The Emersons are modest people. Running a farm, along with raising children to be decent, God-fearing and hard-working, is an all-day, all-week business; there isn’t much time for pretension.
Even among the rustling pine trees in their little bit of Washington state, however, teenage boys may pick at guitars, noodle out a few songs that sound a bit like the Eagles, imagine rock stardom and dream of being discovered.
The true story of the Emerson brothers would be like thousands of others, except for the fact that they were discovered. And that they were discovered, thanks to the internet, 30 years too late.Donnie Emerson had taught himself to play most instruments and was writing and arranging songs by the time he hit his middle teens; the family rated him a genius.
His older brother Joe played just-about-adequate drums, which meant they had a band. The family got behind it; their dad built them a fancy studio in a barn; they even cut a record, posing for a cover photo in white flares and flowing shirts like down-home John Travoltas.It was that record, a predictable failure in 1979, that was picked up and made suddenly popular by vinyl nerds in the first decade of this millennium, something the Emersons knew nothing about until a record producer called, wanting to release a remastered version.
Read more on deadline.com