Country Stars Central would like to introduce HOT NEW band Lady Antebellum to our readers! This sensational trio consists of Charles Kelley, Dave Haywood and Hillary Scott (The daughter of Grammy Award-winner the lovely Linda Davis). Together they create glorious harmonies and possess a unique stage presence. Their current single “Love Don’t Live Here” is rapidly climbing the country charts while their debut video of the same name maintains the #15 spot on GAC’s Top 20 Country Countdown!! They are currently on tour with mega-star Martina McBride serving as her opening act this spring and have plans to release their debut album later this year. It’s a pleasure to speak with Dave Haywood of Lady Antebellum for our exclusive interview!! Watch out country music, Lady A is ready to ROCK and ROLL!!
(CSC) 1. Tell us about the recording process of your debut album and what can your fans expect to hear from it once it’s released?
(Lady Antebellum)
We’ve had some great fans from day one all around Nashville, Ohio and the few other places that we’ve played so hopefully they’ll finally have something in their hands to listen to. We started recording back in July and then we went out on our radio tour when we were pushing the single “Love Don’t Live Here.” We were touring the country just meeting all the radio stations. After the tour we got back in late October and finished the rest of the album. It’s amazing!! It’s one of the neatest and coolest projects I’ve ever been a part of. You get there at ten in the morning and go to your little booth in the back and I get my guitar out and play with everybody and then we’ll do our singing a few days later. We had our producers Paul Worley and Victoria Shaw. Paul’s done all the old Dixie Chicks, Sara Evans and Martina McBride albums. He’s amazing!! He just has brilliant ideas and just the way he gets the sound out of everything, it’s just kind of unheard of. So, we are officially done as of last week. We finally finished it and it will be coming out on April 15th.
(CSC) 2. This year has taken off at quite a fast pace for you so far. What accomplishment are you most proud of?
(Lady Antebellum)
Getting to do what we love is just the greatest! This Martina tour is pretty unbelievable, it really is! We got the call late last year while we were on the radio tour. Being able to share the stage with her and listen to her while she’s playing her set and thank Lady Antebellum is just crazy to hear that out of her mouth plus being able to get to meet her and see her around here on tour. I’d say by far this Martina tour is just a complete honor to be a part of!
(CSC) 3. Tell us about your first meeting and how you came together to create the trio now known as Lady Antebellum?
(Lady Antebellum)
Charles and I became friends from growing up together. We’ve known each other since middle school. We both grew up in Augusta Georgia. We went to high school and college together. We both worked in the real world for a year and then we quit. He talked me into moving to Nashville. He was a few months ahead of me. He moved up there to live with his brother. We were out one night and Hillary spotted Charles and they got to talking about doing some songwriting. So, Charles brought Hillary over to the house one day and just the three of us sat down and the very first song we wrote is a favorite to this day. It’s a ballad that we play called “All We Ever Need.” It’s one that we play on the Martina tour. So, after that first day of writing, it clicked and we hit it off as friends and especially musically, we hit it off with writing songs as songwriters together. We didn’t actually play as a group; we were just writing to write songs for solo projects or just maybe to pitch songs to other artists like a lot of songwriters do in Nashville. We’d written about ten songs and realized that we had a bunch of songs so we decided to play a show and see how it would go. We just did a little show in Nashville and we had about twelve people come and they said that they loved it and we had a blast doing it. After that first show I think we felt like we were on to something. We started the group and here we are today!!
(CSC) 4. You are currently on the road touring with one of the best in the business; powerhouse vocalist Martina McBride!! What is it like playing these massive venues each night and what have you learned from watching Martina perform?
(Lady Antebellum)
It’s funny, playing the large venues. I actually get less nervous doing it in front of seven thousand people as opposed to seven best friends, you know? Getting to play in front of a crowd is just the best exposure in the world. Being able to watch Martina each night evolves your song writing. I’m always watching Martina from the side of the stage and you get to see what the people and the fans respond to. I think it evolves your songwriting skills to hopefully create better music that people can have a reaction to. Seeing her do it every night as a pro, I feel like I’m in little league watching the Braves do it!!
(CSC) 5. Who are some artists you have been inspired by in the country music circle?
(Lady Antebellum)
All three of us definitely pull from a lot of vocal groups. The ones that we all have in common are The Eagles, and the Allman Brothers Band. I know Hillary grew up listening to her mom. She’s a country artist named Linda Davis. She grew up listening and being on tour with her mom and Reba. She’s always been influenced by Reba a lot; her songs, staging and what she does. She also likes Gladys Knight and old mo-town. We all listened to a lot of different stuff. Charles, I know, did listen to a lot of southern rock growing up, such as Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band. He’s got a great kind of grit to his voice which he pulls from his influences. We all love harmony and singing harmony and having all the voices as much as we can. It’s definitely a lot of the vocal groups. I personally loved James Taylor growing up from a guitar point of view. He’s just got some of the best guitar playing and songwriting.
(CSC) 6. How would you best describe your music to people that have not heard it before?
(Lady Antebellum)
How about awesome!! Honestly, we just try to create songs that we believe in and stuff that’s true to us. We wrap up all our influences into one. Hopefully it will be something people will enjoy. We try to create music that we enjoy and we try not to put on some kind of facade or just create stuff to make people laugh because we think people will like it. We want to enjoy our music and like the lyrics we create and make it natural to us. Hopefully people will be able to relate to that!
(CSC) 7. What can fans expect to see and hear at your shows and what are some of your favorite songs to perform LIVE?
(Lady Antebellum)
That first song we wrote called “All We Ever Need” is probably our favorite to perform. It’s just a big moment. I play the Piano, Charles and Hillary duet. They have battling vocal parts back and forth on it. It’s an emotional song about a first love, and a lost love. Hopefully people will just come to the show and check it out. We try to do a lot of high-energy stuff. We’ve only got about twenty minutes to perform so we’re doing five songs. We pack as much as we can in the five songs on the Martina tour!! We love a lot of energy and our single is probably the best to perform in concert. Just the whole ending on our single, we really like to pack a lot of energy into it to get the people clapping!! That’s the last song that we do on the Martina tour so we always get a good response from it. A few people have heard it and there are always a few fans in the front row singing along every now and then.
(CSC) 8. What are some of your goals that you hope to achieve in the next two years?
(Lady Antebellum)
That’s always a tough one. We were able to play the Grand Ole Opry last year. That was a big number for all three of us. We’d also like to be acknowledged for things we do and get some recognition for the NEW album. We’ve worked so hard on it ever since July and we’ve been creating these songs for the past few years. We’ve been in the studio for half a year and we have put every ounce of our energy and creativity into the album. If there’s a way to get some recognition for that, I think it would be a huge goal and an amazing thing to strive for!!
(CSC) 9. You seem to have a popular following that view your You Tube videos. A lot of funny things seem to happen in them!! What’s the funniest/oddest thing that has happened while you’ve been on the road?
(Lady Antebellum)
You’ll have to look at it if you haven’t seen it yet. There’s this video from Chicago we filmed while we were out at the big bean downtown on Michigan Avenue. I had the guitar in my hands and we were going for a radio visit to US99 and I said “Guys let’s just play a song here for the big bean.” I figured all the tourists might think it’s funny and maybe we could make five dollars so we put the case out. We start playing this song and sure enough half way through it this big security guard came over and stopped us in the middle of the song. In the middle of the song, she’s asking us for our permit and we’re like told her we couldn’t find it. She ruined the middle of the song and there were six little girls watching us and yelling for us!! They were cheering for us. That was probably the craziest thing. Make sure to look for that one on You Tube. It’s pretty funny. Being out in front of the big bean and getting busted!
(CSC) 10. What would you like to tell your fans and what can they look forward to next from Lady Antebellum?
(Lady Antebellum)
Well, we’re going to be releasing a NEW single sometime in the next few months. I’d just like to tell our fans to follow us online if they can. We have so many videos on the site. We do a webisode for every single show and make a video for it. We like to goof around on it and thank the city that we are playing in. Our fans should find us on our official website, face book and MySpace and be our friend. We try to put everything we can up on the internet and have good material people can follow online.
Part II interview with Lady Antebellum:
(CSC) 1. Great to chat with you! So, what’s new with Lady Antebellum?
(Lady Antebellum)
Well let’s see here. We were just in Los Angeles the night before last making our late-night debut on Jimmy Kimmel which was a lot of fun! It was just a really cool experience. He was such a nice guy, and it wasn’t too nerve-racking. That was great, and then we just flew to Texas and played a show in Dallas, it was our first big show in Texas. Now we are in Ohio. We are just runnin’ around playing a bunch of shows at fairs and festivals, and gearing up for this fall for the CMT tour.
(CSC) 2. Tell us about your latest video “Lookin’ for a Good Time.” How fun was it to make that video?
(Lady Antebellum)
It was SO much fun!! We actually shot that in Nashville in a warehouse type place. We just wanted to do something fun, and we all love that whole era of the 50’s clothes and all those variety shows. The set was exactly what we pictured in our heads. The guy who directed our first video, Chris Hicky who lives here in Nashville, directed the second video as well so it was great to be with him again, and work with him. The outfit I wore was a fringy blue dress, and I had to shake my hips a lot to make my dress move, (Laughs) and I do not know how the girls on “Dancing with the Stars” and Beyonce can just dance throughout a show every single night, night after night, after night in those 5-inch heels! It was one of the best workouts I’ve ever had. I thought to myself, gosh, I understand why all those stars on “Dancing with the Stars” end up losing weight and getting into awesome shape. It was fun; it was a lot of fun!
(CSC) 3. You’ve been on some pretty fabulous tours this past year… what have you learned from working under people like Reba and Martina McBride?
(Lady Antebellum)
We really just watch their shows. We’re not the kind of people that just go sit on the bus when you have the opportunity to watch someone of that caliber; you go watch them, and you learn from them because they are just so seasoned and such professionals. That’s one thing that I always try to do. When we were out with Martina, I watched how she treats everybody in her company, everyone from her tour manager down to the caterers. She’s full of everybody basically, and it’s just how to treat people and make them happy, and make them work hard for you. It takes a lot of people to make it work. Those are probably the two biggest lessons I’ve learned.
(CSC) 4. That was pretty cool that you were able to duet with Reba on “Does He Love You” in Bloomington this past June, being that your mother made that a hit record with Reba!
(Lady Antebellum)
That was crazy fun! It was one of those things that was a once in a lifetime, and talk about the feeling of your life kind of coming full circle, you know. My mom wasn’t able to be there that night, but I told her all about it. It was just really special because Reba has seen me grow up in a way, and I know it had to be bizarre for her looking across the stage and seeing Linda’s daughter instead of Linda. (Laughs) It was awesome though. It’s definitely something I’ll never ever forget!
(CSC) 5. You’re coming back to Chicago in October to perform at the “Chicago Country Music Festival.” What are you most looking forward to about this performance?
(Lady Antebellum)
Gosh, just the word Soldier Field sounds very exciting! (Laughs) Taylor Swift is going to be there, correct?
(Country Stars Central)
Yeah, she is, as well as Luke Bryan, Gretchen Wilson, and Rissi Palmer!
(Lady Antebellum)
That is awesome… I’ve heard nothing but good things about it! Chicago is definitely one of my favorite cities in the country, and anytime we can get up there and perform we have a blast. US*99 are such supporters of us, and we love them for that. I just hope it’s not really, really cold by then. (Laughs) When it gets chilly up there, it will cut straight through ya! (Laughs)
(CSC) 6. Do you ever have the chance to enjoy the city when you’re here working? Maybe take a break to go shopping?
(Lady Antebellum)
Yeah! I love walking up and down Michigan Avenue whether or not I buy anything. (Laughs) I just love going into the shops and looking at everything. Gosh speaking of food, you always get a good meal anywhere you go in that town! We haven’t really had a ton of downtime there, but I hope to eventually, and really explore the city a little bit more. What I’ve seen of it thus far, is its really beautiful, and a lot of fun!
(CSC) 7. What’s life been like for all of you on the road? Do you all share the same bus?
(Lady Antebellum)
Yeah, we’re all on one bus. There are ten of us on the bus and its close quarters, but we have a lot of fun! We have a great time. I was the only girl for a really long time on the road, and we just actually hired someone who’s selling our merchandise. She has been a god sent because it’s so nice to have another girl around, and not be surrounded by guys all the time as much as you are. (Laughs)
(CSC) 8. What’s the most important thing your mother (Linda Davis) has taught you career-wise?
(Lady Antebellum)
I would have to say she always tells me to drink a lot of water. (Laughs) My mom is one of the most positive; glass is half full, type of people. She’s taught me to have a blast doing what we love most; being able to live out our dreams, and not to take life too seriously because you never know how long its gonna’ be.
(CSC) 9. In closing, what projects would you like to share with your fans that they can expect next from Lady Antebellum?!?
(Lady Antebellum)
We’re just really trying to promote the second single, “Lookin’ For A Good Time” and have a lot of fun out there doing it. Even though summer’s coming to a close, it’s just a fun song that people want to crank up in their car when it comes on the radio. The video just went to CMT and GAC so make sure to vote for it, and call your local radio station and request the song! We’re headed out this fall on the road with Jason Aldean on the CMT tour. We’re doing twenty dates with him all over so make sure to check out our website to see if there’s a show close by because we’d love to see our fans. Just come out and see our live show because we have a lot of fun!
(Country Stars Central)
Those CMT tours always get a really good response!
(Lady Antebellum)
Yeah! It will be fun. We’re doing a lot of shows all over the place, and I believe it wraps up in Maine. Jason Aldean is such an awesome performer, and he puts on such a high energy live show. He’s a Georgia boy like the guys, so I’m sure they’ll have fun hanging, and lord knows its football season, (Laughs) so I’m sure there’ll be many a barbeque watching the football game.
Part III interview with Lady Antebellum:
(CSC) 1. Great to catch up again with you! How have you been enjoying the great success of your latest record “Need You Now” so far?!?
(Lady Antebellum)
The most exciting thing for us has been the response when we perform “Need You Now” out on tour. In some places we have just let the audience sing the entire last line of the song and it is exhilarating to hear thousands of voices sing it back to us.
(CSC) 2. On September 20th, you will embark on your first-ever headlining tour! What do you plan to bring to the table to make this tour highly memorable?
(Lady Antebellum)
Our fall tour will be the first time we have ever really been able to create a full show with production and everything. Usually we’re performing in front of someone else’s set, so our stage space is limited. We’re getting really excited to show everyone what we’ve been working on…it’s been in our heads for so long, so we can’t wait to see it all come to reality.
(CSC) 3. Thinking back on the days that the three of you were playing local clubs and bars around Nashville, how does the unbelievable course that your careers have taken resonate with you?
(Lady Antebellum)
So much has happened since the days of playing the clubs in Nashville, but that was only 3 years ago. We each hoped we would enjoy this kind of response, but I don’t think any of us thought it would come this quickly. We still have so much more we want to do though. We’re thrilled to get to perform more songs every night and to get the opportunity to record a new record before too long.
(CSC) 4. At this moment in your lives, how do you manage to make time for yourselves to let loose and relax when you’re not working?
(Lady Antebellum)
We’ve all become so close with the band and crew we have with us, so even when we’re on the road, we are all great friends and find time to enjoy hanging out with each other wherever we are. But, the moments when we’re home, we usually scatter and catch up with our family and friends…but, after a day or so we’re calling each other to see what everyone is doing, so we can’t really get away from each other.
(CSC) 5. What skills or techniques have you honed from watching other artists like Reba, Martina McBride and Tim McGraw perform at their live shows?
(Lady Antebellum)
There is no better training camp than watching these guys put on their shows. They each do it a little differently, so we have had the benefit of taking in what they all do, and see what works best for us. We are such big fans of everyone we have had the opportunity to work with, and just being able to watch them from the side of the stage and talk to them about their journey has given us incredible insight.
(CSC) 6. What’s the most exciting opportunity that you’ve been able to be a part of since becoming mega-stars this past year?!
(Lady Antebellum)
I don’t think any of us would see ourselves as mega-stars (ha-ha), but we have had a couple really touching moments that have been special for us. We have visited a number of children’s hospitals, and seeing their faces light up is really touching…their strength and courage is really inspiring. During CMA Music Festival week, we held our annual fan club party and were able to donate all the proceeds to some really deserving charities after the horrible flood that hit Nashville in May. So, there have been a lot of career moments we’ll never forget, but to feel like we have helped make an impact on other people is really special to us.
(CSC) 7. What do you attribute to your numerous ACM (Academy Of Country Music), CMA (Country Music Association), and Grammy awards to and how do they inspire you to excel further?
(Lady Antebellum)
The recognition we have been fortunate enough to receive has been overwhelming. But, as much as for us, they’re for all the people who make it all happen. It takes so many people to pull this off, so we like to share those with all of them.
(CSC) 8. What do you want to share about yourselves with our readers that may have just started beginning to listen to your music?
(Lady Antebellum)
We’re really a lot more boring than people think!! We show our fun & silly sides in our Webisode Wednesdays each week, but I think everyone would be surprised how un-eventful our lives are most of the time.
(CSC) 9. Finish the following sentence. “In the next two years LADY ANTEBELLUM would like to be………….”
(Lady Antebellum)
…on vacation!! We’re kidding. In the next two years we would like to have another album out there so we have enough songs to put together what we hope will be a really great show for the fans. And then go on vacation.
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