Little Big Town photo courtesy of Capitol Nashville.

Little Big Town is one of the artists featured on Lionel Richie’s Tuskegee album, out today. The band recorded “Deep River Woman” for the project and agreed that it was the experience of a lifetime to work with the iconic singer. “We grew up on his music, I had his cassettes and I wore them out,” Kimberly Schlapman said. “I loved, loved, Lionel Richie and the Commodores, we all did.”

It was Kimberly who was responsible for getting her bandmates on board for the project. She was approached by Tony Brown, who produced Tuskegee about the possibility that Little Big Town would sing on the record. She agreed on the spot and was willing to do whatever necessary to get the rest of the group on board.

Read our review of Lionel Richie’s Tuskegee >>

“I was like, ‘Oh yeah, heck yeah, we will. I’ll go beat them in to submission if I need to,’’ she said. “So, I talk to everybody and we were all really interested, and it was just a matter if we could work it out, schedule-wise, and what song would we do. I think we got to do the perfect song in his whole catalog. We were able to do ‘Deep River Woman,’ which perfectly fit us.”

When they joined Lionel in the studio, it was almost like stepping into a time machine. “He was so generous with us and kind and genuine and was so complimentary of our sound, and then he opens his voice and it’s that voice that takes you back to junior high school,” Kimberly said.

Read the stories behind Tuskegee >>

You can catch Little Big Town performing on Sunday’s ACM Awards during the ACM Lifting Lives segment. The ACMs, co-hosted by Blake Shelton and Reba, will air live on CBS on April 1 at 8/7c. Before the show stats, tune in to GAC at 7/6c to catch all the action live from the red carpet with hosts Suzanne Alexander, Nan Kelley and Storme Warren.

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