Jon Pardi (#1 party) OC: …changed there, you know? :32
“We’ve been working at it for a while now, and it’s been a great path to here. It’s even more exciting and just awesome in general to come here with a second record, first No. 1, you got a fan base and finally you can say, ’Boom! We did it!’ Just kinda keep marching, but it’s definitely going to another level, which is good. My life is still writing songs and playing shows every weekend, so not much has changed there, you know?”

Jon Pardi (#1 party) 2 OC: …Over Boots. :22
“It’s a good feeling to know as a songwriter that you kinda had that vision and it came true, and I think when you’re a songwriter, you really try to work at that and you can see it live. After everything is all said and done, it’s really fun. There’s a connection when people are dancing and laughing and singing, and that definitely happens with ‘Head Over Boots.’”

Luke Laird (Head Over Boots) OC: …for the ride. 1:07
“Jon literally came in, sat down, started playing that shuffle groove, had the title, sang the first few lines, so I was like the lucky guy in the room that day. From the first time I heard Jon – I was such a huge fan of his first record, I actually seeked him out, tried to get my wife Beth, I’m like, ‘Can you find out a way I cann write with Jon Pardi?’ (JON: “Which is awesome.”) I was just a fan, but when Jon sits down with a guitar, just what he does naturally is already so unique. It’s like so country like you’ve heard it before, like you’ve never heard it before, and when I’m trying to work with artists, that’s what I look. But as far as this song, when we were writing, I honestly just dug back into me being a fan of 90s country music, and I just  loved that we could just write a straight-ahead country song and not worried about having to do all sorts of tricks and whatever. It was just completely authentic to who Jon is as an artist and it was just him being himself, and I was just fortunate enough to be along for the ride.

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.”

Dierks Bentley (wrapping up 2016 tour) OC: …summer vacation. :31
“It’s always sad. It kinda feels like high school coming to an end when you’ve got a great group of people like I have. It starts within my own camp. The guys in my band and my crew, everyone really goes out there wanting the summer to feel great, not just for the audience, but also for us. It’s our summer on the road…it’s our summer too, so we wanna have a lot of fun. We work really hard to create a fun atmosphere backstage for us and all of our crew. And then obviously, the guys that tour with us – having Randy [Houser] out there and Cam and Tucker [Beathard] – want to really make it feel like summer break, summer vacation.”

Dierks Bentley (wrapping up 2016 tour) 2 OC: …like crazy. :51
“I think when I first stepped on the road this summer I realized it’s like, gosh, this is like summer camp for us. It’s so fun getting to see the same people day in and day out and having stories to talk about the next morning from the night before of the crazy stuff that happened on stage or if there’s a little party that went on after the show. It’s just been so fun. And for me to have the songs stacking up the way they have been and the hits piling up, and to have new material to go out there and sing every summer and some summers have multiple songs come out while we’re on the road, makes it exciting, keeps it fresh for us; it feels like we’re really building something great. It’ll be sad when it’s over. We’re rockin’ so hard, it’ll probably come to an end when it needs to, ‘cause it’s gotta recoup a little bit to get ready for 2017. But, we’ll miss Randy and miss Cam and Tucker like crazy.”

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.”

AJ (working people songs) OC: … appreciate that. :28
“I’ve always written songs and recorded songs, other people’s songs, about workin’ people, and workin’, the workin’ life ’cause I mean, that’s where I’m from. I mean, I worked…I’d already had jobs and worked as a grown person before I ever even thought about bein’ in the music business, so I come from that background, and…although I hadn’t had a job in a long time (laughs), I still remember a lot about it, you know, and I remember what the lifestyle is, and I still appreciate that.”

Billy Currington (Labor Day) OC: …record deal. :40
“I started working like at [age] 12, landscaping. This was summer, every summers, and roofing. I started when I was about 16 roofing houses, and that was probably one of my toughest jobs because down there in south Georgia, it gets hot, so doing that every day all summer long. The pawn shop when I moved to Nashville was one of my favorites, even though it was one of my least favorites. The concrete job was my least favorite of all – six years of that, and I couldn’t take it no more. After that job, that was my turning point. Either I’m going to do something else for a living [laughs] or quit and try to really focus on music and get this record deal.”

Canaan Smith (worst jobs) OC: …of that. [laughs] :54
“I’ve had some terrible jobs. I was a janitor for a while, and I mopped floors, vacuums all kinds of, picking up dog poop, taking out trash, just basically somebody’s beyatch [laughs], that was my job. I did that for two-and-a-half years before I signed a publishing deal. Before that, actually my very first job, I got fired from. It was some sort of candy/chocolate store. My mom dropped me off one time, and I went to work and I was like I think I can do this, and then two shifts later I just didn’t show up because I didn’t understand the concept of having to look at a schedule to see when you come in. I just didn’t show. I just thought they’d call me, ‘Hey, we need you to come in.’ I didn’t know. I was 15 years old, and never worked and that kind of stuff. I always cut grass when I was a kid and cleaned golf clubs – whatever I could do to make some money. But, yeah, I got fired from my first job. I’m pretty proud of that.” [laughs]

Clare Dunn (discovered music) OC: …that way. :40
“I did most of my music discovery as a young girl driving a tractor for most of the day – 10, 12 hours a day, you have nothing but the radio as your companion, basically, to keep you entertained. So, there was a local country radio station, and they, along with my parents’ love of music, I mean, that’s how I found Keith Urban and George Strait. My mom is a huge Waylon Jennings’ fan. And so music for me, I discovered it driving long hours on a tractor or hauling water to a cattle in a pickup by myself or through my parents’ love of music. And so, I was really fortunate that way.”

Darius Rucker (Labor Day) OC: …pizza. :15
“I was fifteen, and I worked at a pizza place, and the guy decided that at fifteen, that I could not only clean the floors and wash the dishes, but I also had to make pizza. So, for two months, he taught me how to make pizza.”

David Nail (Labor Day) OC: …Dilly Bar. :32
“The first job that I ever had was working at Dairy Queen. One of my very best friends in the world’s mother purchased a franchise, so it was kinda a cool place to work. You put me in an ice cream place, it’s a recipe for disaster. So, Kathy Jeffers, her mother tends to tell people it was a ‘mutual separation,’ but I can vividly remember her saying that they were going to lose money if they continued to let me work, because I was eating more food than I was selling. But, it was a great two days that I spent there, and I had many a Dilly Bar.”

Dierks Bentley (Labor Day) OC: …generosity. :26
“Personally, the fans give me amazement. That’s the only word to really sum it up. I look out in the crowd, you know, usually see a lot of faces and fans are cheering. I know each one of these like from the road-the signs are from California…Michelle and Kayla live up in the Ohio area. They’re all, I just see them, and I’m like, ‘Wow!,’ they’re all from different regions. You know when you’re in a different region of the country and you just see certain fans. These people are way more hard core than I am, and I’m just amazed by their generosity.”

Eric Church (Labor Day-odd jobs) OC: …bought at 2am. 1:27
“I had an awful job. I’ve had a lot of awful jobs…my worst one was when I first came to Nashville. I got a job at the Shop at Home Network. I worked midnight, graveyard, midnight to eight. That was bad enough but then I would work all night, go home, shower and then I had writing appointments all day because I was trying to get a career started. I’d go write songs and get meetings just trying to get signed. And end up getting done at 3 of 4 with all of that, I’d go home, take a shower or sleep for a little bit and then I had to be at work again at midnight. So the schedule was bad enough, however, what I had to do at the job…I sold knives from midnight to 7 or 8am. And, anytime somebody calls you at 3 or 4am and needs 200 knives for $19.95, it’s automatically an alarming situation. And I just, I was young and I’d been in a lot of these people’s shoes, I had done this…I knew they were drunk. I knew what they had done. They’d just come home from the bar, flipped on Shop at Home and said, ‘You know what? I need that.’ So the reason the job didn’t last long for me is that I was maybe the worst salesmen in history because I ended up talking a lot of these people out of it, I’d say, ‘I’ll tell you what man, go to bed, call me, I’ll be here in the morning. If you get up in the morning and want these knives you call me back.’ Because I knew what was going to happen, you know. They bought 200 knives for $19.95…first of all some of these people you didn’t know whether you should call the cops. What do you need 200 knives for? Even though I’m selling them…what do you need them for? So, it was awful doing that job. And then they got rid of me because, they were like, ‘You’re the worst. I can’t believe you’re talking people out of it.’ I was like, ‘Man I know…I’ve been there.’ [laughs] I’d want some to talk me out of buying some of the stuff I’ve bought at 2am.”

Eric Paslay (Labor Day) OC: …could print. :34
“My first official job was working at a screen printing place in Texas during the summer in a metal building that had no AC. We printed on fanny packs – really cool — and these other little bags. And it was eye doctors that, some company if you bought supplies through them, they’d put your logo on fanny packs for your customers to put in a drawer somewhere. Fanny packs are cool, if you like ‘em. You know, we’d like time ourselves to see how many fanny packs you could print.”

Jon Pardi (Labor Day) OC: …so bored! :17
“The worst job I ever had was at Hometown Grocery Store. I didn’t want to work, I was 15, and I did not want to work at the grocery store. Bagging was fun, but they sent me down the aisles to pull up cans and turn ‘em around and face ‘em, and I would just get so bored!”

Kip Moore (Labor Day-worst job) OC: …than that. :21
“I’d have to say my worst job ever was laying sod in the south Georgia heat. There’s nothing than that, especially when somebody would think that you’re waiting for the next sod patch to be thrown to you and you got your back turned, and all of a sudden, that big ole piece of sod hits you right on the back. You got nowhere to clean up, and you’re just stuck with dirt on your back for the rest of the day. It doesn’t get any worse than that.”

Lady A (Labor Day) OC: …I had a lot of crummy jobs. :31
CK “I used to…” HS: “… knock out asbestos walls.” CK: “I did that for a long time. But even before that, I used to do lawn care every summer. Oh, man, I do not miss that. Just glad those days are over. I get out here and play music for a living. It’s a lot more fun. But yeah, I used to do that, and I used to work as a bag boy at a golf course once. I did that for a couple of summers. I had a lot of crummy jobs.”

Luke Bryan (Labor Day-jobs) OC: …Nashville… 1:07
“At age 12 thru 13, I worked at Rubos IGA Supermarket in Leesburg, GA. I worked during the summers on Monday and Tuesday. I stocked and cleaned up the produce.  They paid me under the table…I peeled off all of the brown lettuce. Let’s see, when I was 15, I was a cashier at K-Mart for two months. I worked at K-Mart for two months, and then I reverted back to Rubos because it didn’t really make sense for me to drive all the way into Albany and work for K-Mart. The benefits were great though-you’d get an hour-long on the blue light special. So I started back at Rubos, and then I quit Rubos and worked for my Dad-just awful just driving tractors through cotton all day, and spraying pesticides that eventually would turn your hair green. And then at some point, I started playing guitar. And well, after college I went back and worked for my dad and continued to spray and haul fertilizer around. And then I moved to Nashville…”

Hey y’all! It’s Billy Currington, wishing you a very happy Labor Day weekend.

This is TJ, and I’m John, and we are Brothers Osborne, wishing you a happy and work-free Labor Day weekend.

Hey! What’s up, guys? I’m Canaan Smith. Have a great and work-free Labor Day weekend.

Hey! What’s up? This is Clare Dunn, and I hope you have a Happy Labor Day weekend.

Hey! It’s Darius Rucker, and I hope you have a have a happy work-free Labor Day weekend.

Hey guys! It’s David Nail, wishing  you a very happy Labor Day weekend.

Hey! It’s Eric Church, and I hope you have a have a happy Labor Day weekend.

Hey! It’s Eric Paslay, and I hope you have a happy and work-free Labor Day weekend.

Hey! It’s Jon Pardi, and I hope you have a happy and work-free Labor Day weekend.

Hey! It’s Kacey Musgraves, hoping you have a happy Labor Day weekend.

Hi everybody! This is Keith Urban, wishing you a very happy Labor Day weekend.

Hey—what’s happening guys? This is Kip Moore, wishing you a happy and work-free Labor Day Weekend.

Hi! We’re Little Big Town, hoping you have a work-free Labor Day weekend.

Hey! It’s Luke Bryan, and I hope you have a have a happy Labor Day weekend.

Hey everybody! I’m Sam Hunt. Have a great and work-free Labor Day weekend.

Hey everybody! We are The Band Perry, wishing you a happy and work-free Labor Day Weekend.