A Little Bit Country

There Jimi Westbrook was, a country boy in the self-professed rock ‘n’ roll capital of the States, a Willie Nelson disciple in the city that first made Meat Loaf famous.

He may have seemed a little out of sorts.

And then he hit the stage.

Opening a Keith Urban arena gig in the fall of 2005 with country vocal group Little Big Town, Westbrook and his bandmates would get a moment of career validation that Westbrook still relishes like he was recalling his first kiss.

“It was the first night of the tour that we had, we came out, and when we played ‘Boondocks,’ the people in the arena stood up,” Westbrook says, not masking any of the awe in his voice. “We were like, ‘Oh my gosh, they know our song, and I think they like it!’ That was an unbelievable high. I’ll never forget that.”

Westbrook cites that night as a turning point in the band’s career: Up until then, Little Big Town had weathered a slow-selling debut, indifference from Nashville, the sting of getting dropped by their first label and years on the road in a cramped van, making little more than gas money to get to the next town.

Not long after that Cleveland show, the band’s sophomore disc, “The Road To Here,” would go gold, driven by their punchy ode to rural living, “Boondocks.”

It was an unlikely success: This bunch has become one of country music’s leading lights by being everything that the genre’s not.

Now that the standard in Nashville is huge-sounding, ultra-polished productions with an unwavering fixation on the airwaves, Little Big Town favors spare, warm sounding recordings, with the instrumentation from their superb, forthcoming third album, “A Place to Land,” recorded on analog tape for a crackling, throwback feel.

The co-ed quartet boasts no lead singer, favors jeans over Stetsons, and their wistful, sun-ripened harmonies have much more in common with classic pop and rock groups like Fleetwood Mac and the Mamas and the Papas than any other contemporary country act.

Basically, they’re the ideal country band for people who don’t like country all that much.

“We get e-mails and we see people live who come up and go, ‘You know what? We have never, ever listened to country music in our lives, but we found you guys, we started listening to other country artists and we actually found stuff that we liked,” Westbrook says. “I think that’s awesome, man. We would love to be a band that does that for the genre.”

This may seem like something of a paradox, considering that initially, the country music industry wanted little to do with a boisterous vocal group known for playing Grand Funk covers live.

“Just the concept of the group itself, as far as we know, there never had been a mixed group of guys and girls,” Westbrook says of the initial resistance Little Big Town received from Nashville. “Then throw in the fact that there is no one particular lead singer, that’s challenging, because a lot of times with country radio, their normal thing is, ‘Well, you’ve got to identify one person as the lead.’ We just wanted the harmony to be the thing that people recognize. Thank God the format opened up and accepted us in with that.”

Countering cosmopolitan country’s pop sheen with a much rootsier, organic sound, the band sets spare, flickering instrumentation against their equally radiant and dusky harmonies. By turns haunting and raucous, “A Place to Land” is an album about chasing down dreams, dying young and the lure of hard women.

It’s a vintage sounding record, one that samples everything from Delta blues to acoustic longing, all bound together by four big, boundless voices that go together like beer and Saturday night.

It’s a country album, albeit a stubborn one, referencing the genre’s past while nudging it toward the future.

“I think people are ready for things that are different,” Westbrook says. “You’ve got all the music of the world at your fingertips now, and everybody listens to all kinds of things. There’s a lot of room for growth in the country format.”

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0476.