Josh Turner (Father’s Day) OC: …one of ‘em.  1:05
“As far as talent and potential, my oldest three, especially, they could do anything they wanted to do if they put their mind to it and their heart was there. My oldest [Hampton] is incredible at playing mandolin. Colby, we kind of noticed him turn the corner lately with the fiddle, and Marion is actually playing a ukulele that’s tuned like the top four strings on a guitar, so in essence, he’s learning how to play guitar. They’ve just kind of started incorporating some singing into some playing, so they’re starting the whole singing and playing at the same time kind of thing, and not only that, they’re even learning to play songs together on their individual instruments. So, it’s amazing to see how much they can learn in such a short amount of time. It makes me realize how much I missed out on when I was that age, ‘cause I did take some music lessons growing up and everything, but I think they feed off of each other honestly. I think that’s why they’re getting so good is because they’re all doing it, not just one of ‘em.”

David Nail (1st Father’s Day) OC: …loved you. :58
“It’s going to be special from a standpoint of like my parents are going to be here, Catherine’s parents live here, so it’ll be three generations together, and so that was important for me. You know, I almost enjoy watching my parents hold my children more than I enjoy holding my children, because obviously they know everything we’ve been through and how difficult it was for them to be here. It’s only their second and third grandchildren, and so it’s still really new to them. It’s a first time in a long time that they’ve been through the whole newborn thing again and that process. It’s just really important for me to have family around, and somebody told me, my best friend in the world – Chris Sledge – told me, he said, ‘Man, when you see your kids, you will immediately know on a whole ‘nother level how much your parents loved you.”

Charles Kelley (1st Father’s Day) OC: …a lot of fun. :22
“I’ll actually be on Father’s Day on the road, unfortunately, but I’m flying out the next day to meet my wife and my little boy, Ward. They’re gonna be down at the beach. My wife said she’s gonna cook me a nice meal for me and enjoy the day, but it’s gonna be a lot of fun.”

Charles Kelley (being a father) OC: …wife Cassie. :38
“Gosh! I mean, being a father, it really puts a lot of things into perspective about making sure you do shut off that side of your brain, that work side of your brain and focus on what matters most. I think n the past, I think I’ve always had it in the back of the mind – work, and once you have a kid, you see something that you love more than yourself. I don’t know. It just really is making me realize how fast time moves and to really and try to enjoy these little moments with my little son and my wife, Cassie.”

Charles Kelley (qualities as a father) OC: …tolerance. :25
“I hope I’m a great father. My dad, I’ve always looked up to. He’s such a hardworker and an amazing man. He’s always showed me and the rest of my siblings a ton of love. And, so I hpe to instill a strong work ethic into Ward, but also a lot of love and a lot of tolerance.”

Charles Kelley (favorite thing about Ward right now) OC: …four months old. :29
“I think the most fun thing right now about Ward is, he’s four-months-old, is just to see how much he changes. Every time I come back from a weekend of shows, he’s doing something else. I think every parent feels like their kid is advanced, but I really do think this kid is advanced. There’s just something, he’s so intelligent and so physically like, I don’t know, with it right now. It’s just really fun to see him do all these things that I didn’t expect him to do at four-months-old.”

Luke Bryan (tragic events) OC: …an American. :21
“It’s amazingly tragic on all levels and its… Well if you think like a true American does and I’m sure we all do in this room and other places but when you hear these two instances this week (signs) I think it’s important for the American spirit to keep trying to live that type of life as an American.”

Keith Urban (Orlando shootings) OC: …today. :10

“Everybody’s in the same boat we’re all trying to live our life, you know live our life as well so we’re as vigilant as we can be but my heart goes out to all the families down in Orlando today.”

LBT (Orlando shootings) OC: …tonight. :26
(Karen) “Music is the ultimate hear and we will not let the haters destroy what we love and enjoy and we will not live in fear of this and tonight is gonna be a celebration of life and love and harmony. And we’re going to remember those lives that were lost and we’re gonna celebrate them tonight.”

“Hey everybody! I’m Billy Currington, wishing you a very Happy Father’s Day!”

“Hey! This is TJ, and I’m John, and we are Brothers Osborne, wishing all you fathers out there a very Happy Father’s Day.”

“Hey! What’s up, guys? I’m Canaan Smith. Happy Father’s Day, Pops!”

“Hey! What’s up? This is Clare Dunn, wishing you a Happy Father’s Day.”

“Hey! What’s up? This is Darius Rucker wishing you a Happy Father’s Day.”

“Hey! This is Easton Corbin. Happy Father’s Day!”

“Hey! This is Eric Church, wishing you a Happy Father’s Day.”

“Hey! This is Eric Paslay. To all you father’s out there, Happy Father’s Day!”

“Hey! This is Gary Allan, and I want to wish all the dads out there a Happy Father’s Day.”

“Jon Pardi here. Happy Father’s Day to all you father’s out there.”

“Hey y’all! This is Josh Turner, and I just want to wish all you father’s out there a Happy Father’s Day!”

“Hey! It’s Kacey Musgraves. Happy Father’s Day!”

“Hey everyone! It’s Keith Urban, wishing all you Dads out there a Happy Father’s Day.”

“What’s up all you Dads out there? It’s Lady Antebellum, and we just wanted to wish you all a good, Happy Father’s Day. Thanks for being great dads. Hope you get pampered and you don’t have to barbecue. And we hope you get some good ties this year.” [Hillary laughs]

“Hey! It’s Lauren Alaina. Happy Father’s Day!”

“Hi! This is Little Big Town, wishing all you father’s a Happy Father’s Day.”

“Hey! This is Sam Hunt. To all you fathers out there, Happy Father’s Day!”

“Hi! This is Shania Twain. Happy Father’s Day.”

“Hey everybody! It’s Vince, and I just wanted to wish you a Happy Father’s Day. Wish mine was still around.”

Alan Jackson (CMA Music Fest) OC: …all about. :28 [NOTE: There’s a slight buzz underneath audio.]
“My daughter – three daughters – and about 10 friends every year, we have to pack into vans and get ‘em out here. They come every night. They come every night, not to see me, they come see everybody else. So, it has become more of a local event, and of course it evolved tremendously since I first started when it was Fan Fair at the old fairgrounds and signing autographs in a hot buildings. But the fans are the same, and that’s what it’s all about.”

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.”

Easton Corbin (fans) OC: …being here. :24
“My fans mean a great deal to me, especially the fans that come out to the shows and the ones that make it to every show around their home or in that vicinity. I even have people come here every time, in these meet-and-greet lines or maybe at the fence over there by the when you’re getting off the red carpet, I try to always make it a point to recognize those fans and just let them know how much that I care and how much I appreciate them being here.”

Eric Church (CMA Music Fest) OC: …to see.
“Well, I think it’s what makes country music unique. Find me another format that happens in, it’s just not something that happens. I think it’s about what we were talking about earlier; 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. We’ve always tried to do it a little different when we’ll have different events, a couple years ago we made the fans find us…they had to find clues around town of where we were playing and then when they found out they could post it and tell people and then that night we had a full show. We started that day with no people, we didn’t advertise, we said, ‘We’re playing, find us.’ We called it ‘Midnight Church.’ So at midnight we played the Rutledge. They found us, and they were out the door, and they found us there. It was really cool to have some fun in our town and just do stuff like that every year. I’ve done, last year I did a show where I did 3 nights in a row at a place. The first night was me and my band, the second night was an acoustic show, and the last night was me and the songwriters that helped me write this record all sitting up there playing songs and telling stories. It was three different takes on basically the same songs. Just unique. It’s my favorite thing about doing it, is when people come to town, we able to do some shows that we’re not able to do throughout the year because we’re touring a certain way. This is a chance for us to have a little more freedom, creatively, and give the fans something maybe they don’t get to see.”

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.”

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.”

Josh Turner (Hometown Girl) 1 OC: …no-brainer. :42
“The first time I heard ‘Hometown Girl,’ I was kind of excited, because, first of all, it sounded like a hit to me. It just had that hit chorus and it just had that vibe that didn’t really lose you. It held your attention. But honestly, it was different for me, and that’s kind of what I was looking for. I was looking for those songs that I felt like that would be different for me that or things that I hadn’t done really yet, but still had those Josh Turner ingredients, which is basically a lyric that tells a story that has a good message and just has a melody that caters to my voice. It had all that, and so it was just kind of a no-brainer.”

“Hey! What’s up guys! We’re Brothers Osborne, wishing all you mothers out there a very, very Happy Mother’s Day.”

“Hey! What’s up, guys? I’m Canaan Smith. Happy Mother’s Day!”

“Hey! What’s up? This is Clare Dunn, hoping you have a Happy Mother’s Day.”

“Hey y’all, what’s up? This is Darius Rucker, hoping you have a Happy Mother’s Day.

“Hey, y’all! This is Dierks Bentley, wishing all you mothers out there a Happy Mother’s Day.”

“Hey everybody! This is Eric Church, wishing you a Happy Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day, mom!”

“Hey! This is Eric Paslay. Happy Mother’s Day to all you awesome Mom’s out there.”

“Hi! This is George Strait, wishing you a Happy Mother’s Day.”

“Hey y’all, it’s Jon Pardi. I want to wish all the mamas out there a very Happy Mother’s Day.”

“Hi! This is Josh Turner, wishing you a Happy Mother’s Day.”

“Hey! It’s Kacey Musgraves. To all you mothers out there, Happy Mother’s Day!”

“Hi everyone, it’s Keith Urban. Hoping all the mothers out there have a very, very Happy Mother’s Day. Love ya, Mom!”

“Hi! I’m Kelleigh Bannen, hoping you have a Happy Mother’s Day.”

“(ALL) Hi! This is Little Big Town. (KIMBERLY) We want to wish all you mothers out there a Happy Mother’s Day. I love ya, Mama!”

“Hey! It’s Luke Bryan, hoping all you mothers out there have a Happy Mother’s Day.”

“Hey! This is Sam Hunt, wishing you a very Happy Mother’s Day.

“Hi! This is Shania Twain. Happy Mother’s Day.”

Vince Gill (Haggard nut) OC: …occasions. :12
“I‘ve been a  Haggard Nut my whole life. And I’ve played country music, recorded country music my whole life, and I’ve tried to emulate what I loved about Merle Haggard on a lot of occasions.”

George Strait (Merle Haggard) OC: …it’s just huge. :41
“You know, Merle was huge in my career. When he did ‘Okie from Muskogee’ back in the 70’s, I think it was, you know I kinda got hooked then on Merle and country music.  When I was in the Army and stationed at Schofield barracks in Hawaii, you know Merle came there, and he played Conroy Bowl.  And I remember I was playing an NCO club that night, and before my little gig, I got to run over there and I kinda snuck in and saw Merle and it just blew me away. That’s what I wanted to be like, you know, I wanted to be like the Hag. And so, I can’t tell you how big of an influence he was on me, just huge.”