The successful musical duo The Bacon Brothers - actor Kevin Bacon and film composer Michael Bacon - have released their latest album, "36 Cents." The siblings wrote/co-wrote all 12 songs on the album, but they didn't necessarily intend to use all of the songs for themselves.
"Some of the songs that we've written were with the idea that someone else would record them," Kevin admits to Country Weekly. "And country music is one of the few places where people will record something that they didn't write."
The movie and TV star is specifically referring to the track "Get a Little," which is part of their set list for their live performances as well. But the tune, he explains, is one that both brothers, along with their long-standing band, instantly fell in love with.
"I didn't write 'Get a Little' thinking that we were going to sing it, 'cause it's not really a song that's from my point of view, where I am in my life, for a number of reasons," Bacon adds. "I wrote it as a song hopefully that some young country singer would cut, but we finally were like, 'Well, we've got the song,' and the drummer said, 'Well, how come we're not singing it?' So we're singing it," reports The Boot.
With two thriving careers that keep the brothers busy, the Bacon Brothers admit that their success as a duo is a pleasant surprise.
"As a writer, I always think, 'That song I wrote is the last song I'm writing,' so when I turn around, and [we have] six records of original songs, definitely, I would not have thought that we would have that many songs," Kevin notes. "The first one that we did, 'Forosoco,' that was stuff that we got from 20 years ago and then did the first one. And then the ones ever since then, [there] have been two or three years in between each other to get a whole record's worth of tunes together."
The Pennsylvania natives now make New York City home, but they say their childhood roots and country music influences still make their way into their songs.
"We're out in the middle of Philadelphia, and there's no country music there, but there was a folk movement that involved a lot of country music that we didn't even know was country music," Michael explains. "So Jimmy Rogers and Hank Williams, we listened to their music, but it was just a part of the kind of music that we listened to. We weren't so aware of the country roots," according to The Boot.
Both Michael and Kevin are continuing their 'other' careers, but they have no plans to retire from music anytime soon.
"I'm not doing this so we can fly under the radar," Kevin insists. "If you're doing anything as performing, you want it to be seen. That hasn't happened, but we're always thinking about taking it to the next level.
"When I started out to be an actor, I feel like you have to live on two planes. The one is the sort of dreams that you never even want to admit to anybody: 'I want to see my name in lights,' or 'I want to be on a couch with Jay Leno,' or 'I want to be above the title,' or 'I want to win awards,'" he adds. "You don't even talk about that stuff because what you have to do is, get a job as a waiter, get some extra work, knock on doors to find an agent, get one line, just one line. It's all those little steps that you have to just wake up every day and put your focus on. But in the back of your mind, it's 'I'm going for it.'"
