Big & Rich Born Again with Bon Jovi

Hillbilly Jedi, the new album from country duo Big & Rich is available for pre-order. This is relevant to the blog because they collaborated with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora on a track called Born Again. And if you go to their Hillbilly Jedi site and put your email address in the space provided, you can listen to the song.

The link is here: http://hillbillyjedi.bigandrich.com/

(Of course, this means subscribing to their newsletter, but you should be able to unsubscribe later if you wish... or else, just wait for the track to pop up somewhere else for free.)

EDIT: Someone has recorded the streaming audio and uploaded it here.


I'm not familiar with the Big & Rich back catalogue, but Born Again sounds like something off Lost Highway to me -- There are serious shades of We Got It Goin' On (which isn't surprising) and Put the Boy Back in Cowboy on first listen.

Big & Rich and Richie and Jon...

They worked together on We Got It Going On, the inane foot-stomper of Bon Jovi's Lost Highway album and now they've come together again for Big & Rich's new album:

It's been more than five years since Big & Rich released a new album, and they're coming back in a big way. The duo has partnered with two parts of legendary band Bon Jovi for collaborations on their upcoming album. Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora have been writing songs with Big Kenny and John Rich, as well as playing on the recording sessions, and even helping give the new project its title.

"It came out in a writing session we were doing with Richie Sambora and [Jon] Bon Jovi we were doing the other week," Big Kenny told Nashville newspaper The Tennessean. "They are going to record the song on our new album and a line in the song was 'hillbilly jedis with attitude.' All of a sudden, Bon Jovi stops and says, 'Hillbilly Jedis? That's it. I'd buy that shirt.' We were like, 'Hey, that's about a descriptive as you can get of what we are.'"

If I may be permitted to get this off my chest... The plural of Jedi is Jedi (without the S)! ;) But anyway, you can read the rest of the article here.

And here's a small taste of the track they wrote together, Born Again:


Thoughts?

In other news, JBJ is playing solo (well, with a backing band dubbed the Kings of Suburbia) at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Florida on July 26, 2012.