When John Rich met Big Kenny in 1998, both had been through the record industry wringer. Rich had been in the country band Lonestar before launching a brief solo career. Big Kenny didn't become a full-time musician until he was in his 30s, but a big record deal and the ensuing album went nowhere, so he launched a wild outfit called luvjOi.

A friend tried to drag Rich to one of Kenny's shows at a Nashville club; Rich's response, he says, was "Big what? I don't think I want to see anybody named that." But he went anyway — whereupon he was whacked in face by one of the many pieces of bubblegum thrown from the stage into the audience. ("I thought that everybody who came to one of my shows should leave with something," explains Big Kenny, not unreasonably.) Despite the tensions caused by this aerial assault, the two men met after the show and made tentative arrangements to write songs together. Then one or the other of them blew off the first three appointments.