LADY A'S SOUND STRATEGY
With basically two new albums to promote, the trio’s Irvine set list will have lots of new songs
After a year and a half off the road, Lady A’s Charles Kelley said he and his band mates, Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood, are finally starting to get back in the groove. The country music group recently resumed touring and is coming to FivePoint Amphi-theatre in Irvine on Friday. “You know, those Irvine shows are always one of our best crowds,” Kelley said during a recent phone interview. “There’s something to be said there about California country fans; they really gravitate to-wards our brand of country. Seriously, it’s one of our most favorite places to play and we’re looking forward to it. ”During our chat, Kelley was waiting to get his car washed near his Nashville, Tennessee, home before heading off to the Ryman Auditorium to perform as part of the “ACM Honors” televised event Aug. 25, which also featured performances by Lauren Alaina, Alan Jackson, Ashley McBryde, Chris Janson, Keith Urban and more. Though a global pandemic sidelined Lady A’s plans to be out promoting its eighth studio album, “Ocean,” which was released in late 2019, the band forged on with several virtual-style events for fans and hunkered down in the studio to write even more music, some of which will be released Oct. 22 on album “What a Song Can Do. ”“We may have had one of the songs writ-ten before the pandemic, but I’m pretty positive it was all written during that year,” Kelley said. “The whole record is pretty hopeful. We didn’t want to put out something that brought people down. I think after last year, the last thing peo-ple wanted is a depressing record. I also think because we had so much time to write, the quality of the songwriting is probably the strongest we’ve had in a long time and I also think it’s a more personal record, for sure.” The title track, “What a Song Can Do,” touches on all the emotions lyr-ics can evoke and the almost other-worldly power music has to transport listeners back to a specific place, time and feeling. “It’s about how we associate with music and relate it to our own lives,” he said. “Hillary always says it best because she has said that songs can express how she’s feeling better than she can say her-self, and there’s a lot of music that has done that for me, too. That song is probably one of the most personal songs I’ve ever writ-ten and it just has a little tinge of what music has done for us as a group as well, so there’s a double meaning in that. Music has brought us to so many places. I had never been out of the states until I started playing music and I feel like I’ve traveled the world, grown so much, and my eyes have been opened to so much and mu-sic did all that.
Country music trio Lady A’s Dave Haywood, left, Hillary Scott and Charles Kelley, shown at the
2021 CMT Music Awards in Nashville, will headline FivePoint Amphitheatre in Irvine
on Friday.
JASON KEMPIN GETTY IMAGES FOR CMT
In response to the social justice movement that erupted with anti-racism protests all across the country last summer, Lady A, which was formerly known as Lady Antebellum, announced it would officially only go by Lady A (a nickname fans had already given the band) in an effort to distance itself from a term with historical ties to slavery.
The move was met with some controversy and still-pending litigation, since that moniker was also being used professionally by Anita White, a Black Seattlebased
blues singer. Kelley said the entire experience, including the stress of a pandemic and having difficult but important open dialogue about potential harm his band name may have caused, provided the trio a good hard look in the mirror.
“It was wild and made us realize that sometimes your intentions can be misinterpreted,” he said. “It all definitely brought us closer as a band and honestly even more dedicated and passionate about trying to really leave a legacy and make a mark that is meaningful. The whole world is divided right now, and it’s really hard to please everyone and you realize that you just can’t. I started leaning on my faith a lot more because you start questioning, like, ‘My gosh, what is happening in the world right now?’ Our goal was just to change and to make our music and our shows a welcoming place and I think once you know better, you do better.”
In late August, when Lady A announced it was releasing a new album, it also put out a new single, “Where Would I Be,” which is one of the tracks on the album the band didn’t write but knew would fit this collection of songs. Kelley said it’s reflective and seemingly perfectly sums up the relationship within the band.
“It reminds me of when we started and with ‘American Honey’; we didn’t write that one either, but I was like this was made
for us,” he said. “That is our story and I also think about, like, where I’d be if I hadn’t married my wife. This past year and a half she was encouraging me and kept my head above water, saying, ‘Listen, God has plans’ and ‘Keep trusting in the decisions y’all are making and you know things will get back to normal.’ I needed that.”
Since several songs off of
“Ocean” were never performed live prepandemic, Kelley said, there’s a lot of fresh material in the current set list. Songs like “What If I Never Get Over You,” “Ocean” and “Champagne Night” will be in the mix alongside newer offerings from “What a Song Can Do” and, at this point, Lady A has numerous hit singles like “Downtown,” “Bartender,” “Need You Now,” “I Run to You” and “You Look Good.”
“It’s an hour-and-a-half show really of hits, singles and singalongs,” he said. “It makes me even more nostalgic when I’m performing and going, ‘Holy crap, this is 15 years of a real catalog now.’ It’s humbling as an artist at this point.”