Little Big Town: A story out of a country song

By GAIL WESTERFIELD • Special to the Guide

In the past 11 years, Little Big Town has been through enough personal and professional ups and downs to create a country-opera album.

They’ve already had four record labels, and gone from selling over a million copies of a CD to touring in a van for gas money. They’ve endured relationship turmoil and the tragic loss of a member’s spouse; recently, two members married each other after spending many years as just friends.

Little Big Town

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park, Beaufort

Tickets: $25

Information: www.bftwaterfestival.com

But now they’re touring and collaborating with superstars as well as on their own, and member Jimi Westbrook says, “We have just scratched the surface of what this band can do.”

The band’s roots are in Nashville, where Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Schlapman became close friends in college. The two went their separate ways, but ended up reconnecting in Music City later on. There they found that a mixed-gender four-singer close harmony vocal band hadn’t been done in country music, so they added singers Westbrook and Philip Sweet. “When we sang together, it just felt right,” Westbrook says.

Each of the band’s four members writes together and brings “a big melting pot of a lot of styles” to their collective work. “We listen to everything,” Westbrook said. “We all grew up on country and gospel. Philip played in a band with his mom in an Arkansas theater.”

And their wide-ranging tastes have “a lot to do with our sound,” he said. “You may hear Eagles, Alabama and Fleetwood Mac influences, bluegrass tinges and more.”

Just a few months after coming together, Little Big Town landed its first record deal with Mercury Nashville, but didn’t put out a record. That relationship ended amicably over creative differences, and they relocated to Sony’s Monument Records. After a big launch, things didn’t go well there, either. “We were new,” Westbrook said, “and lost some key battles.”

So they left and began a new journey — in a van. “We played wherever we could for gas money,” Westbrook said. “All of us worked part-time and travelled on the weekends.”

The band saw during those travels that crowd reactions to their song “Boondocks” had been huge, and indeed, the group’s 2005 album, “The Road to Here,” sold 1.2 million copies on the independent Equity Music label. That success at an independent label was a bit of a coup in Nashville, but when their contract was up, they moved again when that now-defunct label began suffering financial problems.

At the time, though, they had a finished disc in hand, so they took that CD, “A Place to Land,” to Capitol Nashville, which released it in 2008. And they’re currently in the studio recording what will be their first true Capitol release.
“We love the writing and the studio process and the creativity,” Westbrook said. “We’re seeing what we can do and are in it for the long haul. We do it because we love it, not for fame and fortune. I don’t see that changing.”

There were changes on a more personal level during those years as well. Schlapman’s first husband died suddenly of a heart attack in 2005. After their seven years in the band together, Westbrook and Fairchild married each other in 2006.
And both Schlapman and Sweet had children in 2007.

But in spite of all that the band has been through personally and professionally, the original members have never changed.

In most bands, Westbrook said, “There are usually egos to deal with, but we have agreed to lay our egos aside and work like a family. Now, with the babies on the bus, it’s like a big hippie family.”

Like the country music genre, the band is thriving, so they’re travelling a lot, and though life on the road is renowned for its difficulty, Westbrook said he and Fairchild “get to travel the world together, and it’s great.”

Audiences at Little Big Town shows can clearly see how much the group loves what they do. “Our show is full of energy and lots of musical moments,” Westbrook says. “All four of us take turns singing lead, so the live show changes from (singer to singer). You’ll go away having a good time; that’s our goal. Especially in these difficult times, music is a great escape, so we want to provide that opportunity for people.”

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