William Lee Golden on the Oak Ridge Boys’ Farewell Tour

The Country Music Hall of Famer talks about the group’s legacy.

Written by Amanda Tempel

The Oak Ridge Boys have been a cornerstone of country music for decades, known for their unmistakable harmonies, timeless hits, and lively concerts. As the group embarks on their Farewell Tour, longtime member William Lee Golden reflects on the journey, the loss of beloved member Joe Bonsall, and the new spirit brought by singer Ben James. In this conversation, he also opens up about recording new music, his first steps into songwriting, and the creative projects that continue to inspire him beyond the stage.

Amanda: The Oak Ridge Boys are currently on their Farewell Tour – what can fans expect from your shows?

William Lee Golden: We'll be doing a lot of Oak Ridge songs. You probably know we lost one of our singers last year, Joe Bonsall, who had been one of our singers for 50 years. It was heart-wrenching for the Oak Ridge Boys. We had a tough year last year with the losses we went through, but it seems like God works in mysterious ways. We have a young kid that joined the Oak Ridge Boys a year and a half ago when Joe passed him the baton and passed him a microphone.

Joe called him and said, ‘Ben, the Oak Ridge Boys need you. Get your singing britches on and go with 'em.’ He kind of passed the torch to Ben James. He's a young singer that Tony Brown had heard sing. Tony has produced more hit records than anyone out of Nashville, Tennessee. When he heard Ben James sing, he told him, ‘You've got that high lonesome sound that I've not heard with anyone else in the past 35 year – except for one guy. You're a brand-new generation with a Vince Gill voice with that high lonesome sound.’ That's a great compliment for any young guy coming up in country music.

Ben is a great kid. I've got grandkids older than Ben James, but he brings a new energy to the Oak Ridge Boys and a new sound to the Oak Ridge Boys. He is a great young singer. He was singing with a bluegrass group when we met him, Dailey and Vincent. They joined us on stage with “Elvira” and “Bobbie Sue” one night up in Wheeling, West Virginia. Joe passed him the mic that night and told him, ‘Take the second verse.’

At that time, Joe was suffering with ALS  - Lou Gehrig's disease - but it was heart-wrenching to watch him struggle for two years there before we lost him.

Like I said, God works in mysterious ways. Sometimes it's the darkest of the dark, then there's a new light that shines bright. Ben James has been that for the Oak Ridge Boys. He's a godsend and the people are loving him. He's getting rave reviews everywhere we go and we're happy about that.

It's something that we love to do. We love singing. Singing has a healing power to it. It's healing mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. And we certainly needed that after last year's events in our lives. It lifts us up and it's been healing for all the Oak Ridge Boys getting together again and singing our songs and harmonizing together. That's what we love to do. It's what we've loved to do for years. That's what brings us together actually - the music and the songs.

Amanda: Of course! I want to talk about some new music right now. Last year, you released Mama's Boys, and this is an album that you worked on with Dave Cobb, and he's produced five of your albums now. What does he bring out in the Oak Ridge Boys?

William Lee Golden: Dave, he's a young guy, like you said, he's produced Chris Stapleton and some of those guys. He's winning all the awards at the Grammys and different award shows now. We've known Dave for about 15 years. We first met him when Shooter Jennings wanted us to sing a song with him, “Slow Train”, on his album. Dave Cobb was producing that. We got to know Dave in that process. We talked to him about possibly doing a thing with the Oak Ridge Boys. He gladly agreed to, and at that time he was still living in L.A. and he would come back and forth. Our first album with Dave Cobb, it was called The Boys Are Back. We've done five albums with him now and Mama's Boys is the latest one.

There's one song off there that Dave Cobb brought to us that he got two guys to write for this album. He got Aaron Raitiere and David Lee Murphy to write a new song. All these songs are about mothers - each song has a different twist about our mamas and the most important people in our lives.

There’s a song called “Come On Home”. It's about a young boy leaving home. The video that we put out for this one song, because it was getting more streams than anything on the album, it actually has won a Telly Award. For the old guys to win an award like that is pretty unique for us.

Amanda: Now, speaking of music videos, if I remember correctly, there was a video that the Oak Ridge Boys did probably around 1977 from the Y'all Come Back Saloon album. It was released only in Australia, it was called “Easy,” and it was one of the first music videos in country music history. Anything you can share about making those early videos?

William Lee Golden: It was a great song that we had on one of our first albums, our second album, I think. Our first video was a song that we did called “I'll Be True To You.”  Again, that was when videos were just starting to be made for music videos. But that kind of tells you how old we are. When we get to singing together, you forget about age and I forget how old I am a lot of days when we're out there on stage

Amanda: Something that I thought was really special, because you have accomplished so much with your music, is the fact that you recently wrote your very first song. Tell us what inspired you to get into songwriting.

William Lee Golden: Music and songwriting are something that I've had a passion for since I was a small kid myself. My sister taught me how to play rhythm guitar and to sing harmonies when I was six years old. She was three or four years older than me, but she is the talented one in our family. She could play guitar, mandolin, and piano and still plays on that, but she taught me how to play music and sing. We sang as little kids - that's where I first started singing.

I wrote a song that my youngest son, Solomon, inspired me to write. It was some words that he had said. His mother and I divorced about 12 years ago. But having your young son, he was adolescent at that time, kind of pulled away from you, it was heart wrenching. I was missing him and thinking about some words that he used to call me on the phone when he was like five and six years old, and leave me a message if I was busy or couldn't answer a phone. He would say, ‘Hey dad, this is Solomon. I got my heart on you.’

Well, I thought that was unique. I used to save those little messages. It was his way of saying, ‘I love you’. It was a really unique way to me and I kept those messages and it was when I was missing him at home, alone one weekend, I started writing my feelings. That's when the song came about. It was by missing my young son and reflecting on the words that he had used, “I Got My Heart on You”. It was my first composition of writing and doing a melody - all basically on my own. I sang the song to a friend of mine and he wanted me to send it on my phone, just me, a capella. He got this young girl, Danni Stefanetti, a great guitar player, singer, and songwriter to play on it.

I was able to send that to Solomon. Hopefully, it’s something that he can treasure, because it was me singing my heart out to him. I was missing him and it was heart wrenching for me as a father to not be able to come home and see a young son.

Amanda: Definitely a very special song! I know beyond music, you are a very creative person. Have you been working on any photography or painting projects lately?

William Lee Golden: Yes, I have. During the pandemic, I got my family together. We were all sent home. Said you were to go home and lock your doors and put on two masks and if anybody knocks on your door to crawl under the bed. I watched all this craziness here for two or three weeks and I had to turn off all the negative hate on television news and call my family together. We got together and started singing these old songs by writers and singers that were essential to inspiring us to even want to be in music. We wound up recording 34 songs together with my family - three albums worth.

I did an album with the Oak Ridge Boys during the pandemic with Dave Cobb producing. That was the Front Porch Singing album, the last album that Joe sang with us.

But then, I did an autobiography during that time period and during the pandemic with Scot England helping me put it together. He talked to different people - I told him you could talk to anyone that I know and get their opinion of our stories. He did and he talked to all my singing partners and our manager. He talked to two of my wives, and my first wife got into some stories that I was not going to get into about my unfaithfulness, but it's stuff that I could not deny at that time. I sing a song called “Trying to Love Two Women”, and at the time I recorded it, it was kind of my life story. Anyhow, that's a whole other story.

I do have another project that I'm working on right now. For a few years I would paint on the road - landscape paintings. I would take my supplies and paint. I had a camera that I would take and go out and shoot landscape photographs. During the time, I kind of got better cameras and better lens and making photographs. Scot England, who helped me put my autobiography together, he knew I was taking a lot of photographs when I was traveling. And so, I have a book coming out of my photography - my photos of landscapes and places that I've been and different places in America that I've traveled and some traveling that I've done with my family to Europe and places. It'll have maybe 250 photographs in it of landscapes that I've taken through the years. That's a project that I just finishing up now.

Amanda: That's fantastic. You mentioned the albums that you recorded with your family - I know it's been an incredible loss with the loss of your son, Rusty, but you had the chance to record with Rusty and some of your other sons and grandchildren, that is quite a legacy to have that with your family. That had to have been so special to record all those albums together.

William Lee Golden: It is special and it's those things that I treasure. It's the things that we did together and were able to do together during the pandemic. And again, it's amazing how many positive things you can do when you turn off negative hate on network television news and apply yourself to doing things that are positive every day, rather than sitting around looking at terrible news on television, things you have no control over. There’s no need of weighing myself down with things I have no control over and we should actually look on the positive side of life. I feel like we're all blessed. It's a blessing that we get to do what we love to do. We love to sing and make music. Music has a healing power, like I said, and we certainly feel it in our life every day.

Amanda: Very well said. Over the years, over decades, you have played thousands of shows for millions of fans. As you say, goodbye to the road, what do you say to those fans who have spent so many years supporting everything that the Oak Ridge Boys do?

William Lee Golden: We have a lot of fans. There are those that come year after year, sometimes several times a year. They become more than fans - they become friends of ours. It's another family that we have out here - people that you see different times during the year. We treasure their friendship. We love to sing and they seem to support our singing. You should never take your fans for granted, you should treasure each one of them.

Amanda: William Lee Golden, it has been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you so much.

William Lee Golden: Thank you for letting me be here on your show. Hope we get to do it again! Thank you.

For more information on The Oak Ridge Boys and their 2025 tour, check out their website.

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