NEED TO KNOW
- New country duo Ryan and Rory have released “Together Again”
- They’re joined by one of the song’s writers, Jamey Johnson, who tells PEOPLE he is “most humbled” to be asked. Another writer on the tune is Ryan’s father, hitmaker Keith Follesé
- Ryan is the former frontman of pop music powerhouses Hot Chelle Rae
It might seem unexpected for a long-established country powerhouse like Jamey Johnson to jump at the chance to collaborate with a brand-new duo like Ryan and Rory.
But that’s exactly what happened.
“I am most humbled that they invited me to join them,” Johnson, 49, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. “Ryan and Rory recorded such a great arrangement.”
In fact, there are plenty of reasons why this pairing made perfect sense when it came to the song “Together Again (feat. Jamey Johnson)” — a song written back in February of 2008 by none other than Johnson, WSIX-FM radio personality Gerry House and award-winning songwriter Keith Follesé.
“I treasure the memory of getting to write with Gerry House and Keith Follesé,” says Johnson of the song that was held by Alan Jackson for a long time but never recorded. “I consider them among the best songwriters with which I’ve ever had the privilege to work. When Keith told me his son remembered and loved the song, I was overjoyed.”
And yes, Keith Follesé’s son is none other than Ryan and Rory’s Ryan Follesé — the former frontman of pop music powerhouses Hot Chelle Rae.
“I remember just being like — I’ve never heard a country song like that in my life,” recalls Follesé, 38, in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE about the song he first remembers hearing about as a teenager from his dad. “I had never heard it from that perspective.”
“It’s about the feeling of complete devastation following a breakup,” adds Johnson. “That feeling reminded me of the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz losing all his hay and getting scattered around. We also mentioned Humpty Dumpty, the egg that fell from the wall and could not be reassembled despite all the King’s best efforts. Our characters all ask if maybe they all got lost on the way.”
This feeling of searching for something that feels like home turned out to a universal and timeless feeling — so much so that the song that never found a home until it found one in Ryan and Rory.
“I definitely thought that it is something I have never heard before,” adds Ryan and Rory’s Rory John Zak, 28, in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE. “I didn’t think it was like any other country song in the world, in any genre. So, I knew we had to cut it. It’s our first outside song, but at the same time, it’s not an outside song. It’s a damn special one.”
“It was just sitting there like a diamond in the rough for all this time,” adds Follesé, whose parents wrote Faith Hill’s No. 1 hit “The Way You Love Me.” “And my dad is over the moon. He’s excited to just realize that good songs don’t have an age. It doesn’t matter if it was written 20 years ago or last week or whatever. He knew it was special back then. It’s just a testament to that innate internal feeling songwriters have when they know they got something special.”
And there is no doubt that it is this song that feels like home for Ryan and Rory. “It’s like putting on an old baseball glove or something,” says Follesé of the song lovingly produced by Dann Huff. “There’s something about it that just sort of takes you away.”
“This is what was meant to happen,” adds Zak. “We were meant to be cutting the song and doing this.”
It’s also quite impressive that a new country duo who are finding viral success with addictive songs such as “Truck Stop” found the value of the ultra-traditional country song.
“We want to be able to have range in depth and its really cool to me, to be able to exercise that type of depth,” says Follesé. “People are never going to know what’s coming next from us. We’ve now figured out that we can do all these different things, as long as the unifier and the thing that ties us together is the sound of our voices.”
He pauses, adding “We’re just blessed to get to do this song because I think it takes a real level of experience and maturity to write something like ‘Together Again.’ And I’m not sure I’m there yet as a songwriter, but I hope I can write a song like this sometime soon.”
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