LBT Share Some CMA Stories

Earlier this month, Little Big Town won the CMA’s Vocal Group of the Year Award for the third straight time. This week, they join Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton to talk about that exciting night. Lon started by saying, You looked surprised!  “We were, we were stunned, we’re still stunned!”  Of course, after the awards, there are the post-awards parties.  Karen said, “We went to the Universal party to celebrate with our label-mates.  Lady Antebellum did a little karaoke.  Dave told us they rehearsed forever to sing all those 80s and 90s songs.  My favorite was when Darius Rucker went up and did ‘No Diggity.’  That was awesome!  He killed that one.”

People are still talking about LBT’s CMA performance of “Day Drinking” with lighted suits.  Karen said, “Somebody from management had the idea of the lighted suits, and then we talked about doing a collaboration, and the producer suggested Ariana Grande, and she said yes.  It took three weeks to make those lighted suits.  They weren’t doing well the morning of the show.  They flew the lighting tech in from Los Angeles at the last minute to make sure it came off right.” Kimberly had this, “Right before we walked out, my right hip shorted out!  So we put black tape on my left hip to make them symmetrical.  It was crazy!  We couldn’t bend over, we couldn’t hug people, we couldn’t sit down, it was like we were wired for bombs.  It was crazy!” So how’d it work? Karen said, “Our lighting director was running it off a laptop computer.  Just before we went on, he saw that his battery was at 13%.  Fortunately, someone found him an extension cord, but he was in a full body panic right before the show.”

Little Big Town also performed “Smokin’ & Drinkin'” with Miranda Lambert: “It felt like hanging out with our friend, which she is.” Phillip said, “It felt so natural, I loved getting to participate in that, it was so fun.”  Kimberly added, “I loved that it was almost under-produced, it was just the raw voices standing on stage, nothing fancy, I loved the simplicity of that.” Lon asked, Had you wanted this song for your record? “Yes, we lost the arm-wrestling to her.” Karen said, “We had a song she wanted, and she had a song we wanted, and she asked us to sing on her record.  We’re happy it’s going to be the next single.  It sounds like her song.”

Did you chat with her afterwards? “We did, we went and hung out with her & Blake.  Just to celebrate with them.  They had a shin-dig, we met them at a restaurant afterwards.”

 

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Category: Audio