We partied with the royal rich people, and we felt like rock stars. We drank all the whiskey in the place.
Charles Kelley
With Lady Antebellum, there's always pressure. It's hard for commerce not to rear its ugly head when you're making decisions.
We're definitely a hodgepodge of influences. Mine, most heavily, would be Southern rock - the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd and stuff like that. Hillary is more from the country side - her mom is Linda Davis, a country singer. Dave, he's a big fan of the Eagles and like that.
Dave and I had been song writers in Nashville, trying to get around, out hustling, trying to meet people. We randomly met Hillary out in town one night. She said she was a singer. I asked her if she would like to write some songs with Dave and me, and a week later she came over. Instantaneously we had this chemistry.
I love whiskey, and I'm a big fan of 'Mad Men,' so anything that Don Draper does, I like to do. But I want Don Draper to get back to where he was in the first season. I like him married and gallivanting around.
I see too many celebrity kids who can't sing. If you don't have it, give it up, because people are brutal. I never want my kids to feel like they have to live up to what I've done.
It was a total dream of mine to have my voice on an album with Stevie Nicks.
To me, the best music always comes when - it sounds cliche, but you just try to block out the noise and try to not have any pressure with it and take your time.
We love all kinds of music: We love pop music, we love rock music, we love R & B and country, and we just pull from all our influences. So I don't really take offense as long as people are coming out to the shows and buying the records and becoming fans of the music. At the end of the day, the music is what's gonna speak to you.
I think there are a lot of artists that are very traditional. I think someone can be a fan of someone like Josh Turner and then turn around and be a big fan of someone like Taylor Swift because, at the end of the day, it's all about those songs. I feel like country music has the best songwriting and the best songs of any genre.
We've become so successful that it's become a machine: There's a lot of people relying on you. You've got 100 people out on the road and working for you. You want to stay at the top.
One thing I love about the Grammys is that they love to recognize old, risky music.
Growing up I played in garage bands and cover bands with my older brother, and he got us a gig opening up for some hippie jam band. I was 15. I felt like such an adult!
One of my most memorable Thanksgiving memories was probably the first year that me and my two brothers decided to start our annual eating contest. We ate throughout the whole day. We started that morning and weighed ourselves, and at the very end of the night, we weighed ourselves out. And all three of us equally gained five pounds.
My wife and I met right down the street. Our single, 'Just a Kiss' is kind of about that moment. I was trying to replicate that dance-off between Justin Timberlake and Brittany Spears.
That's kind of the theme of Own the Night. It's about those nights that are so memorable you could live them forever.
The country crowd just has fun.
I think for new artists the hardest thing is putting the face with a name. People maybe heard our song on the radio or something but until they get several impressions of who you are - from whatever it is, whether TV or a live show, I feel like they don't quite connect the dots.
We're putting a lot of pressure on ourselves for this second album and so we want to make it as great as we possibly can.
My wife thinks I'm a narcissist, but I just think it's hilarious going on YouTube and seeing these covers. There are so many of them - literally hundreds! It's flattering.
That's a different side of the brain going into the studio, as opposed to doing a live show, obviously.
With anything you do in life, there are days where you're worn out and you don't want to do it for a second.
The perfect winter's night for me would be with all the family together. As you get a little older and everybody has their jobs and then families and kids, it definitely becomes harder to get everybody together at once.
I'm not going to lie, I love TV. I watch a ton of it - golf, HGTV, football.
I tend to gravitate toward ballads and mid-tempo songs.
I'm a real fan of that Foster the People song 'Pumped Up Kicks.'
I feel like fans who like old Southern rock and country, and more lyric-driven songs in general, have come to country radio. I think that's why you see country radio growing and albums selling: People are craving a little more of the singer-songwriter stuff going on in country.
Radio used to be dominated by Tom Petty and artists like that. If Tom Petty came out today, he'd be played on country radio - all that stuff would. I think the genre has opened itself up to more styles of country, and I think that's a good thing.
If we were to use the success of 'Need You Now' as the barometer for every other song, then we'll probably be highly disappointed. That song will probably undoubtedly be the biggest song of our career. We can hopefully have success for 20 years, but we may not ever have the success of that one particular song again.
I think the key to marriage is find your best friend.
If I am going to do something outside of Lady Antebellum, it's got to make a statement. Otherwise, why do it?
One of Lady Antebellum's first big tours was opening up for Kenny Chesney.
I've always thought 'Southern Accents' would make an amazing country song. It's always spoken to me. I've always loved it. Every time I hear that song, it reminds me of my dad.
When I come home and have a new song I've written, she gives me an honest critique. If my wife likes it, I know I have something.
When you're making a record - and I've never said this to anybody, but it's true - when you're making a record, and you go, 'Man, this might win a Grammy!' you feel that level of confidence when you're making a record.
There's definitely been some songs in the past that we've put out, and it was purely us going, 'Okay, we think radio will play this. We think this will be a hit. This will be big for the show,' and all this stuff. But it's like, do you really believe in it?
I never want to cut music ever again that I'm just kind of into, because we definitely didn't do that in the beginning.
I wanted to make music that spoke to me, without having the expectation of success that comes with Lady Antebellum.
I love writing with other artists, I really do. Because you can try to guess what they would want to say and how they would sing it.
It's always cool to go back home to Augusta, especially during The Masters week.
I've got a lot of little quirks and moments that - my wife, she knows exactly what to say and how to handle me, 'cause I can be hard to handle.
In my career, I've always felt like all great things came at once, and when something goes bad, it always seems that everything else seems to start going bad.
I always believe that if you put it out there in the universe and you believe in it, you will stuff to happen.
It's hard to make great art when you've got too much pressure.
There's always expectation with a Lady A single.
'The Driver' kind of set the tone for what I wanted to say, and lyrically, it especially did.
When you do anything for eight or nine years, you start getting a little comfortable; you start taking things for granted.
Lady Antebellum will always be my focus.
I'm 6' 6''. It's hard to find golf clubs that fit you right and work right.
