Line #3 Music/DiamondRio


1	Diamond Rio is an American CountryMusic band founded in Nashville, Tennessee, and one of the most prominent in the genre in TheNineties.
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3	Begun in 1982 as the Grizzly River Boys, then the Tennessee River Boys, the group was one of several recurring performers at the now-defunct Opryland USA, a country music theme park in Nashville. Fronting the original lineup were Matt Davenport, Danny Gregg, and Music/TyHerndon, along with Larry Beard, Mel Deal, Al Deleonibus, and Ed Mummert. The band quit working Opryland in 1985 due to a perception that their status as a theme park attraction discredited them as "real musicians" to the Nashville community. After several membership changes and unsuccessful attempts, they became Diamond Rio in 1990 and established the lineup that has been held since 1980: Marty Roe (lead vocals), Gene Johnson (mandolin, guitar, fiddle), Jimmy Olander (lead guitar, banjo), Brian Prout (drums), Dan Truman (keyboards, piano), and Dana Williams (bass). By 2022, Carson [=McKee=] and Micah Schweinsberg respectively replaced Johnson and Prout following their retirement.
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5	Their debut single "Meet in the Middle", released via Creator/AristaRecords Nashville in 1991, made them the first country band ever to hit #1 on the country music charts with a debut single. Over 30 singles followed in the band's tenure, including four more chart-toppers: "How Your Love Makes Me Feel", "One More Day", "Beautiful Mess", and "I Believe". Although the hits faded after the TurnOfTheMillennium, the band has continued to record and play to this day.
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7	The band's sound is defined by three-part bluegrass-style vocal harmonies, with an unsually heavy rhythm section for the country genre, alongside a myriad of solos on piano, mandolin, and Telecaster. While later albums borrowed more heavily from pop and Christian music, the same six-man lineup has held since 1989, and other than string sections, they have never used session musicians on recordings. Their fourth album, 1996's ''IV'', was the first country album to be recorded entirely on a digital console.
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9	Diamond Rio are also thirteen-time Grammy Award nominees, with one win in 2011 for ''The Reason''.
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12	!!Principal Members (Founding members in '''bold''', current members in ''italic''):
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14	* '''Larry Beard''' – guitar, fiddle, banjo (1982–1985)
15	* Anthony Crawford – vocals (1983)
16	* '''Matt Davenport''' – bass, lead vocals (1982–1988)
17	* '''Al [=DeLeonibus=]''' – piano (1982–1983)
18	* '''Danny Gregg''' – guitar, lead vocals (1982–1986)
19	* '''Music/TyHerndon''' – vocals (1982–1983)
20	* Gene Johnson – mandolin, guitar, fiddle, tenor vocals (1987–2022)
21	* ''Carson [=McKee=]'' – mandolin, fiddle, tenor vocals (2022–present)
22	* '''Ed Mummert''' – drums (1982–1983)
23	* ''Jimmy Olander'' – guitar, banjo (1985–present)
24	* ''Marty Roe'' – lead vocals, guitar (1984–present)
25	* Brian Prout – drums (1989–2022)
26	* ''Micah Schweinsberg'' – drums (2022–present)
27	* Virgil True – vocals (1984)
28	* ''Dan Truman'' – keyboards (1983–present)
29	* Jimmy "J. J." Whiteside – drums (1983–1985)
30	* ''Dana Williams'' – bass, baritone vocals (1989–present)
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33	!!Albums:
34	* ''Diamond Rio'' (1991)
35	* ''Close to the Edge'' (1992)
36	* ''Love a Little Stronger'' (1994)
37	* ''IV'' (1996)
38	* ''Unbelieveable'' (1998)
39	* ''One More Day'' (2001)
40	* ''Completely'' (2002)
41	* ''The Reason'' (2009)
42	* ''I Made It'' (2015)
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44	!!Diamond Rio and its works provides examples of:
45	* CareerEndingInjury: Subverted by half of the membership. Before their debut album, Gene Johnson [[{{fingore}} slashed his thumb in a carpentry accident]], Dana Williams injured his legs in a boating accident, and Jimmy Olander developed a tumor on his esophagus. However, all three were able to heal in time for their first album.
46	* ChronologicalAlbumTitle: ''IV''
47	* ConspiracyTheorist: The subject of "It's All in Your Head" is the narrator's father, a snake-handling preacher who believes these: "We never walked on the moon, Elvis ain't dead / You ain't goin' crazy, it's all in your head".
48	* {{Crunchtastic}}: "Unbelieveable" contains the word "gotta-have-able".
49	* DarkerAndEdgier: "It's All in Your Head" has by far the darkest lyrical themes in the band's catalog, concerning (in order): an unwed teen mother dying in childbirth, a fundmentalist conspiracy theory-spouting preacher father who picks fights with "sinners" in bars and eventually dies of snakebite at a Pentecostalist revival, and the narrator of the song himself, the son who it all happens to.
50	* DoubleDoubleTitle: "Mirror, Mirror"
51	* EpicFail: The narrator in "Beautiful Mess" put salt in his coffee and his shoes on the wrong feet.
52	* GoodNewsBadNews: The chorus of "You're Gone."
53	-->And the good news is I'm better for the time we spent together\
54	And the bad news is\
55	You're gone
56	* HomesicknessHymn: "Mama, Don't Forget to Pray for Me" is sung from the perspective of a man who's moved away to a new job where he is very successful, yet he's unhappy because he bitterly misses his home and family, and fears that the pressures of his current life may change him for the worse.
57	* JekyllAndHyde: Present in "Bubba Hyde", where the song's main character Barney Jekyll is a grocery store employee and volunteer firefighter who seems like an unhip ordinary man, except on Friday nights, when he dons a leather jacket and zebra boots, and becomes the party animal "Bubba Hyde".
58	* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: The albums from ''Unbelieveable'' onward, their sound began taking a much stronger pop influence.
59	* LongRunnerLineup: The band's lineup has not changed since 1989.
60	* LyricalShoehorn: "How Your Love Makes Me Feel": "Then there's a cow in the road and you swerve to the left / Fate skips a beat and it scares you to death..."
61	* TheManInTheMirrorTalksBack: Played with on "Mirror, Mirror":
62	-->Mirror, mirror, on my wall\
63	Tell me, who is the loneliest fool of all? \
64	Oh, wait a minute, I believe I see \
65	The answer staring back at me
66	* MassiveMultiplayerCrossover: In 1994, they recorded a cover of Music/MerleHaggard's "Workin' Man Blues" with then-labelmates Lee Roy Parnell and Music/SteveWariner, which was credited to "Jed Zeppelin".
67	* MotorMouth: "Unbelieveable" has a series of very rapid-fire lyrics, as does "That's Just That".
68	* NewSoundAlbum: ''Unbelieveable'' found the band employing string sections for the first time, while generally pursuing a more pop sound than the predecessors.
69	* ProductPlacement: "Bubba Hyde" name-drops A&P supermarkets and Hai Karate aftershave.
70	* SignatureStyle: As one of the only country bands to rely almost exclusively on their own members for musicianship, they were able to develop a more coherent sound than most of their contemporaries. Most of their songs combine elements of country (twangy guitar solos), rock (heavier drums and bass than typically found in country), and bluegrass (three-part vocal harmony, prominent mandolin).
71	* VocalEvolution: Marty Roe's voice started slipping at the TurnOfTheMillennium, with the band noticing that he was giving dreadful performances in concert. They tried lowering the key on some songs, having Dan Truman sing lead a few times, and employing AutoTune, but nothing worked. His voice was ultimately restored after he consulted a vocal coach who determined that he was straining his voice by trying to overcompensate for a small degree of hearing loss, and was able to restore his voice to the way it sounded in TheNineties.
72	* WantonCrueltyToTheCommonComma: "Walkin' Away" has a subject/verb disagreement in the line "These occasional moments of weakness only makes our love more strong."

Context Music / DiamondRio