Click for a photo gallery: Members of Little Big Town share a laugh as they talk to the media at the Nashville Grammy Nominees party Sunday in Nashville. (photo: George Walker IV / The Tennessean)
Little Big Town
Nominated for Best Country Duo/Group Performance for “Your Side of the Bed”
Today, the members of Little Big Town will take their seats at the 56th annual Grammy Awards and — like last year — start convincing themselves they aren’t going to win.
Last year — like this year — they were nominated for best country duo/group performance. “Pontoon,” the breakout single from their platinum-selling album “Tornado,” was nominated in the category.
“We try not to think about it,” said Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild. “We sat back there … and you want it to happen because you want a Grammy really, really bad, but you sit there and I try to talk myself down.
“Like, ‘Oh, it’s not going to happen.’ And then they said ‘Pontoon’ and we went crazy.”
“Pontoon” is a summertime boat party song, and this year’s nominee, “Your Side of the Bed,” is a longing but hopeful ballad about the spark dying in a relationship. Both are from “Tornado.”
“We like to make a record that encompasses all of us, everything that we are,” member Kimberly Schlapman said. “(Those songs) are the polar ends of what we do, and that’s how we like to make records, we like to put it all in there.”
The band is in the beginning stages of its next album with producer Jay Joyce and admitted that without the success of “Tornado,” they might not have made it back into the studio.
“We’ve been doing this for 15 years this year, and we get to keep doing what we love to do because of that successful record,” Schlapman said.
— Cindy Watts, The Tennessean
B.J. Thomas (photo: George Walker IV/The Tennessean)
B.J. Thomas
“Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” inducted into The Grammy Hall of Fame
B.J. Thomas recorded “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” almost 45 years ago for the soundtrack to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” At the time, it seemed like everything was against him.
Thomas came down with laryngitis near the time of the recording, was their third choice — behind Ray Stevens and Bob Dylan — to perform the song and then was panned by music critics when the song was released.
But Thomas has nothing but fond memories of those days and called the recording session “one of my greatest memories.”
“I remember everything about it,” said Thomas, 71. “There were 100 musicians there. About 80 horns and strings, the full symphonic ensemble and, of course, the rhythm section and then on top of that we had Burt Bacharach up on a stand directing the orchestra.”
Thomas sang live with the orchestra and recalled it was “quite an experience” to have Bacharach at the podium.
“I just knew it was going to be huge, and then when it came out it got terrible reviews,” he said. “They said it was the worst song ever written and it should be on the cutting room floor. … When the movie came out for the Christmas release it was such a good movie, it became a smash, and the song broke wide open and sold about 100,000 copies a day for about three years. You know, the critics don’t know what’s happening.”
As for the song’s induction, Thomas said he’s “all the clichés.”
“I’m very honored and pleased,” he said. “I get a lot of satisfaction from that.”
— Cindy Watts, The Tennessean
Beth Nielsen Chapman
Nominated for Best Children’s Album for “The Mighty Sky”
“The Mighty Sky” is a collection of songs that hit Nashville songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman penned with fellow songwriter Annie Roboff and Rocky Alvey, director of Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory.
Beth Nielsen Chapman (photo: Samuel M. Simpkins/The Tennessean)
Since Chapman sang the songs and released the album, it is her name that appears on the nomination. But Chapman, who has been in Scotland and unavailable, said via email that it was a team effort. The original idea was Alvey’s. He has been interested in astronomy since childhood and a songwriter since the ‘70s. Alvey started writing songs about science and astronomy, and when Chapman heard them she wanted to participate.
“When Beth got hold of it, she just super-charged it,” Alvey said. “We knew we had really good songs. We had written every phrase in every song and every lyric to be really pregnant with a lot of meaning. Most people may not think about it, but almost every sentence has some profound fact about the universe. Not only is it a teaching album, but it’s some really great music.”
Song titles include “The Big Bang Boom,” “Test, Retest and Verify” and “Little Big Song,” which contains the lyrics: “If the sun was the size of a basketball, that would make the solar system small. The earth would only be a grain of sand. You could hold the planets in just one hand.”
— Cindy Watts, The Tennessean
Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott
Nominated for Best American Roots Song for “Keep Your Dirty Lights On”
Tim O'Brien (photo: George Walker IV/The Tennessean)
Perhaps Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott should write songs together more often. For their first album together in 13 years, both of the acclaimed Nashville roots instrumentalists tossed in a handful of songs they’d written on their own, plus a few classic covers — but it’s their one co-write, “Keep Your Dirty Lights On,” that scored a Grammy nod for best American Roots Song.
The tune deals with mountaintop removal mining and is sung from the perspective of a worker. “As long as there’s coal in them mountains/ We’re gonna burn it til it’s gone/ No we can’t stop blowing mountain tops/ We gotta keep your dirty lights on.”
O’Brien said they were inspired to write it while on Scott’s property on the Cumberland Plateau, looking across the valley at an area that had been stripmined.
“We’re from the states most affected by mountaintop removal, which is Kentucky and West Virginia, so it’s good to talk about, put a little light on it.”
“I know what it does — the economic, ecological effects of mountaintop removal. I also know I’ve got a smartphone in my pocket, and I like electricity. It’s just good to know where it comes from, and what the cost is.”
