Dierks Bentley (Preds Stanley Cup) OC: …hockey town looks like. 1:10
“This is the time to get into it. This is what we’ve all been hoping for as hockey fans in this town that we’d make it this far in the playoffs, ‘cause the further you go, the more people come in. I mean, making it to the playoffs like this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a lot of teams. So, you’ve got some guys on the team like Vernon Fiddler, those guys were out  buying season tickets 10 years ago to keep the team here, so you have players that  actually invested [their] own money to keep the team in Nashville. There will never be another year like this one where there’s so much excitement, and it’s so raw. It’s one thing to watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but it’s not until your team gets there do you really realize how much it takes to get there, how much heart. We lost a lot of people to some serious injuries and these guys keep stepping up and going in. Just to see what’s going on here, it’s just weird. I’ve got some friends who work for the NHL, and they said they’ve never seen an atmosphere like the one here in Nashville. They said it’s like collegiate – the chants, the way everyone chants together and the volume is the loudest they’ve ever heard it anywhere in the country. It’s not so much about what the Stanley Cup means to Nashville, it’s more about what Nashville is doing for hockey. I mean we’re doing a lot more for the NHL is doing then what the NHL is doing for us. We’re showing really the NHL what a really great hockey town looks like.”

Lady A (Nashville Predators) OC: …there, yeah. :41
HILLARY: “For the city of Nashville specially, and I think our entire state, there’s such an electricity about the Preds and what’s going on and how hard they have worked and how incredible they are doing.” CHARLES: “It’s very unifying feeling that is happening, because after what I would consider a very divided political campaign and election year, it was nice to like feel all these people come together (HILLARY: “Our whole city”). It’s what we all hope for and wish for just in live to have that feeling. I’ve never felt anything like being in that arena during a Preds game. (HILLARY: “Our fans are loud.”) It’s the loudest I’ve ever heard. I think they broke a decibel level one of the nights that we were there, yeah.”

Luke Bryan (Nashville Predators) OC: …so fun. :48
“This atmosphere that we’ve had the whole playoffs in Bridgestone [Arena] has, I don’t know if you can mimic it anywhere. The only thing I could compare it to is the SEC Championship type moments and the National Championship type moments [in college football]. You see furniture stores around here selling Preds gear [laughs]. So, I mean, totally it’s that vibe, certainly that crazy, energetic vibe in Bridgestone. And I was at that game where they clinched the finals and I mean we had people in our suite, I mean, crying. It was really emotional and a lot of energy. It’s been an amazing ride, so fun.”

Darius Rucker talks about the amazing things about CMA Music Festival.

Darius Rucker (CMA Music Fest) OC: …awesome. :48
“Music Fest is like nothing else. I say all the time that country music is the only genre that could have something like that. It’s truly amazing, when I come that weekend, people are everywhere and they want to be your best friend. It’s always cool and I love coming here. The thing that always gets me is the show. The fact that you can get that many superstars at one show all playing for free, for the same goal, to entertain those people that are in that stadium that come here for the whole week from all over the world. They come here for one week to see country music, and it’s amazing that those artists say on Friday and Saturday night, this is country music come on out. That’s awesome.”

Dierks (fans) OC: …commitment. [laughs] :22
“I know a lot of the early fans by name, because we played a lot of shows at a lot of small venues where we’d be around a lot after the shows. I’m not gonna say her name ‘cause I don’t know if she’d want me to or not, but she has like a dog print of Jake, my dog’s Jake, but she has this dog print on her shoulder with my name in the middle of the tattoo. So, tattoos are always, that’s a big deal when somebody gets your name tattooed on part of their body or something. It’s kind of a scary thing, because it’s kind of a lifelong commitment. [laughs]”

Dierks Bentley (signing a baby’s head) OC: …child’s brain. :13
“A baby’s head with a sharpie. Yeah, like a two-week old baby. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it. The woman was like, ‘Please.’ I was like, ‘Alright.’ The head at that point is so vulnerable, transparent, so I’m just hoping they didn’t get any ink in the child’s brain.”

Easton Corbin (CMA Music Fest) OC: …wouldn’t work. :25
“CMA Music Fest, it’s a great opportunity to hang out with your fans and stuff. The great thing about the country genre is it’s one of the only genres that really has a festival dedicated to their fans, and I think that’s great because without the fans we wouldn’t be here. They’re the ones that make it work. Without the fans to buy records and listen to the radio and come to the shows, it just wouldn’t work.”

Eric Church (CMA Music Fest) OC: …barrage of  music.
“Well, I think it’s what makes country music unique. Find me another format that happens in, it’s just not something that happens. Country music is the one for mat where the fans…the music is really about them. And we’re them; we’re not different than them. We’re not a lot of the rock stars and a lot of the other guys where they’re their own person, they’re their own agenda…they’re not like the people that are listening to them. It’s different in country, we are. We come from there, we are that. I think it’s just a great thing for them to be able to come to our town and to get just this barrage of music.”

Eric Paslay (1st autograph) OC: …first autograph. :42
“The first autograph that I ever got was in Branson, Missouri, and it was Shoji Tabuchi, and he’s a great fiddle player, and I always remember that, you know if you go to Branson, you know who he is. But I was a 9, 10 year old kid, and I always remember that. Every time I meet a kid, I don’t know if it’s their first concert. It could be their 100-thousandth, but whenever I sign an autograph for a kid, I really make sure it’s special and memorable, and with anybody, but especially with kids. I still have that Shoji Tabuchi autograph, you know? Because it meant that much. I didn’t know he was until we saw him, but he tore the place down playing the “Orange Blossom Special.”

Jon Pardi (performing live) OC: …really loud. :19
“To get up on stage, it feels like home. It’s like, ‘Yeah, this is where I want to be.’ I’d rather be there than a lot of places. I love just getting up on stage not matter where it is. It’s fun to get up and entertain people and have a good time, make everybody feel a part of the show and get up there and play my guitar really loud.”

Josh Turner (weirdest things he’s signed) OC: …Sharpie, though. :10
“A toothpick; an unused toothpick, let me throw that out there, an unused toothpick. It was quite challenging, actually, and it didn’t look anything like my autograph. It took a really small Sharpie, though.”

Keith Urban (CMA Music Fest) OC: …love it. :25
“I love it! It’s like summer camp. I mean, it is! It’s a chance to obviously see a lot of people I don’t normally see. I don’t know. It’s just palpable. Since Fan Fair, it’s just been that sort of week-plus of energy; the town just explodes, and what it is we love about this genre and the community aspect of it. I always love it.”

Kip Moore (favorite thing about performing live) OC: …it gets. :17
“I’d say that my favorite thing about being on the road is the fact that I get to play music each and every night with my best friends. There’s nothing better than that than playing with your best buddies and seeing the joy that you bring to other people’s faces playing the music that you love to play. I mean that’s the best it gets.”

Lady Antebellum (Music Fest) 3 OC: …really cool. :25

“When you see the same fans, these die-hard fans that camp out outside the radio remotes and the hotels, and all of these places, and you start recognizing them, I think that’s when you start going ‘Wow, this is a special and unique industry.’ You talk to them by name and give them a hug. I can’t think of any other genre that has that kind of connection. The people that come back the same time every year, you know where they are going to be. It’s really kind of a fun thing. It’s really cool.”

Lauren Alaina (fans) OC: …me wrong. :30
“My fans helped me grow as a person in lots of different ways. I grew up in front of them. I was 15 on American Idol, so they watched me grow up and kind of helped me mold into who I am, because I worked at CiCi’s Pizza, and now I’m traveling all over the place. It’s like I learned responsibility through all of it. I learned who I am as a person, ‘cause my fans have made me stronger, they’ve made me more responsible, they made me believe in myself 10 times more, because I thought I was going home every week on American Idol, and they proved me wrong.”

Little Big Town (CMA Music Fest) OC: (Phillip) …the best, man. 1:43

Kimberly – We played at the fairgrounds.  I guess it was the last year at the fairgrounds.  We had just gotten our record deal.

Phillip – I remember we were just about to walk out on stage, and we had to play acoustic. I mean there was no backing band,

Kimberly – we were at Mercury.  They wanted us to play before Wynonna sang.

Phillip – I remember, my hair was short and Wynonna walked by and tuffed my hair and was like, “Oh that’s cute…cute red hair boy.” [laugh]  I was like, “Oh great.” Like little puppy dog, you’re gonna be ok kid.

Kimberly – We were nervous.

Karen – Oh my gosh, were so nervous. We were so green.

Kimberly – We didn’t have many songs at that point.  Maybe three songs, which is what we sang. It was all we knew at the time which is what we had worked up.  Because literally we got our record deal in May and that was June.

Karen – And they were like, “Why don’t you guys sing a couple songs?” And, we’re like, “Good because a couple is what we know.” That was fun.  And then moving form that to the stadium shows, to me that the most fun you can ever have…CMA Fest, Stadium shows.  It is an energy unlike anything else. Like last year Kimberly and I sang with Keith on “I get by with a Little Help from my Friends,” and Tony Brown was on piano…

Phillip – All star band.

Kimberly – It was incredible.

Karen – It was over the top and I could just come out of my skin at those moments.

Kimberly – Me too.

Karen  – It’s like you just want to float.

Phillip – And it’s like the best country crowd you could ever compile. Every country fan from all over the world wants to be there.  That’s like the crux of country music awesomeness. I’m telling you it is the best fun.

Karen – It’s the best feeling out there.

Kimberly – They let them line up and all come across the stage so you have all these people that are so giddy, crazy giddy, because they get to walk up close to the stage.

Phillip – And they’re waving and their arms are about to fall off.  They’re just so excited. It’s the best.”

Luke Bryan (CMA Music Fest) OC: …for this week. :33
“It’s a great week. I truly love this week for hundreds of reasons. I always remember my first ones and starting out and doing River Stages and always dreaming of coming over here and performing at LP Field (now Nissan Stadium) and all of the stuff building the fan base early in the week. It’s an amazing week for Nashville, and it’s a great week for me. And then I get to be home and do all this stuff. It’s always been a fun week for me. A lot of my family always comes in for this week.”

Sam Hunt (CMA Music Fest-move to Nashville) OC: …good week for Nashville. :38
“You know, I was here several years ago for the first time for CMA Fest as a fan. I came out to the show, did the full experience, and it really was one of the big reasons I decided to move to Nashville. It kind of made the idea of being a songwriter more tangible and realistic, and also I fell in love with the city, Nashville, so I knew it’d be a place I’d be happy living, and also because of the music. So, yeah, that week here really inspired my move here, and it was a significant part of my life. But since then, I’ve been to every CMA Fest since, I think, and it’s a good week for Nashville.”

Dierks Bentley (growth in album) OC: …understand it. :56
“The record when people listen to it, they’re gonna hear right away that it’s about relationships and hopefully, project their own history and storyline and relationships into this particular album. For me, it has a thread of this guy who starts off in this one place with the song ‘Black,’ kind of in the moment with this one girl and then the cracks and the fissures start to show themselves. The next song, ‘Pick Up,’ you have this desperation and then ‘I’ll Be the Moon,’ there’s some deception going on, and then it just kind of goes from there. It’s a real story about just the highs and lows and really the maturity that I guess I go through, this singer goes through, throughout the album. You know the same guy that’s singing ‘Somewhere on a Beach,’ by the end of the record is singing a song called ‘Different for Girls,’ where he’s obviously matured enough to see that there is a different way that girls and guys handle breakups sometimes and there’s also a stereotype that goes along with that unfortunately, as well, too. A lot of growth throughout the record, but it’s all about relationships and this one person’s journey through love and trying to understand it.”

Dierks (Memorial Day) OC: …upon them. :37
“On the most basic level, I think, for me on the road, I just think about being gone two, three days at a time, maybe a couple of weeks at a time, you know. That seems like a long time when you have kids and family, but these soldiers, they’re gone for months and years at a time – they’re doing 12 to 15 to 18 months — and they have family back home. That, in itself, is such a huge sacrifice, and that’s just the beginning of it. That’s just scratching the surface of what these guys [and gals] are doing every day – preparing for battle, actually being in battle, being wounded in battle, sometimes dying in battle. So, this country obviously, we would not exist without those courageous men and women, and our future depends upon them.”

Eric Church (Memorial Day) OC: …those freedoms.

It’s about, especially the soldiers I come in contact with on the road. And not only that, to be able to make the music that I’m able to make, to say what I want to say, and that freedom to be able to do those things and to be in a country where we’re able to do that and to be in a country where we’re able to play that stuff on the radio. I don’t think you’re going to have any America argue that America isn’t the best place to live, and I’m certainly one of them. I’m very proud to be from here and very proud that we have the soldiers. I know there are a lot of other countries out there in the world that don’t want to live the way we do, and that’s fine, they can keep living the way they are, but I’m very proud of it. I think that’s a time to celebrate being proud to be an American and celebrate those freedoms…and celebrate the people that are over fighting for those freedoms.”

Eric Church (grandfathers in WW2) OC: …touching to me. :21
“Both of my grandfathers were World War II veterans. I mean, that’s something that’s very rare. I’m not unique, you know. There’s a lot of people out there like that that their grandfathers served. The way that I was raised was very much red, white and blue and very patriotic, and I think that it’s the fact that what they give up is the real thing that’s very touching to me.”

Keith Urban (SEALS mantra) OC: …conviction. :30
“They have a mantra, and they say ‘the only easy day was yesterday’ and they had this spirit of brotherhood and that’s a particular thing that’s the way in which, I think, it exists is very specific to the Seals. I mean, military in general have this very strong brotherhood code; it’s a particular kind of thing in the Seals. As was the testament, to Lt. Roark who is the lead guy in the film; when he was interviewed talked about funerals he had been to, and he says ‘there isn’t really any one of us who isn’t just a little bit jealous of the guy who’s died,’ and ok, I heard that, that’s a particular way of being that I cannot relate to. That is an unbelievable depth of commitment and conviction.”

LBT (Memorial Day) OC: …whenever we can. :44
KAREN: “It’s such a huge sacrifice what these men and women do for us, not only the ones that are serving, but the families that are left here at home. Kimberly and I met a young girl…she’s 21 years old, and she has a third baby, and her husband has served multiple times overseas. She’s raising these children at home and doing a great job and the best that she can, and he’s serving our country. He’s making a monstrous sacrifice, but so is she, and so are those children. And we just can’t take it for granted. I mean, it’s just a huge commitment that they make, and what an honor. We love to be able to sing for them and entertain them and to say thank you whenever we can.”

Sam Hunt (Memorial Day) OC: …those freedoms. :40
“My granddad was in World World II. He was on the USS Texas battleship, and he was over at Normandy and over near Japan and he spent a lot of time right in the thick of World War II. He really took pride in what that meant, and it was something I got to see it first hand, as somebody who got to experience that; somebody who had that galvanized American trait. It’s hard to describe it. It was just somebody who’s been through that, seen that and really appreciates what that means. I try to channel that into my life, because I haven’t fought in any war, but I have a ton of respect for folks who have, folks who’ve sacrificed, families who’ve lost lives and just sacrificed years of their own lives and time and effort to maintain those freedoms.”

LINER Billy Currington (Memorial Day)
“Hey guys, I’m Billy Currington. I just wanted to say thank you to all our servicemen and women and their daily service to our country.”

LINER Brothers Osborne (Memorial Day) 2
“Hey! What’s up guys? We’re Brothers Osborne. We just wanted to send our thanks to all you service men and women and the ones who’ve gone before you for sacrificing time with your families, sacrificing your own needs and even sacrificing your lives so we can be free to do what we want to do. It means more than you’ll ever know. Happy Memorial Day!”

LINER Dierks Bentley (Memorial Day)
“Hey everybody, this is Dierks Bentley. I just want to say thank you to the men and  women in uniform on this day and every day.”

LINER Easton Corbin (Memorial Day)
“Hey everybody! It’s Easton Corbin here, wishing you a happy and safe Memorial Day, and I also want to send a special thanks out to our men and women in our Armed Forces.”

LINER Eric Church (Memorial Day)
Hey everyone, this is Eric Church hoping you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.

LINER Eric Paslay (Memorial Day Weekend)
“Hey! This is Eric Paslay, hope you have a wonderful and safe Memorial Day Weekend.”

LINER Jon Pardi (Memorial Day Weekend)
“Hi! It’s Jon Pardi, hoping you have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend.”

LINER Josh Turner (thanks to military)
“Hey! This is Josh Turner. I just wanted to say thank you to all of our servicemen and women for what you do around the world.”

LINER Keith Urban (Memorial Day)
“Hi everyone, this is Keith Urban. Now please take time to remember all those who sacrificed their lives during this Memorial Day Weekend.”

LINER LBT (Memorial Day)
“Hi! This is Little Big Town, take time to remember our fallen heroes during this Memorial Day Weekend.”

LINER Luke Bryan (Memorial Day)
“Hey! It’s Luke Bryan, hoping you have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend.”

Luke Bryan (Fast) OC: …in a song. :58
“‘Fast’ is a song that I got the opportunity to get in the room with Rodney Clawson and Luke Laird and we started it. Luke and Rodney, I mean obviously, their pedigree is quite extensive and amazing. And I’m just so proud about how we used a simple word like ‘Fast’ and we tied the verses in and then that second verse how we brought in the parents were saying ‘we were falling in love too fast but we still made it work.’ And how life does move too fast. Every time I come home my boys are bigger and starting to throw me around the house a little more, and one day I’ll snap my fingers and you wish you could have froze time a little bit. And I think anytime you can help people slow down and reflect on that and remember to take things in stride a little bit better, I think people love hearing that in a song.”

Jon Pardi (Dirt on My Boots) OC: …that track. :31
“I saw my 22 year old self getting off a tractor and going to take a shower and putting his work boots back on and going and hanging out with a girl and having a good time dancing or something. And I really connected to the lyrics of it. It’s very country lyrics. It has tractors. It has cutting a rug. My favorite [line] — ‘I can get cleaned up, but I can only get so fancy,’ and I loved it. It was a great written country lyric, and I really think we made it more of a traditional feel with a modern flare to it, and I was really proud of that track.”

Eric Church (Like a Wrecking Ball) OC: …their life. :49
“I hate innuendo. I don’t like where people get cute. I’m 36 years old. I’m not 12. I don’t need people to disguise what we’re talking about. I think we can get so cute with stuff like that. Al Green didn’t get cute. Conway Twitty didn’t get cute. They said it. We’re adults, and this is an adult record. We’ve always made adult music. I like songs like that, and that’s what this song is. This song is about sex. It’s about not being home to see your wife or girl for a long time, and thinking about that, preparing for that and executing that [laughs] is what this song’s about. It has nothing to do with anything else. I mean…that’s what it is, and the honesty of that, I hope people find refreshing, because I’ve not found anybody that hasn’t felt that at some point in time during their life.”