A friendship with Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver lead singer Jaime Dailey and a mutual love of classic, traditional bluegrass lead the two to leave their respective bands and form the duo Dailey & Vincent, who have just released their debut album on Rounder Records. We talked to Darrin about debuting the band, the importance of tradition and what is in store for the duo in 2008. Dailey & Vincent played the Grand Ole Opry recently… We debuted our first show on the Grand Ole Opry, thanks to Don Light.  That was a huge honor to be able to walk out there and do our new music that Jaime and I have put on our new record. If you are going to debut an act, you might as well do it on the biggest stage in country music. Yeah!  And you grow up as a child listening to it… It was just the Lord, it was… I can't say enough about it; it was such a blessing to be able to do that. The record features three or four songs arranged in the style of the old brother duos.  Is it important to carry on that legacy? It's extremely important for Jaime and I.  I really feel that with his high tenor and his high lead voice and the way we match, but we're not brothers at all, just friends.  But the blend of the voices, every time we sing together there's something there, I call it a buzz.  It comes from within our hearts and our minds, our bodies.  When we sing it affects me anyway, when I hear it, I can't even put it into words, I can't hardly even talk about it.  It's just something unique and it's from the Lord is all I can tell you.  It's just a uniqueness in our sound that goes back to the Louvin Brothers, the Wilburn Brothers, Bobby and Sonny, the Osborne Brothers, Jim and Jesse, the Stanley Brothers.  And really the roots of bluegrass are Charlie and Bill Monroe.  We want to take what we have today, and we have all this modern technology, and make some really great sounding duets with just the guitar and the mandolin and the two voices, just trim it down to where there's just real natural tones, no enhancements at all, to be able to do that and have that blend.  We want to keep it rootsy and keep it authentic in bluegrass, that's where our heart is and it's real important to us. After you guys had sung together a few times, what was the decision making process like for leaving your respective groups, which both of you had been in for many years? For Jaime, he always had the idea that he wouldn't be with Doyle.  He always planned on starting his own thing.  But for me it was a hard decision.  I prayed about it for many months and I've got a responsibility, of course he has too, but I've got three children and a wife.  I just don't make knee-jerk decisions to leave things, especially when Ricky's well respected and an amazing talent.  The plane was flying perfectly and to parachute out of a perfectly flying place, it took a lot of courage, but I believe in Jaime and I and I believe in what we want to do and the goals that we have set for us and I believe in our talent.  I believe it was the right decision to make.  I spent a lot of nights praying on my knees about it, I'll tell you right now. Tell me a little about going to play at the Vietnam Memorial 25th Anniversary. Oh my Lord.  On the new record we have a Jimmy Fortune cut called "More Than A Name On A Wall" and Jaime brought it to us to start rehearsing before we recorded it.  I had known the song for years, but they take on a different meaning when you start singing the songs.  I started singing harmony with him and trying to get through the duet parts on it and I just broke down bawling and crying.  I could not get through the song.  It just took on a new meaning to me emotionally.  We played it for Jimmy Fortune and he squalled in his car, he was proud of it.  He invited Jaime and I to go up for Veteran's Day to D.C. to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the war memorial being erected there in D.C.  When we walked up there with the Heads of State and all the people that had lost loved ones or family members of loved ones and Vietnam vets that were there to sing "More Than a Name On A Wall" it was pretty heavy.  It was all I could do to get through it. It was a huge honor.  Just being there and giving thanks to our veterans was a big thing for Jaime and I, but we got it one-upped, they gave us five names to read.  After that there were 58,000 names, they went through it for four days and had 2,000 volunteers to read some names.  That was one of the most difficult things I've ever done.  I couldn't even feel my legs when I walked up to the podium to speak; it was just the Lord giving me the strength.  I'm telling you there is just nothing like it, being able to give back to the people who've given us the freedom to be here and do what we love to do, play music and worship and raise our families and things, so we owe a great debt to our veterans. What are you looking forward to in 2008? I guess first, for me and Jaime, it's getting our record out to the people and seeing how the people will react to the music that we've put on here.  That's the first goal and the second goal is to entertain the people and give them a show.  Jaime's been up front with Doyle Lawson as lead singer and me being with Ricky and my sister before that and Jon Hartford before that and my family, I've always been in the background.  On our first show, at the Grand ole Opry, it was different for me to stand out front and sing a lead and interact with the people in a new light.  To me it's like starting over.  I'm learning new things, so in '08 I want to learn to interact with the audience. We played our first festival in Jekyll Island [Georgia], and I hate to keep going back to "More Than A Name On A Wall," but when we started singing that and interacting with the audience, feeling what they're feeling, this poor lady in the front row just started crying, it looked like from the bottom of her toes to the top of her head, she was just squalling, tears were rolling.  She had such a look on her face; I couldn't even sing the rest of the song.  I quit, I was just squalling, everyone was bawling, tears rolling and I've never felt that before except in a maybe a church service with Ricky every so often.  So I'm going to have to really learn how to interact, it's just a new feeling for me. I'm really going to try my hardest to do my best for our new fan base. Before you left Kentucky Thunder, did you play on Ricky's new album dedicated to the Blue Grass Boys of 1945-46? I only played on "Remember the Cross," unless he took me off, which he couldn't have done without recutting it. (laughs) We all stood around one microphone like the old days and did that song. Any bluegrass groups you would recommend listening to? A new young group, that I have friends in, is the Infamous Stringdusters.  They won Emerging Artist at the 2006 International Bluegrass Music Association awards.  They're all great guys, great musicians, great people to be around.  Another friend of mine that is an incredible talent is Randy Kohrs.  For more traditional bluegrass, Ricky's banjo player, Jim Mills, has three incredible bluegrass records that have Dan Tyminski on them.  IBMA male vocalist Tim O'Brien is singing on there.  Another one is Andy Leftwich, Ricky's fiddle player, he's got a CD called "Three Ring Circle" and it was nominated for some awards last year.  It's got Dave Polmoroy, Rob Ickes from Blue Highway and Andy Leftwich, they're amazing players and it's a really good record.  One more classic you can never get enough of is the Del McCoury Band.  I love those guys!  They are the real thing.