Osborne Brothers get candid about their long journey of music and TJ revealing his sexual identity

Deale, Maryland is a popular place with boaters along the Chesapeake Bay. It’s a heaven on earth that’s also a homeland of one of the country’s music star duos, Brothers Osborne.

“It’s a little town, as people like to say, there’s more boats than people here,” said TJ Osborne. He and his older brother, John, used to catch crabs off the pier.

“Five to seven days a week we’d be in this water running around, swimming, playing,” added John.

The co-host of CBS This Morning, Anthony Mason, quizzed the duo trying to understand  where did their love for music developed from, to which TJ said, “When we first started wanting to learn how to play and sing, it was really so we could just join in with the family.”

They entered the music world when their parents enrolled them in music classes: “And surprisingly, had you heard us play a violin at that age you’d think, ‘Yeah, music was never gonna happen for these kids, they were terrible!” John started laughing.

The duo revealed that they practiced in a shed in the backyard of their house, which they showed Mason. “Does it look pretty much the same?” he asked.

“It looks way, way better,” John laughed. “There’s no beer cans laying around everywhere.”

When their father, Big John Osborne, a plumber and part-time songwriter, formed a band called Deuce and a Quarter, rhe brothers joined it John playing guitar and TJ on bass. Some of their earliest compositions were at the Happy Harbor Bar in Deale. That’s when Big John saw something in his boys: “I kinda noticed, ‘These are guys are pretty good.’ And I tried not to be The Dad – they’re my kids! – but I could see it.”

Brothers Osborne in 2012 finally signed a recording deal. John recollected, “We pulled into the driveway and I just started crying. Finally, all of the work that we have put in over the years and all of the setbacks and all the odd jobs and all the weird gigs I’ve played, finally, is starting to pay off.”

Behind hits like “It Ain’t My Fault,” their debut album, “Pawn Shop,” hit number 3 on the country chart.

In 2019, when the brothers were composing, “Skeletons,” John, was fighting against anxiety since childhood. But at that point, it hit a crisis point: “I remember calling our manager at the time, and I told him, ‘I can’t go in the studio. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know why I’m not happy. I’m depressed. My anxiety is through the roof. I can’t sleep. My ears are ringing.”

Mason further quizzed TJ, “Were you worried about him in the middle of all this?” To which he said, “Oh, big time, I could just look at him and tell he did not wanna be there, and that’s when I was like, ‘Wow, like, we need to go home now.’ We ended up canceling some dates.”

John added, “And with a lot of therapy, a lot of self-help, a lot of love from my friends and family, I was able to kind of get to a better place so we can finish the album. But going into this record, I considered quitting music … which is something I never in my life thought I would want to do.”

The pandemic became a boon for the brothers. It gave them some time to step back and think over: That’s only when TJ realized he finally had to be open about his sexuality: “And I remember sitting down and I was like, ‘I got, I have to come out. Like, I have to do this.”

In a Time magazine article on February’s issue, TJ revealed he is gay. A fact he’d shared with his brother just before they signed their record deal.

“There are not a lot of openly gay artists in the country music scene,” Mason said. “Were you worried at all about how this would be taken?”

TJ replied to this stating, “I guess I was. And I mean –I was worried all the way up until the day I did it. But I think once I finally, like, made the decision I was going to, I felt very sure in that. But it’s just really the fear of the unknown. Do we lose fans? Also, what I didn’t know was how was positive it would be. I did not know that.”

“You got a lot of support,” said Mason.

Sister Natalie and their parents, John and his ex-wife Tricia, completely supported TJ when he came out about his sexuality in February.

John Osborne Sr. said, “We were so happy. It was one of the best days of my life, I can tell ya’.”

Mason asked, “What’s your sense of where things are in country music right now?”

“I’ve never in my life been more proud to be a part of country music than I am today,” said John.

“Absolutely,” TJ added. “Country, for the longest time, was a pretty narrow lane of what it needed to sound like, what it needed to look like. And that’s slowly starting to change.”

John said, “This genre is beautiful and amazing, and the songwriting and the performing is incredible. And it’s only going to get better the more people we allow to do it.”