Lady Antebellum works self-titled debut
As singer Charles Kelley tells it, fate played a hand in the formation of the fledgling country act Lady Antebellum [ tickets ]. Kelley--the brother of singer-songwriter Josh Kelley--and high school friend/singer/guitarist Dave Haywood grew up together in Augusta, GA, and started playing music in college. "I moved to Nashville and talked him into quitting his job as an accountant and moving to Nashville," Kelley said with a laugh. "Shortly after that, we met Hillary and we started writing songs together and the group kind of developed out of a friendship."The meeting of singer Hillary Scott, daughter of '90s country star Linda Davis, was the impetus for Lady Antebellum, whose song "Love Don't Live Here" is currently in the Top 10 of Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart."We were out at a little night spot in Nashville and she walked up and said, 'I know you from MySpace. I know your music,'" Kelley said. "She found out about me through my brother Josh. She was on his page. She checked me out. She said, 'I love what you're doing.'"The two discussed writing songs and exchanged numbers. Three months later, Lady Antebellum was formed. "We just had immediate chemistry between the three of us as a group," Kelley said. "It was just kind of an obvious thing, like we needed to do this together. It was a cool time. Definitely fate stepped in." The band's self-titled debut was released Tuesday (4/15), a day Lady Antebellum spent doing interviews. In the morning, the trio spoke with syndicated radio stations in Nashville and, by 11 a.m., they were on a plane to California for more interviews, including a chat with LiveDaily. "We're so excited," Kelley said. "We've been playing shows on these songs for the past two years, so to finally have something to be able to put in the fans' hands is nice."We've had some really loyal fans really early on that we kind of just developed off of MySpace and just the live shows," Kelley added. "They've been so great, really patient. But they've been waiting for this, so I'm excited to be able to get it in their hands. I just can't wait to see what people think. All but one song are songs that we wrote. So it's a real personal project for us. We're hopin' everybody loves it. We'll see."
