Lonestar Biography

After selling over 10 million copies of seven albums, the guys in Lonestar could look back glowingly on their tremendous success with No. 1 singles like "Amazed," "My Front Porch Looking In" and "I'm Already There."

They could point with pride to floor-to-ceiling stacks of mail from grateful fans who professed how their songs touched -- or even saved --their lives. They had trophy cases overflowing with honors for their musicianship, songwriting and humanitarian work.

They felt good in knowing they'd spent the past five years at the very top of their game.

But they were driven for more. "Our main objective over the years has been to stay creative and make each project better than the last," says lead singer Richie McDonald. Keyboardist Dean Sams added, "We've been together ten years and have been lucky enough to win awards, have a lot of meaningful hits and sell a lot of records. But if you stop growing, there's only one way to go, and that's down and we're far from ready to go down."

The new album, Coming Home, finds them digging deep for new dimensions in their music, cutting loose with a new attitude of fun and pushing their performances into fresh new country-rockin' territory. Hooking up with a hot new producer, Justin Neibank, the band enthusiastically discovered a new level of musical creativity that spurred them forward to edgier, more passionate and more energized performances than they'd ever given in the studio before.

The new album marks Niebank's first time to produce Lonestar, although he initially worked with the band as an engineer in 2003. "We worked with Justin on the Greatest Hits record," recalls Michael. "He came and engineered some stuff, and the sounds he was getting were a lot more natural. They didn't sound as 'produced.'"

They were sold instantly on Niebank when they heard a demo he had produced on his own "side-project" Southern rock band Britton Jack. The demo was for infectiously groovy, feel-good toe-tapper of a tune called "Doghouse." Lonestar heard it and knew they'd found their guy.

"The way he had the drums in-your-face, but there was still clarity to the music," recalls Richie. "Everything had its own little place. I said, 'That's what we need to sound like. That's the sound, right there.'"

For his part, producer Niebank started with a simple vision -- to capture in the studio the passion, edge and versatility of Lonestar's exciting concerts.

"I felt like they needed to move a little closer to what they were doing live," says Niebank. "I felt like the new album needed to rock little harder, be a little more soulful, maybe a little less technical and have a little bit more twang. Just feel a little bit more like a band."

"He came out to hear us live several times and really loved what we do," says Dean. "I think this record has a very 'real' sound. People will hear it and then hear us live and go, 'Yeah! I get it.'"

"We wanted to have a record that was fun, that was 'up' and felt good," says Niebank. "That's what their shows are all about."

Neibank's operating mode in the studio centered around creating an open atmosphere of collaboration and experimentation in which the band members could thrive.

"You hope to get in there and set up a great environment for people to work in, and that they're going to blossom," says the producer. "I wanted to create a situation where things just happened naturally for the guys. And I was really pleased to see that they totally took to it."

"We had more input," says Keech. "Justin was really open to ideas. I think there's a lot of our personalities on this album. You listen to it and you know there's actually some human beings playing."

"This is our jeans-and-t-shirt album," says Michael. "No pretenses. We're not trying to be someone we're not. We got a producer who really liked the way we sounded and wanted to capture it on record. And we wanted to wear jeans and t-shirts and look like we all grew up in Texas, because that's what we did. I can listen to the tracks now and think, 'That sounds more like us than we ever have.'"

In the studio, Niebank encouraged the band to contribute their own musical ideas, then turned on the tape and captured their enthusiasm. In a bit of a departure from some of Lonestar's previous studio experiences, Niebank brought a streamlined, less-is-more approach to proceedings, with fewer overdubs and less musical layering. He pushed the guitar and drums for muscle and drive, seasoned with countrified touches of Dobro and fiddle, and de-cluttered the arrangements to cast more of a spotlight onto the group's distinctive vocal harmonies.

"We tried to keep it stripped down as much as humanly possible," he explains.

"We didn't stack the harmony vocals, we didn't overlayer," says Dean. "If it sounded good and big and real with what we had, we didn't add other stuff just because we could."

The song "I'll Die Trying" is a good example, says Nieback. "When Michael goes into his guitar solo, there's no rhythm guitar," he says. "It's totally like a live record. On a 'normal' record, people put tons and tons of more instruments on there and try to make it bigger and bigger. We tried to keep it as real as possible, but still have that impact."

Another difference in the studio this time around -- Niebank relied on fewer session "hired guns," session pros that are typically imported for any major recording session to supplement and sweeten the tracks with laser-focused precision. Instead, he urged the Lonestar members to contribute more themselves, even when it came to instruments that they'd never played before. On the song "Wild," keyboardist Dean made his debut on the Hammond B-3 organ, a complex, motorized wizard's box of an instrument with a double-tiered keyboard and two full octaves of foot pedals.

"I'd never played B-3 on a record before," says Dean. "We'd always brought somebody else in to play it. Justin goes, 'I want you to do it.' I said, 'Umm, I really don't play B-3.' But he was so insistent. I went out there and did it and I had a blast."

On the album's first single, "You're Like Coming Home," you can hear the notes of something not typically found on a country record -- a bouzouki, a stringed instrument of Greek origin. It's played not by a "bouzouki pro" session musician, but by Michael.

Justin "just brought that confidence to everybody," says Dean, "to make everybody's playing that much better."
"Richie has always been a phenomenal singer," continues Dean, "but something that Justin and Richie did, it stepped even Richie up a few notches."

A real benchmark on the album, says Niebank, is the song "I'm a Man," in which Richie gives one of his most impassioned vocal performances ever. "I don't think he sat down and pondered it," says the producer. "He really went for it, from the heart. That was a great moment in the studio where everything just came together. And we didn't do a zillion takes on it."
Other standout tunes on the new album include the funky "Noise"; the jaunty "What's Wrong With That"; the spring-break sand, sunburn and young love tale of "Two Bottles"; the humorous, hoedown-y "When I Go Home Again"; and a gorgeous power ballad, "I Never Needed You," featuring an intense, soaring guest performance by Sara Evans--who was actually somewhat under the weather when she came in for the recording session. "But you know what?" says Richie. "You couldn't tell it. She was incredible."

Sara's performance was so compelling, in fact, that it elevated her role to full duet status. "She nailed it," says producer Niebank. "We had originally thought about just having it be a straight background vocal. But she added just a little more personality and put a stamp on it that I really loved. It was perfect."

The band's members were responsible for co-writing eight of the album's new songs. Richie penned six, and Michael and Dean contributed one each.

All the band members agree that Coming Home marks a proud step up in their musical progression.