BAM Column: Little Big Town playing Oklahoma’s Buffalo Run Casino before recording album this fall
Little Big Town is, from left, Jimi Westbrook, Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman and Philip Sweet.
A version of this column appears in Tuesday’s Life section of The Oklahoman.
After almost 11 years together, Little Big Town has developed a rootsy contemporary country style emphasizing soaring four-part harmonies.
But it isn’t just the quartet’s blended voices that are tight. Jimi Westbrook, Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman and Philip Sweet consider themselves more than just a vocal group standing at the crossroads where Fleetwood Mac meets Restless Heart. They have become one big musical family.
Westbrook and Fairchild married each other more than three years ago. Schlapman and husband Stephen have a daughter Daisy, who turned 2 in July. Sweet and wife Rebecca have a daughter, Penelopi, who turns 2 in December. The quartet, their spouses and children all travel on one bus; the band and crew ride in another other.
“It’s fantastic. We’re all so close and have lived on this bus together for so long that there’s really nothing different to it. It’s just like any other family; you just kind of adapt and go with it. We love those babies like they’re our own; we help take care of them. It’s like a big hillbilly hippie family out here on the road,” Westbrook laughed in a phone interview Wednesday from Salt Lake City.
He rolled out of his bunk that morning to the news that Little Big Town will compete for vocal group of the year at November’s Country Music Association Awards.
“That’s exciting,” he said. “It’s flattering. It means that your peers are recognizing what you do, and it’s kind of a pat on the back from the industry. So, that’s always nice.”
The past year has been a big one for the quartet, which performs Saturday at Miami’s Buffalo Run Casino. The group’s song “Bones” was featured in last fall’s premiere episode of the HBO vampire series “True Blood” and included on the show’s recently released soundtrack. The foursome embarked on its first headlining tour earlier this year and will join Oklahoma native Vince Gill, Keith Urban, Faith Hill and more at the Oct. 13 “We’re All For The Hall” concert benefiting the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
In addition, Little Big Town is preparing to record a new album, the follow-up to 2007’s “A Place to Land.”
“On the days that we are home — which are few and far between at this point — we are cutting some songs. And we’ve been writing for several months,” he said. “When October rolls around, we’re going to come off the road — which it’s the first time we’ve done that in, gosh, probably six or seven years — and we’re gonna take time off and concentrate on really finishing the record.”
Until then, the Little Big Town family will continue traveling and performing energetic live shows.
“The live show is what we live for. It’s the reason we write the songs and record them and kind of go through all that you have to go through in this business of living on the road. It’s for that, it’s that love. And I think you see that when you see us live,” Westbrook said.
He added, “It’s not your normal way to raise a child. I think it’s great to raise a child this way because it is such a different experience. You’re all over the world and you get to take them with you and they get to see all the great places that we get to go and play”
While he gave no indication if or when he and his wife might add a baby to the group’s growing brood, Westbrook said he enjoys spending time with his bandmates’ daughters.
“Sometimes one of ‘em will come and pull your curtain back on your bunk and they’re the ones that wake you up. And that’s the best. There’s nothing better than seeing that cute little smile when you wake up. It makes the mornings a lot better for me, who can be grumpy in the morning.”
In concert
Little Big Town
When: 8 p.m. Saturday.
Where: Buffalo Run Casino, Miami.
Information: (918) 542-7140 or www.buffalorun.com.
-BAM
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