It’s an impossible
task trying to define Little Big Town. There’s no one like them in
country music – or in any genre of music for that matter. And their
singularity goes far beyond their unique configuration of two men and two
women.
Flying high on the
heels of their platinum-selling CD The Road to Here (Equity Music,
2006), which spawned such mega-hits as “Boondocks” and “Bring It on Home,”
the band has recorded another first-class album in A Place to Land.
Their latest musical venture takes the foursome to another level,
solidifying their reputation as gifted singer/songwriters with a mature
sound distinctly their own. Though the band still feels “new,” they have
actually been together for some nine years.
Little Big Town
writes almost all of its own music – much of it with their secret weapon,
Grammy-winning songwriter Wayne Kirkpatrick. Together they create
gorgeous harmonies and indelible melodies and serve them up in sparse,
intelligent arrangements featuring top-notch players. The effect is
layered and textural: each listen serves up a new discovery, another
musical layer.
“They work really
hard at their instrument,” says Kirkpatrick, who has produced both
albums. “Just like a guitarist sits in his room and woodsheds and works
on his chops, they are always honing,” he adds. That diligence worked to
intriguingly dark effect on The Road to Here, written as Karen
Fairchild, Kimberly Roads, Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook recovered
from acute personal and professional setbacks.
Divorces, the death
of a young spouse, mismanagement and abandonment by their first label –
the band took the pain and anger of those situations and poured them into
intensely written and performed songs with a deep emotional heart. “When
we wrote The Road to Here, we had gone through some terribly tragic
circumstances,” recalls Roads. “We’ve had our struggles – but we never
thought about giving up.”
But this is a new
era for Little Big Town: Fairchild and Westbrook have married each other,
Roads remarried after losing her first husband and recently gave birth to
a baby girl, and the divorced Sweet has also remarried. The once
label-less band has spent the last two years touring with the likes of
Martina McBride, Keith Urban and John Mellencamp (even recording with
Mellencamp on his last album Freedom’s Road).
In 2007, they won an
ACM Award as Best New Vocal Group, and filmed a CMT Crossroads with
Lindsey Buckingham. Billboard named them Independent Artist of the
Year (2006). And they were nominated for two CMA Awards in 2007: Vocal
Group of the Year and Horizon Award. In 2008 they will tour with George
Strait – opening the band up to an even wider audience.
“It
was important to us with this new album to make a whole body of music –
not just songs to get played on the radio,” says Roads of A Place to
Land. “The songs are about real life, about some of our experiences.
We worked harder than we ever have on this CD.” She adds that the band,
despite all its happiness in the past year, can still “go to a really dark
place.”
With its intricate
harmonies, fetching melodies and insistent rhythms, A Place to Land
showcases the quartet’s ability to craft quality music recalling such 70s
bands as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Fleetwood Mac, and the Allman
Brothers. “There’s something about that music that moved people like no
other,” comments Westbrook. “That’s the music that we all loved and grew
up appreciating.”
The four gifted
singers effortlessly shift lead vocal chores. “The way we decide who
sings lead on a song is a very organic process for us,” explains Sweet.
“We always look for songs that showcase each of our gifts. We consciously
accentuate that whenever we can – without forcing the creative process.”
The CD’s first
single, “I’m with the Band,” finds the group placing the listener
somewhere between a performer’s love of the road and a fan’s love for
following performers. “That song is the cornerstone of the record,”
points out Roads. “We wanted a story about the fans because they are the
reason we have a career.” A paean to life on the road, the song wears
like a comfortable old shirt as it shifts from reflective to insistent.
It’s a ballad and a rock song at the same time, and the close harmonies
capture the undeniable feel of a Southern-rock song.
Like the last CD,
A Place to Land opens with a countrified rocker with Fairchild on
lead. It’s a wise move – her grab-you-by-the-collar alto and sassy
delivery on “Fine Line” pull the listener in from the first note, and she
never lets go. “We try not to muddy the waters with too much
instrumentation,” says Fairchild, “yet we try to keep it driving with the
instrumentation we choose.” With banjos plunking and guitars strumming,
the embittered number builds to her aggressive closing ad-libs. If you
aren’t tapping your foot at this point, check your pulse.
When Fairchild
wraps her voice around the tender "Only What You Make of It," she
illustrates the breadth of her emotional range.
On the pensive
“That’s Where I’ll Be,” the band paints with wide brush strokes in
imagery-laden lyrics. Lush harmonies and an open, Western musical
landscape float behind Westbrook’s emotive lead. He’s one of the finest
male vocalists today – in any genre – with a broad range, excellent pitch
and a natural twang. “I grew up listening to country music but also to
R&B, soul and gospel,” explains Westbrook. “You take it all in.”
On “Evangeline,” one
of LBT’s most intricate tracks to date and the artistic zenith of the
album, the band sings to a woman suffering from verbal abuse. “It’s a
very emotional song,” admits Roads, who lends her warm bluegrass sound to
the urgent lead vocal. The quartet really wails in harmony during the
closing, and the effect is like a siren, reflecting the song’s threatening
musical undertones.
Sweet
adds the full earthy bottom to most of the band’s rich harmonies. His
deep, husky voice – which ripped it up on last year’s “Bring It on Home” –
works to great effect on “Vapor,” a song about the transient nature of
life with aural echoes of CSN & Y. “When we were tracking both of those
songs, my voice just seemed to naturally find a home,” observes Sweet. “I
really felt connected to what the lyrics were speaking – that it was
honest and believable,” he adds. Roads says of Sweet’s soulful baritone:
“We love that rough, big quality his voice has.”
The playful “Novocaine,” with riffs recalling
the Steelers Wheel 70s hit “Stuck in the Middle with You,” finds the band
doing duet leads – first Fairchild and Westbrook and then Roads and
Sweet. During the choruses close listeners will be able to locate the
four voices in the vocal spectrum – a daring move indicating the quartet’s
vocal dexterity. The song also reveals the band’s uncanny ability to go
back to capture a sound and yet create something entirely their own.
“The great thing
about writing with them is that you can hear the vocals instantly,” says
Kirkpatrick. “You can say, sing this – and you get an immediate picture
of it.” Roads notes that each member of the band “gravitates to their
own little place vocally – we don’t even have to talk about it.”
Although Little Big
Town has fought a long hard struggle to get to where they are today, they
have always remained committed to each other. “Despite all they went
through, never once did I hear one of them say, Maybe I’ll just go solo,”
observes Kirkpatrick. “It never was an option. They love each other and
have earned this.”
A Place to Land
offers hope that contemporary music, and especially contemporary country
music, has not simply become a disposable “product.” Told that listeners
can trace shades of groups like the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac in their
sound, Fairchild comments, “When you look back on the bands of the
seventies, they had identifiable sounds in their harmony. That’s always
been the goal of the band.”
“There’s been an
absence of that kind of music for a long time,” adds Westbrook. Thanks to
Little Big Town, that absence has been filled.
www.littlebigtown.com
CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT LITTLE BIG TOWN HAD TO
SAY TO US IN 2006!
