Little Big Town Open Up About How Tragedy Brought Them Closer

Little Big Town have become one of the most successful and respected vocal groups in country music, but they have endured their fair share of hard times along the way.

The group are currently enjoying a huge career upswing with the runaway success of their most recent single, "Girl Crush," but in an upcoming interview with CBS Sunday Morning With Charles Osgood, they open up about their early days, when they struggled through losing their label deal, two divorces and the death of one band member's husband.

LBT released their self-titled debut album in 2002, but their label, Monument, dissolved in 2004, and it was not until 2006 that they scored their first hit with "Boondocks." In the meantime, both Karen Fairchild and Phillip Sweet divorced their spouses, but the band kept on working right through it all. The death of Kimberly Schlapman's first husband, Steven, nearly derailed them in 2005.

“I didn’t know if she would sing again after Steve died,” Fairchild admits to CBS.

“I didn’t want to,” Schlapman adds.

“There was so much sorrow in her eyes,” says Fairchild. “I kind of thought the band was over.”

Schlapman asked her fellow members to sing at the funeral, and during their performance, she got up from her seat and joined them to sing. It was a moment she calls “probably the most spiritual experience of my life. It was like the spark of the healing that started.”

Little Big Town scored their first No. 1 hit with "Pontoon" in 2012, and "Girl Crush" has given them their first crossover hit. Schlapman attributes the group's success in part to the fact that they have supported each other through all of their individual ups and downs.

“And that bonds you in a way that just permeates the music then,” she observes. “It’s like all this life we didn’t know how to sing some of those lyrics. And now we do, you know. We are a walking, breathing, living country song.”

LBT's interview is set to air on Sunday (June 21) at 9AM on CBS.

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