Diamond Rio has done a lot in the last few decades. The award-winning group released their debut single, “Meet in the Middle” in 1991, the same year their eponymous debut album was released. 34 years later, most of the original members remain, and Diamond Rio is still performing and recording music, with no plans of slowing down.
“We were having a hard time imagining the next six months without having to break up and do something else,” lead singer Marty Roe admits to Everything Nash, while on the Country Music Cruise, speaking of their early days. “To be quite honest, our dream was to get a record deal and maybe get chart singles. We were all musicians that had been making a living making music beforehand. And some of us may or may not have ended up doing that, but I think most of us would have in some other way shape or form. But once we had a single go No. 1, and you win all these awards, I remember Jimmy [Olander] and I sitting in a hotel room after the ACMs, and it was kind of a letdown.”
Olander recalls being in their hotel room after winning their first ACM Award, and realizing that it wasn’t the pinnacle that they once thought it would be.
“It was the journey,” Olander says. “And it turns out I didn’t know I was a cliché. I really loved the journey. I loved making records, writing songs, doing all that stuff.”
“The reality of that, if you’re able to make it through, it’s about the journey,” adds Roe. “The awards come and go, but we just feel really blessed to continue to be able to do it.”
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Diamond Rio is mostly the same, but they do have two new members, including the group’s first female. Carson McKee and Micah Schweinsberg, who replaced Gene Johnson and Brian Prout, respectively. For the rest of the band, it’s been a welcome breath of fresh air.
“We have been blessed to be around long enough that two of our guys literally just decided to retire,” says Roe. “And successfully so, and they’re doing very well, and I think they’re enjoying it.”
“She’s amazing,” praises Olander, while wearing a shirt with McKee on the front. “When she came in the band, and not saying anything about Brian and Gene, they wanted to retire … Carson and Michah, it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, all these new toys,’ and you got a bunch of old guys that are kind of waking up. I think I’ve got a size 11 Carson McKee boot in my butt to go, ‘Hey come on, man. We’re gonna pick; we’re gonna write some songs.’ So that’s what we’re getting with that.”
Diamond Rio’s 30-plus years as an entity is even more impressive because of how they remained true to who they are, without compromising their strong Christian faith.
“It’s not something that we were on the front of our t-shirt, necessarily,” Roe shares. “We try to let our walk be more loud than our talk. But it played a role in all the material we chose. We just wouldn’t choose to do some traditional subject matter for country music, at least during the ’70s and ’80s sometimes. We just wanted to be about positive things. Fun and positive — the positive side of relationships, not the negative.
“And then we got the opportunity later to do that a little more forward with a gospel project called The Reason,” he continues. “Won a Grammy with that project … God is what we’re about before Diamond Rio, and we’re thankful to say that Micah and Carson carried on that tradition. We don’t make any apologies for it, but we’re not trying to cram it down anybody’s throat. It’s a wonderful life.”
Diamond Rio is more excited than ever about their future, and the new music they are currently working on, including a song that is deeply personal to Roe.
“Jimmy and I wrote a song about ten years ago when my daughter left for college, which happened to be in Australia,” Roe reveals. “I was pining. She was my oldest, and just really scared for her — excited and scared for her. She was going to start in the praise and worship music business in Sydney, Australia for Hillsong, and it is as far away as you can go without getting closer again. I kept saying, ‘She’s on the other side of the world.’ Every time I would call her, she would either be getting up or going to bed, one or the other, and I would be doing the opposite. And he had this idea to write a song, ‘On the Other Side of the World.’
“We wrote it and nothing happened with it,” he adds. “And now we have a 25-year-old girl where a father/daughter duet makes sense. And so we did it. We cut it and it’s mixed and mastered just about and ready to come out.”
Find all of Diamond Rio’s music and upcoming shows at DiamondRio.com.
Josh Turner, Patty Loveless, Randy Owen, Shenandoah and more will headline the 2026 Country Music Cruise. The cruise will set sail on January 25 from Ft. Lauderdale, and visit Grand Turk and St. Thomas, returning on February 1. Cabins will be available beginning on February 6. Find more information at CountryMusicCruise.com.