Forget the fancy studio. TJ of Brothers Osborne may have found one of his best songwriting environments beneath the glow of a Waffle House sign.
During the duo’s week hosting Backstage Country with Elaina Smith, TJ revealed that one of the songs on Watertown, “R.I.P.,” began with one of his increasingly regular solo visits to Waffle House.
TJ's Therapeutic Visits to Waffle House
For TJ, those breakfasts aren’t simply about pancakes, hash browns and coffee. He described his Waffle House trips as a form of “therapy,” explaining that he often goes alone, eats quietly and watches the unpredictable theater unfolding around him. “It's like a Waffle House therapy. Plus, it's like, if I've got no one, you don't need anyone to talk to. You just get to watch. It's like a dinner theater, honestly.”
TJ added, “It is amazing. It's never not entertaining, but a lot of times I just go in there and kind of to my own thoughts, and I just am eating. But anyways, I tend to have a lot of my ideas there.”
The idea for “R.I.P.” arrived during one of those visits. TJ had a simple thought: “R.I.P.” He explained, “I don't know that I've ever heard that before. I'm sure someone else has written it, but I haven't heard it. And then that day, I went into the right, and I was like, hey, I have this little thing. And then we just started jamming around on something real simple.”
The finished track eventually developed into something that felt unmistakably Brothers Osborne.
The Brothers Osborne's Sound
Smith even compared the song’s energy to the duo’s earlier hit “It Ain’t My Fault,” a connection TJ embraced rather than resisted. He explained that different sections of “R.I.P.” reminded him of different eras of the brothers’ sound. “It's really, really fun. There's, like, this familiarness with it, but especially when it gets into the kind of the clapping post-chorus thing, I do feel like it sounds like ‘It Ain't My Fault.’”
Brothers Osborne - R.I.P. (Official Music Video)
TJ added, “And at first I was like, ‘Does it sound like it too much?’ And then I kind of thought to myself, ‘Well, that's what we sound like.’ You know, if I can rip anyone off, it's me and John.”
“It’s hard to sue yourself,” John joked.
