When John Rich met Big Kenny in 1998, both had been through the record industry wringer. Rich had been in the country band Lonestar before launching a brief solo career. Big Kenny didn't become a full-time musician until he was in his 30s, but a big record deal and the ensuing album went nowhere, so he launched a wild outfit called luvjoi.
Introduced by friends, they liked the first song they wrote and loved the second, "I Pray for You." They weren't ready to record together quite yet, so the song became John's first single as a solo artist. John and Big Kenny became friends and writing partners, and they kept jamming at each other's shows and clambering onstage with singer-songwriter pals like James Otto and Jon Nicholson. Eventually, Big & Rich signed to Warner Bros. Nashville. Paul Worley, the company's new chief creative officer, had produced the Martina album with Martina McBride; it included "She's a Butterfly," which John and Kenny had written after meeting a teenage girl who was suffering from brain cancer at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. Worley's daughter was also a regular at the Muzik Mafia shows, and at her urging he met them in his new office.
Horse of a Different Color, the first fruit of Worley's signing, starts with a sermon: "Brothers and sisters," declaims Big Kenny, "we are here for one reason and one reason alone: to share our love of music." It ends, an hour later, with a hymn of sorts: "Live This Life," which features a wailing background vocal by McBride. In between are party songs and sober songs, drinking songs and thinking songs, songs about the legends of the West and songs about the casualties of our streets. Often as not, the songs fall into a few of those categories at the same time.
"We never went, 'Nah, this isn't a country song,' or 'This doesn't sound like something anybody would cover,'" says Kenny. "We were writing stuff that was out there. We've written bone country and psychedelic rock and everything in between. We just love music, and we like taking all aspects of it and seeing what comes out
"What we're doing now is American music," he adds. "And the most American music format that I know of is country. That audience understands us. People that listen to country music don't just listen to country music. The kids who are coming up listen to Johnny Cash, then Kenny Chesney, then Ludacris or Outkast or Kid Rock. I mean, John's little brother wears a John Deere hat and an Eminem t-shirt.
"And Nashville's going to catch up to that," says John. "They want to."

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