AJ (Thanksgiving) OC: …enjoy it. :19
“My favorite Thanksgiving dish would be the homemade dressin’ that we, cornbread-based kind of dressin’ that we always have with turkey. That recipe is a kind of a combination of my mama, and Denise has taken it and perfected it over the years, so that me and my children really enjoy it.”

Brothers Osborne (misfits Thanksgiving) OC: …going home. :45
“What we’ve done the past several years is because it’s so hard to go home, we would have what we call the Misfit Thanksgiving dinner, and all the people in Nashville who aren’t able to go home to their families, we would just invite them over to our house and have a big potluck style Thanksgiving dinner. We’ll take like a couple of tables and throw them together and throw some sheets on it just to make it look nice. It’s a very redneck display of like tableware, because all the plates don’t match and the forks and knives don’t match, but we don’t care. People will bring wine, and at the end of the day, we’ll probably have 12-15 people all sitting at dinner together that weren’t able to go home with their families, and just enjoy it with friends. It’s been really fun. Definitely a lot less stress than going home.”

Canaan Smith (pumpkin pie) OC: …Thanksgiving. :14
“Pumpkin pie is where it’s at. My mom makes the best. She got it from her mom, my Nanny. It’s so good. It’s made from scratch. Everything about it, it’s just mouthwatering. I love it. I can’t get enough. If I could get fat, it’d be from pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving.”

Clare Dunn (Thanksgiving dish) OC: …like hers. :21
“I think my favorite Thanksgiving dish [is] my mom makes the best mashed potatoes in the world. I mean, they’re crazy. They’re like garlic and butter and all the good stuff, so that’s probably my favorite Thanksgiving dish. Oh, and she makes great stuffing too, and I’m not a stuffing person, but I like hers.”

Darius Rucker (favorite part of Thanksgiving) OC: …my family. :17
“My favorite part of Thanksgiving is easy – it’s food. It’s eating. It’s hanging out with family and getting some great food, ‘cause that’s really what Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving is about giving thanks for all of the great things you’ve got, and I always give thanks for the greatest thing I’ve got and that’s my family.”

Darius Rucker (Thanksgiving) OC: …alive. :17
“The main thing I’m thankful for is my family, no doubt about that. Thanksgiving is about family first, you know either getting together going to New Jersey and getting together with family or in Charleston and getting together with my family and just cooking and eating and sitting around talking and remembering and being thankful for where we are and that we’re all still alive.”

David Nail (Thanksgiving dish) OC: …spoonful. :33
“My favorite Thanksgiving dish was my grandmother’s macaroni and cheese. There probably wasn’t anything elaborate about it. It was probably the cheapest macaroni and cheese that money can buy, but for some reason it was always extra special, and she would also add extra cheese to it for me. My cousin Matt and I would have many, many fights about who would get the last spoonful.”

Dierks Bentley (Thanksgiving must-have) OC: …for Thanksgiving. :34
“You gotta have a big turkey. Thanksgiving is not possible without a turkey. We cook it traditionally, but when we’re in, a couple of Thanksgivings ago, we were here in Nashville, we did the whole fry the turkey up, and it was great. It just tasted so good; all those juices get locked in there, and I love that too. You really can’t, to me, cook a turkey wrong. I’m gonna eat it any way, and I have over the years. Trust me, I’ve played a lot of county and state fairs, where I’ve seen gigantic turkey legs, you know, I’ve had the flat meat. I’ve done turkey every way you could do it. I’m pretty good any way you want to cook it up, but you’ve got to have a turkey for Thanksgiving.”

Easton (Thanksgiving) OC: …my grandma’s. :33
“Having family and being able to spend that quality time with them and obviously, the opportunity to do what I do. But absolutely during that time, being able to spend that time with family and your loved ones. We used to always go to my grandma’s, that’s Christmas and Thanksgiving. We’d go there for the big meal. I don’t get to go back much. A lot of times I’ll stay up [in Nashville] for Thanksgiving, and then go down during Christmas, but we’d always go to my grandma’s.”

Eric Church (Thanksgiving) OC: …want to do it. :23
“A couple of things. I’m thankful for my family and great health. And I’m thankful for from a career standpoint, I’m very thankful for the success we’ve had lately. I’m thankful for what the fans have done. I mean there’s a lot of stuff to be thankful for in that regard. And I’m thankful that I was given the opportunity to do it my own way. I’m thankful that I’m going to get to keep doing this and do it the way that I want to do it.”

Eric Paslay (Thanksgiving) OC: …too much. :05
“My best Thanksgiving memory, I think, is just hanging out with family, watching football and eating too much!”

Josh Turner (fave side dish) OC: …’em myself. [laughs] :24
“Uh, deviled eggs! [laughs] Where I’m from in South Carolina, I don’t think I’ve tasted a bad deviled egg. It’s like everybody has their own twist on it, but they’re all good, but I always loved it when my mama made ‘em. I’m learning as I get older, making deviled eggs is no easy task. It’s more complicated than it looks, and so that’s probably why I never made ‘em myself.” [laughs]

Keith (Thanksgiving) OC: …for me. :21
“Thankful that, well, my marriage is just, it’s life-giving, not just life-changing, it’s been life-giving for me. And from there, we created life, and that’s just beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And the effect that all of that has had in my work, has given life to it too, given it a sense of purpose and really deepened the experience for me.”

Lady A (Charles-Thanksgiving eating contest) OC: …five pounds! :25
“One of my most memorable Thanksgiving memories was probably the first year that me and my two brothers decided to start our annual eating contest where we ate throughout the whole day. We started that morning and weighed ourselves and at the very end of the night, we weighed ourselves out and all three of us equally gained five pounds. I wish we had a more accurate scale to decide the winner, but we all tied. Five pounds!”

Lady A (Hillary-Thanksgiving food) OC: …ever tasted. :12
“So, my favorite Thanksgiving food would have to be my grandmother’s sweet potato casserole. There’s just something she puts in it — probably all the love – that makes it better than anything I’ve ever tasted.”

LBT (Thanksgiving) 2 OC: (Kimberly) …and eat. :31
KIMBERLY: “Thanksgiving—we love Thanksgiving, ‘cause we get to be with our families and we don’t often get to spend time with our families, our extended families, until the holidays. I love being around the table with my family and talking and laughing and cooking and eating…” JIMI: “And eating and eating and eating and eating…” PHILLIP: “The laughter around the eating, the good cheer, the celebration, the music…” JIMI: “The eating, going taking a nap, then coming back and eating.” KIMBERLY: “Go to bed with a full belly, take a nap, and then get up and eat.”

Mickey Guyton (Thanksgiving traditions) OC: …Thanksgiving traditions. :17
“One of my Thanksgiving traditions is playing charades after Thanksgiving dinner. I’m not the most competitive person in the world, but as soon as you put some Charades in the picture, I am crazy, and you will definitely want to be on my team if we’re playing Charades. I’m just saying. So, that’s one of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions.”

Mickey Guyton (favorite Thanksgiving dish) OC: …both so much! :39
“My favorite Thanksgiving dish that has to, has to, has to be at Thanksgiving dinner is dessert. Dessert is my favorite Thanksgiving dish. I mean, it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s sweet. My mom actually makes an Italian cream cake that’s absolutely awesome. It’s homemade, and the entire family, that’s the first thing to go at Thanksgiving dinner. And my Grandma D, she makes a pecan pie that is awesome. She taught me how to make them when I was little, and I just love them, and that’s the other thing that I look forward to at Thanksgiving dinner, and I love them both so much!”

Sam Hunt (Thanksgiving eats) OC: …glass of milk. :34
“When I pile my plate up, it’s mostly turkey and then I’ll put a little dressing on the side, and I’ll usually go ahead and grab my dessert on the first run [laughs] and have it ready before it all disappears. Those are the really the three things. It’s strange, but since I was very young, I’ve always loved drinking milk, my brothers too, we drank lots of milk. My cousins, who grew up down the road, they always looked at us funny when we wanted to drink milk with our Thanksgiving meal. They would have coke or whatever else. So, I still get turkey, dressing, a piece of pecan pie and a big ole glass of milk.”

Dierks Bentley (Elle King) OC: …new place. :36
“Well, I love Elle King’s voice. I mean she has such a unique voice, and you never know if her voice is going to blend with your voice. I didn’t found out until I went down to the studio in Austin, and right away it was just a really natural sounding blend. Her voice just lifted up this song. The lyrics of this song are pretty strong and her voice on this particular song really takes the song to a whole other level. I really wanted to find a way for her not to just be background vocals. I wanted to find a way to really get her included in the song, so I gave her the second verse and made the song more of a conversation as opposed to just background vocals. And it really, it just took the song to a whole new place.”

Elle King (Different for Girls) OC: …song with him. 1:08
“The song itself, it’s an interesting take on a breakup or relationship song. I don’t know if this is why Dierks wanted me to sing on it, you know, besides just my voice, I think I take a really interesting writing approach with my songs about breakups, and I write often from the male perspective. And this song is really thinking about how different men and women are through a breakup, and so I was really excited to be a part of someone else’s song that’s kind of jumping outside the norm of a breakup song or a relationship song. I think it’s got a sweetness to it. The lyrics of this song are really smart, so I thought that it was kind of just a good fit, and I really do want to break out in the country world, because I love country music, not just because I play the banjo. I love country music, and I really love that he’s bringing like a lot of attitude, and I think comedy, to modern country. So, I was really excited to sing this song with him.”

Chris Stapleton (Fire Away video) OC: …grew from there. :25
“The song is kinda about loving somebody unconditionally through not so easy times. The concept of the video kind of came to me as that would be the hardest possible space in which to love somebody. I’ve been a huge fan of Ben’s [Foster] for a long time and so we tried to track him down and he was kind enough to take the phone call. And then it kind of grew from there.”

Chris Stapleton (Fire Away video) 2 OC: …in the world. :29
“I wanted to get real actors and not spend a lot of time making it a promo video for me, and that was how I wanted to make a video, because I felt like that it was more artful and meaningful on the backend. That was the thing – it was just a notion, and then it became real and useful and something that can hopefully make the world a better place through putting the notion out in the world.”

Dierks Bentley (Black) OC: …it all out. :28
“I wrote the song ‘Black.’ I loved the song and it had this kind of relationship, sexy thing going on. My wife’s maiden name is Black, and so it has these layers to it. Our 10^th anniversary has come and gone, so it kind of sparked an idea of a relationship-type record. I think she heard the song and she really liked it, and then as the album started growing, it became less of just about her and more just about this journey in general – this guy going through these ebbs and flows in different relationships and trying to figure it all out.”

Dierks Bentley (Halloween 2016) OC: …pretty strong. :57
“The costumes are always picked out by our kids, and this year they wanted to do Toy Story. So, I thought maybe I’d get Woody. No. I thought maybe I’d get Buzz Lightyear. No. I got Mr. Potato Head. Yeah, I’m very cool. I’m gonna make him cool. I’m bringing sexy back to Mr. Potato Head. they’ve got a Mrs. Potato Head too, so Cass is Mrs. Potato Head. So, we’re going as the, yeah, Toy Story. But we’ve gone as The Wizard of Oz before. We did Willy Wonka one year, which was unfortunate for Cass ‘cause she had to dress up as Violet as a big blueberry. So, our outfits are terrible, but it’s fun because the kids pick ‘em out. Let’s see, so we’re Potato Heads, Evie is Little Bo Peep, Jordan is the cowgirl. I can’t think of her name. Jessie! Jordan is Jessie, and then Knox is Buzz Lightyear. We got a little Buzz Lightyear costume for him, which is pretty strong.”

Dierks Bentley (GMA CMA perf) OC: …in the morning there. 1:10
“I’m coming from a little thing I’m doing down in Orlando the night before, but I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to be part of this Good Morning America performance. I think Keith Urban did it last year. I remember seeing all those people down there on Lower Broadway. That’s where I got my start playing those bars down there. You dream of playing the CMAs and getting on that show and now to have a chance to kick off the whole night with a show that morning on that stage they build out there and just seeing the people packed in amongst all the buildings down on Lower Broadway. I own a building down there now. I’m starting a bar down there, and I’ll probably be able to see it from the stage. Lower Broadway is just so important to me and the CMAs are so important to me, so to have those two worlds collide and to start the day off with that performance is a huge honor. It sounds like a lot of fun. I don’t care if it’s two o’clock in the morning. I don’t care. [laughs] I haven’t slept in a long, long time anyway, so it doesn’t matter what time the shows are. I love it and the guys in the band are already excited about it, so we’ll be really fired up to be out there. And all these country fans that come in from all over  the country, from all over the world they come in for the CMA Awards, so it’s gonna be a really fun party atmosphere right there on Lower Broadway in the morning there.”

Billy Currington (Halloween) OC: …Halloween. :17
“You know, when I was a kid, I loved the trick and the treat. I loved dressing up. I was always wanting to be Dracula. That was my favorite guy. But, of course, who doesn’t love going door-to-door and getting these buckets of candy? [laughs] So, love, love Halloween.”

Brothers Osborne (zombie costume) OC: (John) …was so fun! :29
TJ: “Literally, you can dress up like a zombie and drag your foot behind you all day and make weird noises, and everyone finds that completely acceptable.” [laughs] JOHN: “One year I dressed up as a ‘90s redneck zombie with a mullet wig and an Alan Jackson denim coat. I never once broke character. That’s part of the thing — you can actually not break character and get away with it. And everywhere I went, even when I ordered a drink, I ordered it like a zombie that was falling apart. [laughs] It was so fun!”

TJ: “I would say, Snickers, Baby Ruth, Kit Kat and Reese’s too.” JOHN: “I always hated those houses that would give you bad candy, though. You’re like, ‘C’mon. Step it up.’ Spend the extra dollar on a bag, you know?” TJ: “A house when we were growing up used to give out whole candy bars. It was the best. You were like, ‘That house – that’s the honey hole of candy.’” JOHN: “I love it, and I love like at the end, like three or four days after Halloween you would see what candy was left, and it was always like those crappy cheap candies, and they would just go stale.” [laughs]

Brothers Osborne (carving pumpkins) OC: …or something. :25
“With our dad every year, we would go looking for pumpkins, and we would all get our own pumpkin to carve, and he would buy the biggest pumpkin that they had. It was huge. I mean, it was way too big for any one person, but he would love carving. He’s kind of an artsy guy. He was a great drawer and stuff, and he would carve the most terrifying, vicious looking, scary pumpkin you’d ever seen in your life, and it would be massive. It would be like on a 50-pound pumpkin or something.”

Canaan Smith (Halloween) OC: …cornfields. :37
“I grew up in a Christian family. We went to a private Christian school for a while, so they didn’t allow us to celebrate Halloween like I do now. We did what was called a Hallelujah Party instead, and you still dress up and still get all the candy, but  you go to the high school gym. You play games, you just do, like cornhole and the dunking booth and all kinds of stuff and win prizes, but it was nothing ever scary. I think they had like rules about what outfits you could and couldn’t wear. But now I just love freaking myself out and going to, I love going to haunted houses and haunted cornfields.”

Darius (Halloween) OC: …I’m into. :06
“Halloween’s big for me, because the kids love it. It’s my kids’ favorite holiday, so anything they’re into, I’m into.”

David Nail (favorite part of Halloween) OC: …it better. :14

“My favorite thing about Halloween was just the excitement about picking out your costume and talking to your friends and fighting over if you’re going to be this or if they stole the idea from you and if you can do the idea better.”

Dierks Bentley (Halloween) OC: … …around home. [laughs]  :23
“Oh, when I was a kid, I was all into fireworks. Growing up in Arizona, we couldn’t get ’em, so we’d have ’em shipped in illegally. I still remember the name of the guy we’d call. His name was Joe, and he’d bring in, ship ’em in a package with no writing on ’em. We were all about M-80s in the mailboxes and bottle rocket wars. To me, as a kid, Halloween was fireworks, was blowing up stuff around home. [laughs]”

Easton Corbin (Halloween) OC: …pretty warm. :26

“My grandma made a werewolf outfit for me, and I wore that one year. She got this fake hair and glued it to sweatpants and a sweatshirt. That was a hot outfit. I mean, it got pretty warm.”

Eric Church (Halloween) OC: …Franklin Street. 1:18
“My favorite Halloween costume really came, I remember when I got a little older my first year of college, there’s this thing they do every year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina – Halloween on Franklin Street. We drove down from Boone, North Carolina. I had a bunch of friends that went to University of North Carolina, and we didn’t have costumes and didn’t realize until we were on the way that we had to have costumes. So, we stopped at a costume place in Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s Halloween, so there’s a run on everything and couldn’t find anything. And we end up getting sent around, driving  around town. We end up finding this hole in the wall place, but they had the full costume, Sesame Street outfits. The real deal. The real ones [with] feathers and fur. We were Elmo, Cookie Monster and I was Big Bird, and the Big Bird was the actual Big Bird. It’s about 7-foot-4, and yiou looked out of the body and then you had these straps that went on since the head was a lot higher. There’s a lot of beer involved in Franklin Street, so we get down there and as the night went on, my straps broke, so the head would pivot. And so, I would be walking one way and the head would be facing the other, and it just became this funny…I didn’t know the head was on backwards. I had no idea. I see out of the body, so I’m just kinda walking around and people were talking to my ass-end. [laughs] The whole time peiople’d come up and start talking and go, ‘Hey, turn around.’ And I’d turn around, and they’d go, ‘No turn around.’ It was a mess. That year, there was no other Big Bird on Franklin Street.”

Jon Pardi (Halloween) 1 OC: …the Superman. :15
“Man, I went through phases of costumes – the Superman costume, then it was a ninja, then I was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle one year. I remember rockin’ the Superman.”

Lady A (Charles costume) OC: …an apple. :19
CHARLES: “I want to be a banana. I think there’s something so funny and understated about a banana, especially when you’re 6’6” and like your little head’s popping through and you’re a banana.” DAVE: “Do they make ‘em your size?” CHARLES: “I’ve been known to sew a thing or two.” HILLARY: “That’s really random.” CHARLES: “I know. I’ve always wanted to dress up like something, just kind of funny like a banana or an apple.”

Lady A (Dave Haywood costume memory) OC: …50 feet. :20
“I was a die (1/2 of a pair of dice) for Halloween. I had a big cardboard box that I had painted white and had the polka dots and stuff. And I remember I was walking up this hill to go to this hill and literally fell back down the entire hill [laughter], rolling in this giant cardboard box that I couldn’t do anything about, because I rolled down about 50-feet.” 

Luke Bryan (Halloween) OC: …your teeth. :21
“You can find out a lot about your neighbors by what kind of candy they put out. So, well, like full bars of Snickers bars, that’s what, and Reese’s cups, [but] the old chocolate popcorn ball of stuff, that’s no good either, like Dots – you get Dots one time of year and they pull your teeth.”