Today's Country

With a catalog that includes top ten songs like “What Do I Know,” “Love is Stronger Than Pride,” and their #1 hit “Daddy’s Money,” Ricochet are certainly not strangers to country music fans. Though they have been absent to the radio audience for the past eight years they have continued to tour relentlessly brining their music to the masses of fans. They have recently released “Ricochet Reloaded,” which allows fans to be treated to six brand new songs and re-mastered versions of six of their classic songs and more importantly has brought them back to the radio with singles like “I Had To Be Me” and their forthcoming single “Feel Like Fallin’.” We had the opportunity to catch up with original member/bassist Greg Cook to talk about the new material, the singles, the current country music format and its acceptance of them now, and more.

Official Ricochet Website 

Ricochet Myspace 

Ricochet - "Ricochet Re-Loaded – Hits Plus" Review 

1. It has been 8 years since new Ricochet music was released and with “Reloaded” you combine 6 brand new songs with 6 of your classic hits. Why did you choose to bring your new music out in this way?

We didn’t really make a decision to do it that way, a conscious decision anyway. We did 3 or 4 songs in a few different sessions with some of it ending up on the cutting room floor and at the time we had a compilation of the different sessions in the can already. The old stuff that we re-recorded for it was the last stuff we did. The big hits were recorded and we thought hey if we add the re-recorded stuff to the project we will have some new material and sort of a greatest hits package too. So it really kind of happened backwards.

2. Why did you feel that now was the perfect time to reintroduce your music to country radio?

We are lucky in that we have a fairly recognizable sound being a harmony band. There have been a lot of changes to radio and the rules associated with it. The rules that were in place in the 90’s and early 2000’s are gone now. I think we have made a lot of friends at radio that do remember us and our music. We didn’t make a conscious effort to go to radio we just recorded what we wanted to this time with no one telling us what to do or deciding what songs were good for us or not. We just loved these songs and the hits are a part of our lives that stay with you and are very representative of who we are.

3. How has the current country music format accepted the new material and did it go above your own expectations so far?

They have accepted it well. We always have people in the radio business asking us how we’re doing and where we’ve been. We did the general CRS interview thing and the CMA Awards as well as a huge radio tour that showed people we were just really down to earth guys. I think I am the luckiest guy in the world. Anyone that gets to use the word play in their job description, whether its play football, play music, is lucky. People can tell that we love this, and that we feel lucky to be doing it. Radio embraced the album and we kept hearing back from them that they liked the record. We’re kind of doing this on our own now too. We hired people and have our own label out of our pocket, so as far as our expectation with it, things are taking longer now then we are used to them taking, but that’s a good thing. The longer a song stays on the charts it takes on more identity then just racing up the charts and falling off.

4. Why did you choose “I Had To Be Me,” to first represent the new material?

We really loved the song and since we are now calling the shots we were smart enough guys to listen to the people we hired. We were on the fence with a couple of songs but they kept saying that one was the one. It’s difficult to put out a single because you spend hours with them. Each and every song is like your baby/child so it makes it hard to be objective. No one thinks that songs they wrote are terrible so we put our two cents on the table but we listened to people as well.

5. You also offered the single as a free download to fans. How beneficial has the internet been to you this time around that you didn’t have 8 years ago?

Don’t know how to answer that one exactly. The internet is a huge benefit and it’s like we all have the same store to sell our records at. Us, Keith Urban, Brad Paisley, to Beyonce and Jay-z, so the objective is to get them to come to our store. I have daughters that have IPOD’s and are listening to music they get from I-Tunes all the time. Music is more popular now that it ever has been because of that. You can’t look at a bus carrying a basketball team and not see a kid without his or her IPOD out. They are all listening to music. That’s the good side of the internet.

The bad side is that you don’t really know what people are getting or listening to and I don’t even want to get into the illegal downloading stuff. Whole labels used to run based on CD sales. I mean if you couldn’t sell that piece of plastic then it didn’t matter if you had a big hit on the radio or not. I think with the internet and downloading CD sales are a thing of the past and it is a trend that is going to continue going that way. So it’s a double- edged sword. We are all on the internet now so it’s about who has the best marketing on the internet and that’s always evolving and changing.

6. For a follow-up, you are going to be releasing “Feel Like Fallin’.” Why do you feel this song is the perfect follow-up and what expectations do you have for the single?

Again we were just tossing different ideas out there and our promotion team overwhelmingly picked that one due to the timing and sound, etc… We recorded that song a long time ago, 2004 was our first session on that song and we loved it the first time we heard it. It showcases our background vocals and that’s kind of our calling card. With the expecation for it; as long as we have been in the business we are seasoned enough to know what we want from it but we don’t get our hopes up too high. It may sound more like what people expect from us then “I Had To Be Me” did, but I think it will do what it is supposed to do which is set up the third single in the process to re-introduce us to country radio.

7. Which one of the new cuts from “Reloaded” stands out as your personal favorite and why?

Well it is easy for me to “Keep You Loving Me” cause I wrote it, but I won’t say that one. I would say “Beauty Of Who You Are” is one of my favorites. It is really out of the box for us. It is a little bit R&B for a country album. Marc Broussard originally did it and I was listening to it on the bus and said this song would make a perfect country ballad. It is different for us. A little sexy, R&B sound, but we all have roots in that style of music and have played it before.

8. Over the course of the last 8 years, in between releasing music you continued to tour and perfect your live shows. What can people who have never seen your live show expect from it when they come to see you?

We have been doing our live show for a long time and we decided a long time ago that the one thing that other people can’t control is the live show so we decided a long time ago to take control of that. We always say that if people want to listen to the record they can stay home and do that so if they come to the shows they can expect a lot of live audience interaction and surprises. There are a couple of songs that part of the band plays horns on. “Blink Of An Eye” is an up-tempo, fun song that on the recording had a prominent fiddle part so when our fiddle player left the band we decided not to replace him but we wanted to keep that song in our set so out of the blue we tried it with horns and it worked. So then we took another song, “I Can’t Dance,” and did it on that one too. We all play drums  and a place in the show near the end of the set. Heath played drums in high school, I can play a little bit, Dwayne dabbles in everything so we decided we’d do a drum line thing and that is the single most complimented thing we get. We always stay after the shows and sign autographs and hear things like “Man you sounded great tonight.” That’s a nice compliment to get, but we love hearing things like “Man I had a ball tonight. This was the most fun I ever had at a concert.” That tells us that we did our jobs right.

9. You are playing a lot of fairs and festivals. What do you like the most about shows like these and how have the fans been reacting to your performances?

They are all different. We play big state fairs and little county fairs. Usually with these shows you can interact with the crowd well and we generally get a good reception. It is obvious to anyone watching that we are having fun doing this. At a lot of the fairs we can get down and close to the audience and see a lot of the kids and youth of America having fun and singing. We do songs from the 80’s and 90’s and we see little kids singing AC/DC songs so it is fun.

10. What piece of advice can you offer to someone that is looking to break into the music industry?

That’s a loaded question. I like to always say that you don’t pick music it picks you. Part of me knows that the sensible thing to do is take my college degree and get a real job, but there was 4 or 5 years where I didn’t play music and there was a hole. We are lucky to do what we do as a living. The most important advice I can give is to just stay with it. In this business it is almost true that tenacity is just as important as talent so people should keep playing their music, playing live shows, knock on doors. You can’t win if you quit. The sensible thing is to have something to fall back on, but there are groups of people that have passion to do something whether it is flying planes or playing music. I wouldn’t trade places with anyone. I am really blessed to be doing this, and if you get involved youa re going to have to want to do it really bad. So stay with it, hone your craft, don’t give up. You can’t really set a timeline and say if I don’t make it by this time then I am done either. Garth Brooks got turned down by everyone in town before he did anything, so did Elvis when he came here. Believe in yourself.