Country quartet headlines Union Fair Little Big Town sets sights on blueberries

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UNION – Country music’s Little Big Town is ready for a taste of Maine’s wild “blues.”

This hot new country quartet performs at 8 p.m. Monday at the Union Fair/Maine Wild Blueberry Festival on a grandstand that is bigger and brighter than ever before, fair trustee Buddy Savage reported recently.

Little Big Town, featuring Kimberly Roads, Karen Fairchild, Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook, will perform songs such as “Boondocks” and current hit, “Bring It On Home,” which ranked No. 5 on the country music charts this week. For these rising stars, fair organizers rented a larger stage, special lighting and improved sound for the headline show.

Two years ago, when Little Big Town was clawing its way to fame, the foursome played the Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland, opening for country favorite SheDAISY. This time around, the band’s performance will bring a much bigger catch financially, he said.

“The lobster was worth it,” Little Big Town’s Sweet recalled of the Rockland gig.

Now, Little Big Town is eager to taste some Maine wild blueberries.

Wherever the road takes them, band members like to take a few hours off to sample the local culture and to “get a feel for the people,” according to Sweet.

Nowadays, the foursome is opening for stars such as Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson and John Mellencamp.

Little Big Town’s claim to fame seems to be “Boondocks,” a catchy, toe-tapping tune that became a No. 1 Country Music Television video.

“That was the one people really connected with,” Sweet said of “Boondocks.” “It really grabbed the people.”

“Bring It On Home” also reached No. 1 in CMT videos.

Sweet describes Little Big Town’s style as “acoustic-driven southern American music with an electric crackle.”

Billboard Singles Reviews calls “Boondocks” a “swampy vibe that works well with the interplay of different voices.”

“The members of LBT now surround their songs with mandolin, dobro, banjo, steel guitar and fiddle, giving them an organic country-pop sparkle,” writes the Dallas Morning News.

All of Little Big Town’s vocalists made their singing debuts as children in church.

In college, Roads and Fairchild teamed up while both were attending Samford University, a Baptist college in Birmingham, Ala.

They knew Westbrook, who lived nearby, but they didn’t connect until years later. Sweet met the others through a songwriter friend when they were playing corporate shows.

Sweet called himself the “final piece of the puzzle.

“We were a united front at that point,” he said.

Most of the quartet grew up in towns the size of Union.

Sweet, 32, and Westbrook, 34, are both small-town guys.

The dark-haired Westbrook’s roots are in Sumiton, Ala., a little town with a population of 2,600. Sweet hails from Cherokee Village, Ark., up in the Ozarks, a big town in comparison, with roughly 4,600 townspeople.

The women are from Georgia, but Roads and Fairchild didn’t meet until college. Roads, the 36-year-old blond-haired member, grew up in Cornelia, a small town in the northwestern corner of Georgia. Fairchild, 38, is an Indiana native, whose church-singing family, moved to Atlanta when she was a child.

The band has played together for the past eight years. The road to success has been a bumpy one, however, filled with heartaches and disappointments.

Before they hit the Top 20 country music charts, record deals fell apart, Roads’ husband, Steven, died; Sweet and Fairchild’s marriages ended in divorce. Then, their debut album titled “Little Big Town” got “savage reviews,” they said. But the band played on.

Along came songwriter-producer Wayne Kirkpatrick, who re-energized the group with financial backing for a second album, “The Road to Here,” on Equity Records’ label, which has finally earned Little Big Town name recognition.

“[Kirkpatrick’s] like the fifth member of the band,” Sweet said, crediting him for giving the group an opportunity to be creative again.

The group just wrapped up recording vocals with Mellencamp this week and were on their way Tuesday to play the Rockingham County Fair in Harrisburg, Va. Then, they’re off to fairs in Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan and Pennsylvania before arriving in Union.

These days, things are looking good with “The Road to Here” approaching platinum record sales, and “Bring It On Home” in the Top 10. Also, Westbrook and Fairchild got married May 31.

“Home now is Nashville,” Sweet said, but Arkansas is still “my homeland.

“[Nashville’s] a big place, but it has that small-town feel,” he said.