Twenty years ago, Little Big Town were seemingly at the end of their rope in trying to make it in Nashville. The country music quartet had two failed recording contracts in the rearview mirror, with no real prospects to come.
“We were broken, and we just sat down and wrote that record,” Karen Fairchild tells Rolling Stone. “In a way, it was the best time, because we didn’t have anybody looking over our shoulder while we were making music.”
That record would be Little Big Town’s breakthrough 2005 album The Road to Here. Up until that point, the band had some moderate success with its self-titled 2002 debut. But Fairchild and her bandmates Jimi Westbrook, Kimberly Schlapman, and Phillip Sweet couldn’t help but feel like they were spinning their wheels in mud, with some in the industry even viewing the group as “damaged goods.”
Thus, Little Big Town decided to go all in and entered the studio with producer Wayne Kirkpatrick and nothing to lose. The aim was to not only capture the sound they’d always envisioned for the band — a hearty blend of country, gospel, and bluegrass — but to also take a risk and release it independently.
“[It was] things we needed to say and get off our chest,” Fairchild says of The Road to Here. “Get the demons out of our heads and realize we can make the music we want to make.”
Upon its release, The Road to Here chugged its way into becoming a smash hit, ultimately selling over a million copies and achieving platinum status. The album spawned four hit singles, including two Top 10s, “Boondocks” and “Bring It on Home” (with the former still racking up enormous numbers on streaming services).
“It’s not surprising that it’s the one that broke through,” Fairchild says of the album. “Because it was the most honest, it translated with that kind of emotion and importance.”
Little Big Town became the toast of Music City — if an unconventional one — an elevated position within country music the group has held for over two decades and counting. They’ve added country classics to the genre (“Little White Church,” “Pontoon,” “Girl Crush,” “Better Man”) and sold out arena tours, including one with Sugarland that wrapped up last week in Nashville. Not to mention four Grammy Awards alongside numerous ACM and CMA honors.
“The consistent story — and the thing that makes me most proud of the band through all these years — is strength and the willingness to take chances,” Fairchild says.
On Monday night, they’ll add a holiday special to their resume with Christmas at the Opry, premiering at 8 p.m./ET on NBC. The special is tied, in part, to the group’s latest LP, The Christmas Record, which contains traditional holiday fare, originals, and seasonal country songs like Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December.”
“We’ve been singing Christmas music for a long time,” Fairchild says. “It’s something we’ve wanted to do for almost 25 years, but making other studio records, touring and kids all happened.”
Tapping ace producer Dave Cobb to take on the project, Little Big Town convened at Cobb’s Savannah, Georgia, studio, which the producer decorated in a Christmas motif to get the group into the headspace of “home for the holidays.”
“He’s adventurous and spontaneous,” Fairchild says of Cobb. “And he’s a musician historian. If you reference something, he instantly knows what you’re talking about and references something else that’s very inspiring.”
When it comes to the pantheon of great vocal groups, Little Big Town’s harmonies could fit neatly alongside Fleetwood Mac, the Mamas & the Papas, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. That was by design, according to Fairchild.
“We knew if we wanted to have a long career, we would have to have an identifiable sound from the harmonies,” she says. “Not just individual voices, [but] almost treating the harmony like it’s a lead singer.”
Formed in 1998, the long, winding story of Little Big Town begins at Samford University in the late 1980s, where Fairchild and Schlapman were attending the Alabama school and both members of its vocal ensembles.
“We were on a bus going to a choir camp,” Fairchild reminisces. “[Kimberly] was sitting right behind me and I introduced myself. We hit it off and we’ve been close ever since.”
Fairchild and Schlapman kept in touch after graduation and “through all of life’s changes.” By the mid-1990s, Fairchild was in Nashville pursuing her musical dreams, with Schlapman not far behind. The two reconnected for lunch and started brainstorming over their respective careers.
“The Chicks were huge [at the time],” Fairchild recalls. “And we were like, ‘We don’t want to do a girl [band] ‘cause nobody’s going to do it better than that — that’s as good as it gets.’”
Their eureka moment occurred right then and there. Fairchild and Schlapman started kicking around names of their favorite vocal groups and what they liked about them: The Mamas & the Papas and Fleetwood Mac became the template for what they ultimately wanted.
“We were like, ‘Nobody’s really done a mixed group [of two female and two male singers] in country music,’” Fairchild says. “It took us a while to find the right human beings ‘cause we knew it wasn’t going to be easy if we were going to stick together for a long time.”
Cue Sweet and Westbrook. Years earlier, Fairchild had crossed paths with Westbrook on the road when each were in other bands. While the initial seeds of Little Big Town were being planted, Westbrook’s name was suggested to Fairchild and Schlapman. Fairchild remembered how great Westbrook’s voice was and called him up.
“As soon as the three of us sang together, it was really good,” Fairchild says. “He drove up from Birmingham to Nashville and he and Kimberly just hit it off, so much in common and such great chemistry.”
According to Fairchild, the missing piece of the group “needed to be somebody that sounded like he smoked all day long so that it would toughen up the bottom of the harmonies.” That’d be Sweet. “We were blown away by his voice,” she says, “that smoky, big, huge textured voice that we had wanted.”
More than 25 years later, the four original members of Little Big Town remain intact, and Fairchild and Westbrook married in 2006. The group has become a family through harmony.
“We’ve lived so much life together,” Fairchild says. “We’ve unfortunately buried family members together. And we’ve gone through some of the biggest highs ever of having children. And we’ve always been together.”
Recently, Little Big Town had the honor of singing at the Rockefeller Center tree lighting ceremony in New York. During their rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which they cover on The Christmas Record, it began to snow.
“It was a little manna from heaven, you know?” Fairchild says. “You get these little magical musical moments of absolute beauty and you go, ‘I’m so lucky I get to do this still.’”
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
