Biography
Little Big Town
“If you believe in something, you’ve got to fight to see it through,” declares Little Big Town’s Jimi Westbrook. “We won’t ever give up.”
If ever there were a statement that summed up Little Big Town, this would be the one. Not only in their unfaltering determination and dedication to the band and their music despite the realities of the “one step forward, two step back” obstacles of the music business. But the statement also defines who they are individually and how fiercely the foursome’s bond is - supporting each other through difficult personal trials and rejoicing together the many triumphs.
Little Big Town strongly believed in the music on A Place to Land—so when a change of record label left it in limbo shortly after its release, they didn’t give up on it. Band mates Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Phillip Sweet and Westbrook found A Place to Land at Capitol Records Nashville both literally and figuratively.
“We want the world to hear our music,” Georgia native Schlapman says. “It’s our heart and soul. It’s who we are, and we put so much of ourselves into it. It’s how we tell the story of our lives.”
A Place to Land wasn’t re-released as the album plenty of Little Big Town fans already knew and loved—it is much more. At Capitol, three brand-new studio tracks were added demonstrating the group’s continuing growth and evolution, while “Life in a Northern Town,” the live collaboration with tourmates Sugarland and Jake Owen, captured its onstage sizzle. That all-star cover of the 1986 Dream Academy hit intended as a video-only memento of the group’s stint on 2007’s CMT on Tour, became a surprise radio hit due to spontaneous listener demand. The single was Top 30 and also nominated for a Grammy, ACM and CMA for “Vocal Event of the Year.” “The phenomenon of how it happened was really awesome,” Sweet says. “It’s been amazing.”
Among the tracks debuting alongside “Life in a Northern Town” was one that hearkens back to the beginnings of Little Big Town almost 10 years ago. Wayne Kirkpatrick’s “Love Profound” was among the first songs the group ever sang together, before they even met the man who wrote it and who would later become their producer. “It’s a beautiful song about the power of love and what it gets you through,” Schlapman says. “The lyrics ring absolutely true to the four of us individually and as a band. We’re a family, and the love we have for each other and for the music is the reason we’re still around.”
A Place to Land, the follow-up to 2005’s smash The Road to Here vividly reflects the emotional currents and concerns of the band from intense soul searching and their upcoming album (released Spring 2010) will be no different. "We've been writing all year getting ready for this record,” says Fairchild. “We're just dying to share the new music. We've been playing with more traditional sounds, mixing influences of things we grew up listening to with our own approach. We've also been incredibly impacted by the struggles people have been going through during these difficult days. There's a song called Lean Into It that I think will mean a lot to people."
The group songwriting and complex vocal interplay is the result of almost a decade of deep friendship and camaraderie among the members. Fairchild and Schlapman go back even farther, having begun singing together while students at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Both moved to Nashville in the mid-1990s, and invited old Alabama friend Westbrook to join them in 1998. Sweet completed the band later that year.
"There's a special connection between the four of us, for whatever reason," Westbrook says. "Who knows why that happens? You like to think that maybe it was meant to be, and I really do believe that. This group of people came together for a purpose."
The band’s uniqueness made it a hard sell at first in the ever-cautious country music field, but Little Big Town pushed forward with characteristic determination. Their patience paid off with The Road to Here, which has sold over a million copies and produced four Top 20 hits including the Top10 smash "Boondocks," the Top 5 "Bring It On Home," "Good As Gone" and "A Little More You," and earned them nominations at the Grammy Awards, the Country Music Association Awards, Academy of Country Music Awards and CMT Music Awards.
They toured with superstars like George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban and Martina McBride, and collaborated onstage with rock legend Lindsey Buckingham for an episode of CMT’s Crosssroads. Another musical luminary, John Mellencamp, invited them to sing on his Freedom’s Road album. (Fairchild is also prominently featured on Mellencamp’s Life, Death, Love and Freedom and in his “My Sweet Love” video.)
Along with those triumphs came personal changes: all the members have married since 2006 (Fairchild and Westbrook to one another), and Schlapman and Sweet are both the parents of young daughters. But there have been challenges as well, particularly the group’s exit from its former record label just after the initial release of A Place to Land. The members entertained offers from several labels before settling on Capitol Records Nashville. “Looking at the roster there and the things they wanted to do, it felt like that’s where the music belongs,” Fairchild explains. “We went with a gut feeling, which is what we’ve always done.”
“All we ever wanted to do was to travel around and write songs and play them for people,” Westbrook says. “There’s great joy in that for all of us. We have a great life doing what we do, and we just want to keep doing it. We want to keep exploring, growing and finding new challenges.“
The road to here has been an eventful one, for certain—and the road ahead promises to be just as exciting.