This Week’s Guest Host: Lee Brice
Lee Brice is this week’s guest host on Backstage Country. The country star joins Kelly Ford in the studio to discuss everything from his new “Drinkin’ Buddies,” Nate Smith and Hailey Whitters, his next album, fatherhood, who his dream collaboration is, and so much more.
RELATED: Lee Brice Teams Up With ‘Drinkin’ Buddies’ Nate Smith And Hailey Whitters
Brice released his new country anthem on Friday (4/26) and it will have just about everyone in your circle or at the bar singing along in no time. As for his “Drinkin’ Buddies,” Smith and Whitters, they are two artists he felt that he could connect with that just made it “really fresh and cool.”
“Both of them are obviously great talents and worked hard. We’ve become buddies, literal buddies since the day we met,” Brice said.
Brice is currently finishing up a “big record” coming out this year that is to be announced and there’s one song in particular that is very special to him and his family. His wife, Sara, a former DJ, dancer, and writer of poetry, is also a songwriter on the project with him.
“The biggest one in my life right now is on this record that I’m making right now and it’s called ‘When the Kingdom Comes.’ It was a year-long process for this song,” Brice said.
He continued, “If I had to just pick one song to play for the whole world, and that was the only song they would ever get to hear off the record. That’s the song I would play. It’s beautiful to be able to say I wrote it with Sara, you know, and we had a big, huge connection over it. And it’s spiritual. It really is kind of from my roots and, I love it and it’s truthful. It’s really everything I wanted in a song.”
To date, Brice has taken nine Country radio singles to No. 1, including “A Woman Like You,” “I Drive Your Truck,” “I Don’t Dance,” “Drinking Class,” “Rumor,” “I Hope You’re Happy Now,” “One Of Them Girls,” and “Memory I Don’t Mess With.”
This summer, fans can catch Brice performing at select festivals including CMA Fest, Carolina Country Music Fest, Country Jam, Windy City Smokeout, and more. He will also join Dierks Bentley out on the road this fall for his 2024 Gravel & Gold Tour.
Five Country Music Couples We Adore
Five country music couples we adore: when making this list, we have to begin with the fact that country music sings so much about love. We have country couples we all love to watch. They sing about their love and bring their life into the music they share with fans.
George and Tammy
George Jones and Tammy Wynette were country music royalty. They sang together in the late 1960s and 1970s, and their marriage was one all fans could talk about. Then, their divorce in the 1970s really gave country fans something to talk about.
Blake and Miranda
No one talks about it much anymore because the two have gone on to marry others, but when Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert got married, it was big news and fun for country fans. A few years later, their divorce shocked everyone, but during their marriage, they were country royalty we admired; now, we just adore them separately and watch their happiness with other spouses on social media.
Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert at the 2014 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
Christopher Polk/ Getty Images
Garth and Trisha
Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood are also true country royalty. Trisha told me about their relationship and how it works so well. The couple has been married for 18 years. She told me it isn’t always just roses, “Well, when people go, ‘Marriage goals’ and ‘Relationship goals,’ I want to go, ‘You know, have your own goals; we’re regular people who don’t always get along.'”
Yearwood adds, “If people see that we make each other the priority and we really respect and love each other, then I think if people take that from our marriage, then great.”
Garth gushed as he looked at Trisha, standing about five feet away and out of earshot, “I think her and anybody’s a great combo, I really do. So, I just feel lucky to be there with her.”
He continued, “What I love about it is what I try to teach my girls: be yourself, be independent, but also be as strong as you are. Some of the most strength you’re gonna have to show is the ability to bend. The ability to flex, the ability to take that pause and think, ‘What is this guy really saying,’ instead of just jumping, and we do that to each other. So, I think the respect is there.”
Brooks told me the relationship was years in the making, “One of the big things was, cause we’ve known each other since ’87, we were friends for thirteen years before we even dated. We toured together, which means you’re way too comfortable with each other, so we told ourselves s— on each other that no married couple would ever say. So, we know everything about each other.”
He concluded, “With that, I think you just realize, walls and all, that they’re gonna love you, and that’s very sweet and hard for me to accept.”
Garth and Trisha are performing at the Grammys in 2022.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
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