Little Big Town Reveal the 1 Song That ‘Finally’ Landed on 12th Album as Band Reflects on Keeping Their ‘Craft Alive’ (Exclusive)

Karen Fairchild, Jimi Westbrook, Kimberly Schlapman and Phillip Sweet tell PEOPLE about the 1 song that “finally” landed on their 12th album ‘It’s a Dying Art,’ available now

NEED TO KNOW

Little Big Town released their 12th studio album It’s a Dying Art on Aug. 28

The new project is inspired by enduring relationships and traditional crafts like songwriting and community building

The band will kick off their For the Art of It Tour on Sept. 24

Little Big Town have been a band for more than 25 years — a fact that Jimi Westbrook is struck by all over again on a recent Zoom call with PEOPLE.

“I think bands hanging around that long is probably a dying art,” he says, invoking the title of the band’s latest album It’s a Dying Art, available now.

Fellow band members Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman and Phillip Sweet agree. “It’s not very common,” says Schlapman earnestly of their quarter-century-long tenure.

Fairchild sees this album release as the start of a “new chapter” for the group, infused with all the same core truths they’ve always valued.

“And as a band, just using our voices and our gifts and making something that only the four of us can make together [feels important],” she says of It’s a Dying Art. “Think about all the things that our grandmothers did — the writing notes, the quilting, the picking flowers out of the garden and dropping them at a friend’s house — I think this record has the ability to celebrate all those things and relationships that last a long time and what hard work it takes to see that through.”

In the making of the album and deciding upon its title, the band contemplated what else they hope to preserve, too.

“Making art that is flawed because that is art,” says Fairchild. “And painting.”

“How to write a good thank you note,” adds Schlapman. “Community, especially in Nashville where it’s extra special and unique. When we get to hang out with our brothers and sisters in country music, we have so much fun and there’s depth and history there. I hope that that continues. I hope that doesn’t die.”

“I feel like for all [us] Gen X-ers, it’s everything analog, right?” says Sweet.

“I do think it is,” says Fairchild. “It is kind of coming back in a way, and we were talking about just teaching our kids the craft of writing a song, singing it, playing, pulling the ideas together. It’s a craft that has to be kept alive.”

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Fairchild co-wrote a number of the songs on the record — so many “bangers,” says Sweet, that the band had an embarrassment of riches.

“We’ve always had the same philosophy of the best song wins and when the moment finds itself and the record starts telling its story, that’s where you go and follow that. And that’s really the process we always like to go with, and I think that’s what happened here,” he says.

“She just kept whipping songs out of her pocket,” adds Westbrook, who happens to be married to Fairchild. “I was like, ‘Dang, that’s another one!’”

Fellow country star (and longtime friend of the band) Kelsea Ballerini even has a feature on the record with “Closing Time,” but the one song that the band says they’d been sitting on for a while is a track called “Long Way to Your Heart.”

Courtsey of Little Big Town

“We never could really figure out what record it was going to be on. It could have been on any of them,” says Fairchild of the tune co-written with The Love Junkies (A.K.A. Lori McKenna, Liz Rose and Hillary Lindsey — the songwriting trio also responsible for the band’s mega hit “Girl Crush”).

“It just didn’t work out until now. I’m so glad it did,” says Westbrook. “I love the song so much.”

Sweet says he still remembers first hearing the track “a couple of record cycles back” but notes the tune hadn’t quite found its way to the right album until now.

“I think it happens a lot more than people would know about,” muses Fairchild. “Sometimes you try and force it and it’s like, ‘Eh, I don’t know, what is it missing?’ And we don’t ever want to have that feeling. We want to be able to look at a record and go, ‘Can’t wait to sing all of these songs on stage for the fans.’ We can’t have any ones that we’re like, ‘Wish I hadn’t cut that,’” she says.

“We’ve done that before!” Schlapman says with a laugh.

Little Big Town will kick off their For the Art of It Tour on Sept. 24. It’s a Dying Art is out now.

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