What`s In A Name

Diamond Rio Discovers That Its New Moniker Is A Real Gem

May 26, 1991|By Jack Hurst, Country music writer.

Three years ago, country star Lee Greenwood telephoned Nashville guitarist Jimmy Olander, a member of a struggling and obscure group called the Tennessee River Boys, and offered him a job.

Olander turned him down.

``At the time, we were recording a project with (producer) Keith Stegall that was going to be pitched to the major record companies, and I told Lee that I thought it might do something for us,`` he recalls.

``But we were about to starve to death, too, so about a week after I talked to Lee I got this lawn-care job. I showed up for work the first day and was told the first lawn I had to go mow was Lee Greenwood`s.

``Boy, I hated to turn down that good gig and then go out there and cut his grass. I went in a hat and dark glasses-heavy disguise, man.`` Even more discouraging, the project eventually fell through.

But Olander isn`t having to wear the hat and glasses these days. His group has just hit No. 1 on the country charts with its debut single, ``Meet in the Middle,`` and is scheduled to perform Saturday in the increasingly country environs of the Cubby Bear Lounge.

Even without hat and glasses, though, Olander is still sort of in disguise, as are the rest of the band members. They have discarded their former persona and now are called Diamond Rio.

``Tennessee River Boys makes me think of white belts and white shoes and calico shirts-a uniform,`` Olander explains.

``Yeah, either Southern gospel or bluegrass music,`` agrees Diamond Rio lead singer Marty Roe.

``And there`s nothing wrong with either one of those,`` notes the group`s bass player, longtime bluegrass musician Dana Williams. ``It`s just that that ain`t what we are.``

In fact, the band-Olander, Roe and Williams, along with drummer Brian Prout, keyboardist Dan Truman and mandolinist Gene Johnson-hadn`t been that for some time before the group decided to change its name.

After several months of pondering names and asking everyone for suggestions, they all went to producer Monty Powell`s house one day and decided they weren`t leaving until they had a new name. They came up with a real clinker: the T-Town Mavericks.

``Our record company went `Peee-u,` `` Roe remembers with a laugh.

``Yeah, we said, `We`re gonna be the T-Town Mavericks,` `` Williams says, ``and they went, `Not on Arista you`re not.` ``

The name problem evolved out of the band`s origins. Born in the early

`80s as a ``copy`` band that performed the popular country songs of the day at the Opryland theme park in Nashville, the group was first called the Grizzly River Boys, after one of the park`s rides.

``We chose the name Tennessee River Boys, but it had to be a name that made sense in the park,`` Roe says.

``And once we had had that gig-where we played for literally a million people, probably-we had such a following that until we got this record deal, it was kind of cutting our own throats to change the name.

``Once we knew we were gonna get the deal and were working on the album, we decided that was the time to change it. But we had kind of been wanting to do it for a long time.``

The reason becomes pretty obvious, listening to Diamond Rio. The band soon began writing its own music, and the sources are much more diverse and multi-dimensional than their old name implied.

The lead singing of Roe, an Ohioan named after Marty Robbins and reared on cowboy music, is traditional country. The two harmony singers, Johnson and Williams, are longtime bluegrass musicians, as is lead guitarist Olander. Drummer Prout was a New York rock `n` roller, and keyboardist Truman was trained at Brigham Young University in pop and jazz.

The band`s bluegrass and country aspects help it fit into Nashville`s current neo-traditional fashion, while its rock and pop overtones seem to impart a wider level of commercial possibility on the radio.

``I think the difference with Diamond Rio,`` says Williams, a nephew of bluegrass pioneers Bobby and Sonny Osborne, ``is its unique sound.``

That uniqueness didn`t make finding a recording contract any easier, though. While they hunted one, they worked 80 or 90 widely scattered shows annually (``Over the past 6 1/2 years we`ve played 46 states and Canada and Brazil,`` says Roe) and filled in with jobs in carpentry, ditch-digging, substitute teaching, flower delivery and lawn-maintenance.

``We`d get in off the bus at 6 in the morning and go straight to the lawn-care center and work 12- and 13-hour days,`` recalls Roe.

``We worked like convicts,`` Olander says.

When the recording contract came, it came gradually and from an unexpected source: Monty Powell, whom Roe had known since the two attended college-and even roomed and played music together-at David Lipscomb University in Nashville.

Powell first produced commercial jingles, then moved into songwriting about the time the Tennessee River Boys were quitting Opryland.

Powell began writing songs and working with Tim DuBois, who eventually was named head of Arista Records` new Nashville office. But Roe didn`t exactly pester his ex-classmate.