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WELCOME TO CAMP ANTEBELLUM Lady A’s 12-hour Work Day Keeps it All in the Family BY LEE VALENTINE SMITH
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T’S 3 P.M. AT THE GWINNETT Arena in a busy northern suburb of Atlanta on an unseasonably hot June afternoon. It’ll be another six hours before Lady Antebellum’s sold out show begins but fans are happily tailgating in the parking lot and a sizeable number of die-hards are already lined up near the front doors to be near the stage in the general admission pit that surrounds the stage. Inside, Hillary Scott, Dave Haywood and Charles Kelley have just finished their sound check. They bound into a busy production office with the same confident energy and accessible friendliness they exude onstage. Even though the band has been on the road since last fall, the Own The Night tour stars are fresh-faced, cleareyed, and seem genuinely excited to welcome their visitor into the band’s pre-show world. Backstage, the walls are dotted with schedules that detail the day’s activities, beginning at 12 pm and loading out nearly 12 hours later. In between there are three different meet and greets and, oh yeah, an energetic 90-minute show to do at 9:15. What is a typical day for Lady A? Do you guys get up early? Kelley: Well, not too early. We roll out of our beds at 11 or so. The only time I actually wake up early is to play golf. We go in, get a cup of coffee, and then the day really begins. Scott: Yeah, we normally miss breakfast. Kelley: We literally get off the bus when we get here and won’t see it again until we get back on it at night. We play a little ping-pong, start writing some songs, get a work-out in. Then it’s time for sound check, and after that it’s time to get showered, do the meet and greets and get ready for the show. We don’t just sit and watch movies. There really isn’t a whole lot of downtime at all. Right now, we’re already starting to write a bunch for the record, so Dave will put it together on his little portable studio and we’ll sing some vocals on a demo. Scott: Sometimes right before we hit the stage! Kelley: We’re always kinda moving. It feels like a traveling summer camp, because we’re so close to our fans and the crew. Scott: I’m especially close to the drummer! Is it difficult to tour and perform with your husband [drummer Chris Tyrrell]? Scott: I think being away from your spouse is a whole set of challenges and being with them is another set of challenges. He usually rides the band bus so he gets his “bro” time and I get my alone time. He stays completely locked into the band, they love each other and they hang out. And I get to have some “me” time with my puppy! Kelley: They make it work really well. There was an initial curiosity at first about how it would work. He’s such a nice guy and they’re very respectful about all that stuff. But its always a challenge. We’ve always been able to work out things like that. Shoot, when I was the first one married, it was always, “Ok, where’s the personal space, where’s the lines?” Scott: We are truly mindful of it. But we’re newly-weds and there are moments where we’ll hold hands or he’ll kiss me in the hallway. But all of our band and crew are away from their family all the time. That’s the sacrifice they make on a daily basis. We try to be respectful of that and we don’t ever want to be annoying. PG 10 • August 2012 • insiteatlanta.com
Kelley: Y’all can make out in front of me, I don’t care. Go for it. Haywood: We know each other so well now, when we need space, we just know it without having to say it. It’s like a marriage and I think we’ve done nothing but get stronger. We focus on our strengths and it all works out for the good of it. Kelley: There’s always places you can go if you need a minute to yourself. But we’re all pretty sociable, too. We don’t like to be alone much. We’re all in the same bus, still. The three of us. We like to keep it that way. Sometimes we have writers out on the road with us, they’ll ride the bus with us and we’ll sit there after a show, open up a bottle of wine, and start writin’ songs. I think if we were all on different busses we wouldn’t have that. There may come a time when kids come into the picture, and that could change the dynamic, but for now we are trying to stay as close and creative as we can. It really is like a family out here.
Any tips on harmony for bands that don‘t get along as well as you guys? Kelley: I recommend every traveling band buy a ping-pong table. Scott: It’s bonding! Kelley: It’s really the most bonding thing I think we’ve ever done. We’re always in here working together and I think it helps keep us close. We also have a room with a bunch of instruments in it, and we’ll all just go in there and jam. We’ve already written new songs with the band for the next record. Haywood: We’re workaholics. There’s been plenty of times where we’ll get off stage and five or ten minutes later, we’ll be back working on songs. Scott: With a ping pong paddle in our hand!
How do you guys plan the set list for each show? Kelley: It evolves during the tour. We knew we wanted to start the shows with “We Owned The Night,” with that energy . But we have a lot of
mid-tempo songs, so the ticket is putting those in the right spots. You want to save your big songs, but you want to make sure the back half isn’t too ballad-heavy, too. It’s always a challenge. I feel like our set has gotten to a good place now, it’s a great compliment to hear that people enjoy the pacing of the show. You want that nice ebb and flow. But it’s from trial and error. Tell us about the importance of the meet and greets. Scott: It’s our chance in every city to make personal connections with people we’ve never met before. I’m very much a people-person and being able to meet good people and shake their hand is great. That’s the essence of Country music in so many ways. Scott: Yes! I think that’s one of the reasons why country is different than any other genre, the artists’ willingness to make those personal connections with people, one-on-one. And it’s obviously paid off. Tonight’s show is sold out, as usual on the tour. Kelley: For us, it’s the first time to be able to sell out these places. We didn’t know what to expect when we started, but each night, it’s always fun to ask out tour manager, is it sold out? Yes! And it’s the best feeling. Haywood: We’ve kinda been breaking our own personal record, each weekend. And I think that’s one thing that keeps us excited about it. Almost every weekend, we sold, like, 18,000 tickets! More than we’ve ever sold before. We got up to around 19,000 a couple of weeks ago. Every so often we set these sort of personal landmarks, which are goals we’ve had in mind for a long time. Now its very cool to get there. Even Bruce Springsteen can’t even sell out every city anymore. Kelley: There was a fear going into it, with the economy and stuff. We definitely put out a lot out there, so you kinda go, “All right, I hope this works!” So there was definitely some butterflies going into this tour but now its like, “My gosh, if this is any indication of what the future holds, then we’re fired up.” The tour stage is very fan-interactive, too. It’s almost like seeing a club show, but on a huge scale. Kelley: We hate when the crowd is too far away. I feel like the whole crowd feeds off the first few rows of every show. When they are up and their hands are up, you can feel it all over the place. When you’re out here on the road, you start writing songs that you think will translate well to the live show. So I think these big venues have rubbed off on us. A lot of the songs we’ve been writing are very big, singalong type songs. Scott: The energy is infectious. And I must say, one of the most humbling things is seeing people spend their hard-earned money to come see us. We know that anything extra is a blessing, the way times are now. The fact that they would want to come see us and escape from all that stress for three hours is the most humbling feeling in the world. A few hours later, the house lights dim, and the stage lights blaze as the three musicians rise up from the center of the stage, greeted by a thundering ovation. Along with a few thousand of their closest friends, and backed by a minimal but extremely well-rehearsed combo, once again they Own The Night.