Day Drinking With Little Big Town: On Tipsy Songwriting and Getting Kicked Out of a Casino with Blake Shelton

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Four Cellars

"We write a lot of songs while we're drinking wine – so it’s a tax write-off, maybe?"

Little Big Town's Karen Fairchild is explaining the origins of the band’s new Four Cellars wine club over a glass of chardonnay in a private back room at Nashville's The Thompson hotel. In a few minutes, we'll launch into a boozy, hilarious game of "Never Have I Ever" – but first, we talk shop.

Produced in partnership with the Browne Family Vineyards in Walla Walla, Washington, LBT is kicking off its Four Cellars collection (named for, you guessed it, the four members of the band) with a chardonnay and a red blend. In addition to being poured at select venues in Nashville – including The Ryman Auditorium, where the band currently holds residency – it’s also the "very sophisticated, but super easy to drink" anchor of a wine club experience.

"It's been a long process because we didn’t want to just throw our name on a bottle of wine. We drink a lot of wine, so we do know good wine, I’m gonna confidently say that,” Fairchild says. “We did kind of an experience in a box, so with the first box shipment comes a vinyl of The Breaker, a beautiful gold corkscrew, a recipe from Kimberly [Schlapman, who hosts Kimberly’s Southern Cooking on The Cooking Channel] for your evening, a playlist from us of some of our favorite songs for the summer, and then two beautiful wines. All you have to do is add friends."


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With feel-good hits like "Day Drinking" and "Painkiller," it's no surprise that Fairchild, Schlapman, Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook draw inspiration from good times with good friends. As the Four Cellars roster expands, fans can expect to taste a sauvignon blanc, syrah, rosé, merlot, and, around the holiday season, a sparkling wine.

"We've taken a lot of pride in the process," Fairchild says, with Sweet noting that they "started developing over the last year and a half."

But don't label them "wine snobs" just yet. Trust us, you're gonna want to hear their drinking stories...

Gamely swapping tales for ET's "Interviews Under the Influence" series, Little Big Town reveal which of their songs were written with a buzz (the answer might surprise you), how they were once kicked out of a casino with Blake Shelton and Zac Brown, and the only A-listers to have ever convinced Schlapman to take shots of tequila. Watch below for all the details!

The interview came just a few days after LBT's powerhouse performance of "When Someone Stops Loving You" on the CMT Awards. Now, the band has announced that the song will officially serve as their next breakout single, marking the first Westbrook-led single since their massively successful breakthrough hit, "Boondocks." 

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