Lauren Alaina (RLT-turning point) OC: …of a diet. 1:05
“It was difficult for me to get better. The eating disorder thing was not an easy thing to overcome, because I knew if I quit I was gonna gain weight, and that was my biggest fear. I was practically killing myself. I mean, you have to eat. You have to have nutrients to live. I mean, my hair was falling out. I was balding. My fingernails wouldn’t grow. I think I finally got so sick, that I realized, and they told me if I didn’t quit, it was affecting my voice. So, I started was losing my, that was my one thing that made me feel like I had a purpose was my voice, my music, my songwriting, and when it started affecting, I kinda thought, ‘Okay, I’ve got to do something,’ but it didn’t make it easy. I mean, it took me before I was really better in that process, a couple of years. I started trying to get better around 17, almost 18, and I didn’t really get it figured out until I was probably 19 or 20. And I still struggle with it, but I had to completely let go of a diet.”

Lauren Alaina (RLT-foundation) OC: …and lost. :59
“It has been a struggle for me to kind of accept who I am, and I’m on stage every night, and I’m in interviews and I look super-confident, ‘cause I’m outgoing and whatever else, but I have insecurities just like everybody else. It’s been a process. I came into the spotlight at 15. I was a baby, I was a baby. [laughs] I was so young, and I was just thrown into this whirlwind of I had a record, and I was on tour with Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan, all these [things] that I ever dreamed about doing, I had in my hand. But I got caught up in what people had to say about me. I was 15 and kind of in that transitional phase of being a child and into being a woman and my body was changing, and people said things about my weight and the color of my hair and the freakin’ clothes I was wearing, and it ate me alive. I had everything I ever wanted in the palm of my hand, but I was sad and lost.”

Lauren Alaina (RLT-foundation) OC: …to share. :47
“I had an eating disorder for four years. I struggled with an eating disorder for four years because I wanted to try to fit into what I thought someone else wanted me to be, and that is horrible. I mean, it’s still a process. I want to share this message because I don’t want other people to feel the way that I felt, and I still feel that way sometimes. It’s an everyday process to wake up in the morning and be nice to yourself. There’s always gonna be someone skinnier than me and someone more blond and someone that can sing better than me or write better songs, but they’re never gonna be me, and they can never offer what I can offer, and that goes for everybody. We’re all unique. I wrote this song as a reminder to myself that, ‘Hey! It’s cool to be different, and you can achieve your dreams and your goals, but you have to believe ‘em. You can’t achieve something that you don’t believe in and you’re scared of.’ So, that’s kind of what I want to share.”

Lauren Alaina (Road Less Traveled) OC: …to write. :50
“So, I wrote ‘Road Less Traveled’ with Jesse Frasure and Meghan Trainor. It was just one of those days where I went in to write with two of my good friends, and I was super comfortable, and the message of the song is so important to me and what we say in the song is so important to me. And I know that Meghan has done a really great job with her artistry by encouraging people, and that’s what this song is all about. Especially I get to share it with her and with Jesse, because it’s a song to encourage people to just be who they are and don’t apologize for it, and I think that’s a hard thing to do because it feels like there’s so much pressure to fit this mold that everyone has like made for us which is ridiculous, because last time I checked if we were all the exact same, it would be pretty boring. I’m glad that it gets to be a single, because it’s one of my favorites. It’s one that really meant a lot to me to write.”

Lauren Alaina (Road Less Traveled) 2 OC: …share it. :46
“I don’t even know really if they knew when we wrote this song that it was kind of about [my eating disorder]. I mean, I think, sure, during the day, I was talking about how much pressure it was for me and how I feel like this needs to be a certain way and look a certain way. But I don’t know that I went into detail about, because I was really struggling with an eating disorder at the time, so I was really at the time kind of like me knowing that I needed to believe what I was writing, but it took me a while to really get there. I had to listen to this song. I had to write a million songs with this theme to kind of grow in that. So, I think maybe Meghan kind of knew, because she’s a really good friend of mine, but I don’t think we talked about it in the write. I just think we all felt this feeling to write this theme, and now I get to share it.”

“Hey! This is Alan Jackson, wishing you a happy and safe Fourth of July.”

“Hey guys! I’m Billy Currington, wishing you a Happy Fourth of July.”

“Hey y’all! I’m John, and I’m TJ, and we are Brothers Osborne, wish you a very Happy Fourth of July.”

“Hey! What’s up guys? I’m Canaan Smith, wishing you a safe and happy Fourth of July!”

“Hey! This is Clare Dunn, wishing you a very Happy Fourth of July.”

“Hey y’all, what’s up? This is Darius Rucker, wishing you a very, very happy Fourth of July!”

“Happy Birthday, America!”

“This is David Nail, wishing you a happy Fourth of July!”

Hey everybody! This is Dierks Bentley, wishing you a Happy and safe Fourth of July.

“Hey! This is Easton Corbin. Have a safe and happy Fourth of July.”

“Hey this is Eric Church, wishing you a very happy Fourth of July.”

“Hey! This is Eric Paslay, wishing you a very happy Fourth of July.”

“Hey! This is Gary Allan. Happy Fourth of July.”

“Hi, it’s Jon Pardi, wishing you a happy Fourth of July.”

“Hey everybody, Keith Urban here, wanting to wish you all a fantastic and safe summer. Enjoy the sunshine. Hopefully, you’ll get to spend some time with the ones you love, and hopefully, we’ll also get to see you out on the road.”

“Hi! This is Charles, Hillary and Dave of Lady Antebellum, wishing you a happy and safe Fourth of July weekend.”

“Hey! It’s Lauren Alaina. Have a safe and happy Fourth of July.”

“Hey! We’re Little Big Town. Happy Fourth of July!”

“Hey! This is Luke Bryan, wishing you a very happy Fourth of July.”

“Hey! This is Mickey Guyton, wishing you a Happy Fourth of July.”

“Hey everybody! This is Sam Hunt, wishing you a safe and happy Fourth of July.”

“Hi! It’s Toby Keith, wishing you a safe Fourth of July.”

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.”