound that we have when we play out live.”
This was not Jesse and Noah's first foray into the production side of the music business. They had worked closely with Ron Taylor (Gloria Stefan, 2 Live Crew, Frank Sinatra, Jaci Velasquez, Aaron Carter, Jon Secada, Ricky Martin, Julio Iglesias) to co-produce Elston Gunn’s critically acclaimed 2001 release Key To The Highway. The connection being that Taylor had for a while played keyboards for The Bellamy Brothers. Noah and Jesse also self-produced their own demos.
Some artists scramble for songs to complete the tracks for their albums. Others, who are not as gifted in songwriting, are continually on the look out for good songs for future CDs. Those are not issues that Noah and Jesse Bellamy have to contend with.
“A lot of our record came about because we had twenty-four hour access to a recording studio. We would work on things, and eventually we had an album, without really even sitting down to make an album. We had all of these songs stockpiled. We are always working on songs and recording. In between doing shows and writing songs, we would record at home, and that is how we came up with the album,” says Jesse.
Jesse continues, “I think that we ended up getting what we wanted out of all of these songs. We just do what the individual songs need, and then we keep doing it until we get it right.”
Growing up rubbing shoulders with people such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Oakridge Boys, Tanya Tucker, David Allan Coe, George Jones, Ray Stevens and Loretta Lynn, likely planted the first seeds, which have now become finely honed music sensibilities.
Jesse and Noah Bellamy are planning to release another single this fall, and there are numerous good tunes to choose from the tracks of Nowhere Revisited.
They now split their time between living on their father’s cattle ranch in Florida, Nashville where they have an apartment and studio, and Fort Worth Texas. Most of their songwriting and recording is done in Nashville, while the musicians who comprise their backup band live in the Fort Worth area. Their record label Smith Entertainment is also located in Fort Worth.
Their song may be titled “Drivin’ Nowhere,” but this is a country duo that is going somewhere fast. They are booked well into the spring of 2008, and we can only expect to hear more great music from Jesse and Noah Bellamy down the road.
Interviewed by Joe Montague
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October 2007
