Little Big Town photo by James Minchin III, courtesy of Capitol Nashville.
That love for the music and love of harmony has always been the common thread for the band. From the first time those voices blended, sitting in Kimberly Schlapman’s living room, they knew this is what they were supposed to do... make music together. Karen and Kimberly had first met in college at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. While Karen and Jimi Westbrook had known each other from other touring bands, the timing of his move to Nashville didn't seem like a coincidence. Soon after the three began hanging out together, they were introduced to Phillip through a writer/friend of Karen's.
"At its core, the vocal blend is the same today as it was sitting in that living room when we first all four sang together," Kimberly recalls. Karen chimes in, "Now there's a maturity and a history to the band that can't help but come through -- the breathing together, the moving together. The knowing what we're going to do without having to say it to each other."
That kind of musical bond can only be forged over the span of many years and a lot of hard miles. Looking back on the past decade plus, Kimberly says, "It's been 12 years so crammed full with story after story and drama after drama...crazy stuff in 12 years that most people might take a lifetime to live out."
The backstory goes likes this -- Early in their collaboration, all four band members were in relationships. Due to break ups, divorces, and in Kimberly's case, the death of her husband Steven Roads in 2005, they all found themselves single again with their fellow band members forming their main support system.
Fast forward to the present and Little Big Town finds themselves with the happy problem of having less and less room on the tour bus due to their ever-expanding families. All four members have married and had a child in the last five years -- Kimberly and husband Stephen Schlapman welcomed their daughter Daisy in 2007; Phillip and wife Rebecca had Penelopi Jane in 2007; and Karen and Jimi married in 2006 and added son Elijah Dylan to the family in March 2010.
The stability of these happy home lives afforded the band a stable environment in which to create The Reason Why, but that joy doesn't translate into a bunch of sappy songs about babies. Instead, the new lives all around the band have actually sharpened the band's creative instincts. "We're not easily satisfied with the art we make. Never have been and never will be probably. We're constantly striving towards the next goal, the next song, the next thing we want to accomplish. There's a hunger and edge to the band that people might not realize on the surface."
That edge Karen speaks of is evident in the rocking, dirty slide guitar of "Why, Oh Why" and the hard charging "Runaway Train". On the flip side, tracks such as "Kiss Goodbye" and "Shut Up Train" dig deep into the exploration of loss and "Lean Into It" also speaks directly to Little Big Town's own story of perseverance in the face of adversity. Taken as a whole, the songs that make up The Reason Why offer a 360-degree view of life with all of its ups and downs. That element of variety is only heightened when taking into account that Little Big Town has not one, but four lead singers.
