Joey + Rory Top Country Albums Chart With ‘Hymns’
On the heels of their recent Grammy and ACM nominations, Joey + Rory have achieved a career milestone with their new inspirational LP, Hymns That Are Important to Us, which debuted at Number One on the Billboard Country Albums chart. The album also charted at Number Four on the all-genre Billboard 200. With 70,000 units sold — including 68,000 in physical album sales — Hymns marks the married couple’s first-ever entry in the Billboard 200 Top Ten. Released on the couple’s own Farmhouse Recordings label, the record also topped the Christian album survey.
Released around Valentine’s Day, Hymns was mostly recorded last summer while Joey Feek was recovering from surgery to treat cervical cancer. She’s currently in hospice care at her home, facing a terminal diagnosis.
“I think Joey wants to capture the words and music of her childhood,” husband Rory Feek wrote on his blog at the time, part of his effort to document the life of his wife. “The music that makes this beautiful, tragic, crazy life somehow make sense.” Although the instrumental parts were tracked in a Nashville studio, Joey recorded her vocals at home and in several hotel rooms. Heidi Feek, Rory’s older daughter and a notable songwriter in her own right, appears on the album as a harmony vocalist.
Made up of gospel standards such as “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” “Softly and Tenderly” and “I Need Thee Every Hour,” the album is available in a deluxe edition at Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores. One dollar of each sale benefits the Loeys-Dietz Syndrome Foundation, in honor of Scout — the best friend of the Feeks’ two-year old daughter, Indiana — who has Loeys-Dietz syndrome.