Click Image to Download!

In both music and life, Brandon and Derek Campbell have been nearly inseparable since birth. The 27-year-old twins from Versailles, Ky., got their first public singing experience in a church choir, but when they weren’t learning worship songs, they were foregoing their classical piano practice time to perform to keyboard beats with their older brother Quentin or singing along to Disney Channel songs in their bedroom.

“I remember us never having to practice sounding good together,” Derek recalls. “We just sang together, and it worked.”

While their parents — a therapist mother and a chef father — were not artistically inclined, Brandon and Derek were consistently enrolled in music lessons and began dance lessons as teens. They also played several sports, though none offered the same high as performing.

“There was a feeling like no other that sports, as promising as that was, did not give. I never felt like I didn’t want to go sing or dance,” Derek remembers. “That’s when we realized performing was exactly what we were meant to do.”

Still, it took the Campbells some time apart to realize both that music, specifically, was what they were supposed to do with their lives, and that they were supposed to do it together. Brandon moved to Chicago and Derek to Bloomington, Ind., for college, and while they call that separation “probably the best thing that happened to us,” they also didn’t feel quite at home in their new cities.

“I think we needed that time away to be individuals for the first time in our lives,” Brandon reflects. “We needed that to come back and bring what we each had to the table, instead of bringing the same thing.”

Separately, the Campbells chose to move home, but together, they decided Nashville was where they should be — and when their mother offhandedly referred to them as “my Kentucky gentlemen,” they knew they’d found their duo name.

“Our time away was when we realized Kentucky was part of our identity more than we had thought,” Derek explains. The moniker reflects how their parents raised them to be kind, but real, and treat people well.

In August 2013, the Campbells moved to Nashville, and as they met fellow creatives and executives, they kept hearing the same refrain: They needed to write more songs. So, for that first year, they wrote one song each day.

Nearly a decade after their relocation, the Kentucky Gentlemen enter 2022 ready to share five new songs, all co-produced by songwriter and producer Chris Sligh (Rascal Flatts’ “Here Comes Goodbye”) and Grammy-nominated producer Matt McClure (Lee Brice, Dylan Scott). Their sound draws inspiration from the ‘90s country and R&B they favored during their childhood, which combine in “Whatever You’re Up For,” their sultry, yet upbeat next single. “Love Language,” meanwhile, is romantic in a different way: It’s the ultimate love song, a promise to give whatever will best show how much they value a special someone.

Listeners get a taste for Derek’s sense of humor in “Alcohol,” a country drinking song soaked with denial and a Motown groove. “Good Riddance,” too, is a kiss-off, albeit a less liquor-fueled, more empowered one — the male version of the “screw you” breakup song with a big ol’ saxophone solo.

But “Twice as Good” is easily the most vulnerable and personal of the Kentucky Gentlemen’s five new songs. It honestly expresses their frustrations at the inequalities they face as both Black men and gay men, but also their optimism that they won’t let the gatekeepers and naysayers stop them from being successful.

“You know, you get asked questions that other musicians don’t get asked. They always ask us, ‘Why are you here?’” Derek says. “It’s wild — not everyone is focused on the music and talent like they should be. Instead, they’re focused on how much you’re not like the others, when, in fact, my favorite thing about us is that we’re not just like the others.”

Adds Brandon, “We grew up having conversations with our parents about needing to be twice as good as our counterparts to achieve some of the same goals. For that reason, we’ve always worked our tails off honing our craft. But I don’t want to have to teach my kids about that part of the world. I want them to be twice as good because that’s what it takes to win, not because that’s what it takes to win while Black."

Co-writers Sligh, Mary Kutter, and Paul Wrock stayed out of the brothers’ way, chronicling their stream-of-consciousness feelings-turned-lyrics without interrupting them. “No one really said, ‘No, not that,’ or, ‘Yes, that!’ They just let us sing,” Brandon remembers.

“It got really emotional,” Derek adds. “They really respected and listened to our experience, and they just let us sing it out.”

The Kentucky Gentlemen know sharing their more serious personal experiences is just as important as showcasing their fun side. “Unless we call it out, we can’t fight it,” says Derek. “Showing up as your most authentic self over and over and over again will, with time, release so much weight off your shoulders and will start opening doors. It can be hard at times, but it's so much easier than wasting time not being true to who you are.”

“People put you into boxes for their comfort, not yours,” Brandon adds.

“We hope people see these two guys who just keep showing up as themselves,” Derek continues. “We understand the importance of where we’re going and what that means to people like us. We want to be the same folks that we wish we had always gotten to see on the main stage.”