Stevie Nicks will be adding harmony vocals to the Lady Antebellum singer’s cover of Tom Petty’s ‘Southern Accents.’
On Wednesday, Lady Antebellum’s Charles Kelley announced at a private music industry event in Nashville that he would be recording a new version of Tom Petty’s “Southern Accents” (from Petty’s 1985 album of the same name) with Stevie Nicks on harmony vocals. Kelley will head into the studio to record his first solo album after Lady Antebellum wraps up their Wheels Up Tour.
According to Billboard, Kelley said the lyrics of the song reminded him of his father, who sold Bibles to pay his way through medical school.
No release date information for Kelley’s solo album has been announced.
The country trio continues to pay respect, tribute at shows for the music of Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac
Lady Antebellum have been closing their summer shows with Fleetwood Mac’s classic “Landslide.” The band, which is currently in the middle of the Wheels Up Tour with special guest Hunter Hayes, added the perennial favorite as an encore to their set in June. From the videos below, it’s clear that their rendition has been a good-old-fashioned-sing-along session with audiences.
Here are two recent performances of “Landslide” from the band’s June 2 concert in Irvine, California and July 29 pre-show acoustic performance in West Valley City, near Salt Lake City. (Get ready to bust out the tissues!)
Lady Antebellum has slotted several breaks into its current tour, affording the band the luxury of getting to go home to Tennessee to spend time with family and catch up on laundry.
Even so, for a superstar country act, there’s always band business to manage, even on breaks. Last month Lady Antebellum performed with Stevie Nicks at the ACM Awards.
During a conversation on a recent break from the tour, Lady Antebellum’s Dave Haywood talked about working with Nicks, the gift he received from opening act Kip Moore after wrapping up one leg of the tour and the band’s crossover smash hit.
Did you get into that bottle of Bulleit bourbon that Kip Moore gave you the other day?
I’ve got it actually sitting on the bus, so when we head back out next week I will dive into it very quickly, I can assure you of that. There’s no shortage of whiskey on our tour. That’s kind of our go-to, me and (bandmate Charles Kelley) especially. Bulleit and Woodford are definitely the go-to’s.
I’ve seen your band in concert, and I don’t remember you flaunting the drinking and partying on stage like some other acts do.
Not during the show. When we’re getting warmed up for the show we have a little bar area backstage. You got to make at least one drink to take the edge off. It’s fun to have a little wine or whiskey after the show to celebrate. I guess we’re not doing shots on stage, but we like to have a good time.
Lady Antebellum performed “Rhiannon” with Stevie Nicks at the ACM awards last month. Who chose that song?
Kind of the both of us. We did (the CMT show) “Crossroads” with Stevie about a year ago, and it was honestly the best experience for us as a band. It was the No. 1 highlight for us, to sit with her and work with her. We did “Rhiannon” on that show, and they had asked us to try and come up with a collaboration to do something with her again. We had a blast doing that.
She has been honestly so genuinely nice. She has invested so much time into our music and to us, spending time practicing and rehearsing. She’s just an unbelievable individual. You sit with her long enough and she’ll start telling old rock ‘n’ roll stories. And it’s the real stuff.
To say that playing with Stevie Nicks is the No. 1 highlight for you as a band is high praise.
My dream has always been not just to meet someone you’ve been a fan of, but to have the opportunity to work with them.
We went into the “Crossroads” experience not sure how that would go, if she would be cold or standoffish, or if it was going to be awkward. We showed up, and immediately she gave us all a big hug and started asking us about us, and how we started as a band, and how we write. She was so invested in our music. She started naming all these album cuts from our debut record and second record.
She was like, “We need to do ‘Cold as Stone’ from your second record,’ and I was like, “Who even knows that song?”
Did you have a sense that “Need You Now” was going to be the huge crossover success that it was when you wrote it?
Absolutely not. We wrote it and really put it away. We had one final song-listening meeting with our management and label where we just go through everything we’ve written and pick songs to record. We were literally all grabbing our keys to go to the car, and Charles said, “Let me play this one little acoustic thing we did like a year ago.”
So he played it, and the label was like, “Gosh, that’s got a really cool thing. You should at least try it in the studio and see how it comes out sounding,” and once we did, it felt like it hit this special moment, and it sounded really different and unique for us. We still had no idea that it would do what it did.
It not only crossed over to different formats, but different parts of the world. It allowed us to travel to Australia, and travel to Europe. It’s just been unbelievable. It just took on a life of its own.
We never sat there and said, “Oh yeah, this is the crossover hit.” We thought it would be a cool album track. It’s so dark. The lyrics are so dark. We’re blown away. We never thought it was gonna happen.
If you go:
What: Lady Antebellum with Billy Currington and Joe Nichols
When: 7 p.m. Friday
Where: Riverbend Music Center, 6295 Kellogg Ave., Anderson Township
The CMT show’s best pairings are also its most unexpected
(Photo: CMT)
Alison Krauss & Robert Plant
Feb. 11, 2008
“When I first arrived at CMT, Crossroads had just started and Alison was the channel darling,” says CMT president Brian Philips. “We thought, ‘Who would make a good partner for her?’ The answer came back, ‘Well, she really loves British hard rock.’ We could have run through names for a day-and-a-half without daring suggest Robert Plant – yet he would be the one to hook up with her and make a great show.”
(Photo: Rick Diamond)
Taylor Swift & Def Leppard
Nov. 7, 2008
The inspired matchup of a budding country star with classic rockers started when Crossroads executive producer John Hamlin saw a Def Leppard poster on Swift’s wall and joked that they’d make a good pairing. “Taylor said, ‘I’d love to do that,’ he recalls, so he got to work on it, then worried,” ‘What have we gotten ourselves into here?’ This was opposite ends of the spectrum on so many levels. But it was one of the highest-rated ones ever.”
(Photo: Julie Jacobson / AP Photo)
Carrie Underwood & Steven Tyler
Feb. 4, 2012
The highest-rated Crossroads since Kenny Rogers and Lionel Richie took the stage in 2005, when the American Idol winner and Aerosmith frontman drew an audience of 1.9 million to a live Super Bowl edition of the show. “It was a completely different dynamic, with more mistakes but more adrenaline,” says Philips. “That show revealed the fearless side of Carrie that would come to play out when she did The Sound of Music Live!”
(Photo: Frank Micelotta)
Lady Antebellum & Stevie Nicks
Sept. 13, 2013
“Back in the first meeting we ever had in 2001 about this show, I think we said, ‘Well, I suppose Stevie Nicks would be right at the top of the list,’” says Philips. “We locked her in in 2013.” Adds Hamlin: “She had a dream that she was in Lady Antebellum.” By the end of the taping, it had come true, and Lady Antebellum rerecorded “Golden” as a single with Stevie Nicks.
Shirley Halperin & Chris Willman / Billboard / May 31, 2014
Voting is currently underway for the 2014 CMT Music Awards. Stevie and Lady Antebellum are in the running for Performance of the Year for their harmony-laden CMT Crossroads performance of “Rhiannon.” The Performance of the Year category consists of musical performances on a television show, series or variety special on CMT. The honor is fan-voted and awarded to the artist, according to CMT.
This year’s CMT Music Awards will be held in Nashville on June 4.
Stevie has provided guest vocals on Lady Antebellum’s new single “Golden” from the country trio’s latest album of the same title.
She is tentatively scheduled to perform the song onstage with Lady Antebellum at the 49th annual ACM Awards on April 6. The song is available now on iTunes or can be downloaded here (M4A/6mb).
“Eisele is channeling her inner Dorothy today,” Hillary Scott posts with a pic.
(Photo by Hillary Scott)
Looks like rocker Stevie Nicks and Hillary Scott really hit it off at the Lady Antebellum CMT Crossroads taping earlier this year. Now Stevie is showering Hillary’s newborn baby with gift.
Hillary posted a picture Sunday (Oct. 27) on Instagram of baby feet in red slippers with pink bows on them.
“Eisele is channeling her inner Dorothy today thanks to her Aunt Stevie (Nicks) who sent these amazing shoes! =) #spoiledalready,” Hillary wrote.
Lady A is releasing a deluxe version of their album Golden, complete with new single “Compass,” (clip posted below) on Nov. 11.
CMT Crossroads kicked off the season with the fantastic pairing of rock and roll icon Stevie Nicks and smash country trio Lady Antebellum. Recorded at Sony Pictures Studio in Culver City, CA on January 29, the hour-long program featured the two acts collaborating on some of their biggest hits.
Set List
Love Don’t Live Here
Need You Now
Golden
Cold as Stone
Just a Kiss
Downtown
Gold Dust Woman
Landslide
Edge of Seventeen
Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around
Rhiannon
Main band
Stevie Nicks: Lead vocals
Hillary Scott: Lead vocals
Charles Kelley: Lead vocals
Dave Haywood: Guitar, background vocals
Sharon Celani: Background vocals
Lori Nicks: Background vocals
Stevie Nicks band
Al Ortiz: Bass
Jimmy Paxson: Drums
Carlos Rios: Guitar
Darrell Smith: Piano
Brett Tuggle: Keyboards
Waddy Wachtel: Guitar
Lady Antebellum band
Clint Chandler: Guitar
Jonathan Long: Keyboards
Dennis Edwards: Bass
Jason “Slim” Gabill: Guitar
Chris Tyrell: Drums
CMT CROSSROADS: STEVIE NICKS AND LADY ANTEBELLUM
Premieres Friday, September 13 at 10:00 p.m., ET/PT
Other airdates this weekend:
Friday, September 13 @ 11pm ET/PT
Saturday, September 14 @ 2pm ET/PT
Sunday, September 15 @ 3pm ET/PT
Rock-and-roll icon Stevie Nicks will share the stage with country superstars Lady Antebellum when CMT presents an all-new episode of CMT CROSSROADS, which premieres tonight at 10pm ET.
Meeting and collaborating for the first time on the CMT CROSSROADS stage in Los Angeles, Nicks and Lady Antebellum will share harmonies and stories on CMT CROSSROADS: STEVIE NICKS AND LADY ANTEBELLUM featuring the classic hits “Edge of 17,” “Landslide,” “Rhiannon,” “Stop Draggin My Heart Around,” Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now,” “Love Don’t Live Here” and more.
CMT CROSSROADS is produced by Tom Forrest and Kathryn Russ. John Hamlin, Margaret Comeaux and Bill Flanagan serve as executive producers for CMT.
Crossroads has seen some epic pairings: Dixie Chicks and James Taylor, Willie Nelson and Sheryl Crow. The latest matchup—Lady Antebellum and Stevie Nicks—is flawless. The Fleetwood Mac mainstay and the country trio mesh so well that it’s hard to believe they haven’t collaborated before. Nicks’ hits “Edge of Seventeen,” “Landslide,” and “Rhiannon” swell further when performed with Antebellum’s Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley, and Dave Haywood, while the trio’s “Need You Now,” “Love Don’t Live Here,” and “Golden” glow with help from Stevie’s signature rasp. Nicks tell Antebellum, “Your songs make me want to be in love.” This hour of TV is similarly bewitching. A-
Tanner Stansky / Entertainment Weekly / Friday, September 13, 2013
