phil collins take me home tour

Little Big Town, Sugarland Announce 2024 ‘Take Me Home’ Tour

By Joseph Hudak

Joseph Hudak

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On the heels of their CMT Music Awards collaboration, Little Big Town and Sugarland have announced the “Take Me Home” Tour. Titled after the song they performed on the CMTs — Phil Collins ’ 1985 hit from No Jacket Required — the trek will kick off Oct. 24 in Greenville, South Carolina, and conclude Dec. 13 with a show at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. Country trio the Castellows will open all dates.

This isn’t the first time the quartet of Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Jimi Westbrook, and Philip Sweet shared the stage with Sugarland, the reunited duo of Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush. In 2008, Little Big Town, Sugarland, and Jake Owen performed Dream Academy’s 1985 single “Life in a Northern Town” at the CMT Awards, and LBT would join Sugarland on their Incredible Machine Tour a few years later.

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Tickets for the tour, produced by LiveNation and Sandbox Live, go on sale April 12. The groups’ collab on “Take Me Home” will be released as a single.

“Take Me Home” Tour Dates: Oct. 24  – Greenville, SC @ Bon Secours Wellness Arena Oct. 25 – Raleigh, NC @ PNC Arena Oct. 26 – Columbus, OH  @ Nationwide Arena Oct. 31 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden Nov. 1 – Pittsburgh, PA @ PPG Paints Arena Nov. 2 – Buffalo, NY @ KeyBank Center Nov. 7 – Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center Nov. 8 – Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv Forum Nov. 9 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Van Andel Arena Nov. 14 – Kansas City, MO @ T-Mobile Center Nov. 15 – Sioux Falls, SD  @ Denny Sanford PREMIER Center Nov. 16 – Moline, IL @ Vibrant Arena at The MARK Nov. 21 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center Nov. 22 – Fort Worth, TX  @ Dickies Arena Nov. 23 – Tulsa, OK @ BOK Center Dec. 11 – Biloxi, MS @ Mississippi Coast Coliseum Dec. 12 – Duluth, GA @ Gas South Arena Dec. 13 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena

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30 Years Ago: Phil Collins Releases ‘Take Me Home’

In 1985, Phil Collins dominated radio on the strength of his 12-times platinum album, No Jacket Required . The fourth and final single from the record, "Take Me Home," was released on July 25, 1985.

Two weeks before the song's release, Collins had been one of the stars at Live Aid , where he performed both in London and Philadelphia on the same day. That sense of jet-setting world-weariness is reflected in the above video, which sees Collins leaving his country estate for such locations as London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Gothenburg, Chicago, Stockholm, Tokyo, San Francisco, Memphis and St. Louis. At the end, he returns home, dressed in the same casual clothes as when he left, where his wife thinks he's been drinking at the pub.

But the lyrics reveal a potentially darker theme. Lines like " They don't tell me nothing / So I find out what I can ," " There's no point escaping " and " I can't come out to find you / I don't like to go outside " could be interpreted to be the thoughts of someone who has been confined to an asylum.

And yet that's hard to discern on a casual listen, given the high-gloss production -- complete with a bubbling synthesizer loop, that was perfect for radio in 1985. Sting and Collins' former Genesis bandmate Peter Gabriel contribute background vocals.

Reaching No.7 on the Billboard Hot 100, "Take Me Home" was actually the lowest-charting of the his singles -- "Sussudio" and "One More Night" went to No. 1, while "Don't Lose My Number" peaked at No. 4.

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Watch Little Big Town, Sugarland Cover Phil Collins’ ‘Take Me Home’ at 2024 CMT Awards

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For the second time in their careers, Little Big Town and Sugarland have come together to interpret a 1985 pop hit. The country groups performed “Take Me Home,” off Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required album, onstage at the 2024 CMT Music Awards in Austin on Sunday. In 2008, LBT and Sugarland, along with Jake Owen , performed the Dream Academy’s hit “Life in a Northern Town” at the CMT Awards.

Onstage at the Moody Center, Little Big Town kicked off the performance with Jimi Westbrook and Karen Fairchild taking the first lines as smoke, lights, and lasers swirled around the group. Then Sugarland made their appearance: Jennifer Nettles’ massive voice announced their presence, before Kristian Bush had his turn in the spotlight. In fact, all six vocalists — including LBT’s Kimberly Schlapman and Philip Sweet — had a solo moment.

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. @littlebigtown and @Sugarlandmusic just took us all home with that #CMTAwards performance! 🏠💛 pic.twitter.com/we5TlUhYxa — CMT (@CMT) April 8, 2024

Prior to their collaboration, the “Girl Crush” quartet announced the “Take Me Home” Tour with Sugarland. Titled after Collins’ song, the trek will kick off Oct. 24 in Greenville, South Carolina, and conclude Dec. 13 with a show in Nashville. Country trio the Castellows will open all dates.

Little Big Town and Sugarland also released a studio version of “Take Me Home,” available to stream now. Tickets for the tour go on sale April 12.

Kelsea Ballerini hosted the 2024 CMT Awards, which handed out trophies to Carly Pearce, Jelly Roll, and Lainey Wilson. Other highlights included a tribute to Toby Keith, who died in February, by Sammy Hagar, Brooks & Dunn, and Wilson; a rousing performance by Keith Urban of “Straight Line”; and a debut performance of “Austin” by Dasha.

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Little Big Town and Sugarland Collaboration on CMT Awards Wasn’t a One-Off: LBT Members Talk Covering Phil Collins for Joint Single, Plus Fall Tour

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For the group’s 25th anniversary, Little Big Town is pouring some sugar on it. Some Sugarland , actually, as the two country groups will be spending some quality time together later this year, in the wake of their joint performance Sunday night on the CMT Music Awards , where they hooked up to sing their newly arranged cover of Phil Collins ‘ 1985 smash “Take Me Home.”

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There’s a throwback element to the new single and tour, as well as Sunday’s CMTs appearance: The two groups toured together in the late 2000s, and they sang a cover of the Dream Academy’s “Life in a Northern Town” (then joined by Jake Owen as well) on the 2008 show that at the time went under the name of the CMT Flameworthy Awards.

Backstage at Austin’s Moody Center during CMT Awards rehearsals, the four members of Little Big Town sat down to discuss with Variety their feelings about reuniting with their old vocal-harmony pals.

The tour plan preceded choosing which song to do together, says Karen Fairchild. “When we were on the road together years ago, we would really learn songs in the afternoon and then sing ’em,” she recalls. “Like, if we were in Memphis, we’d do ‘Walking in Memphis.’ So it was just something fun that we did on the road. So when this tour was gonna be announced and we were gonna get to do a song, then it was like, what do we do? And this song was Kristian Bush’s (of Sugarland) idea. and then we decided that we should get in the studio, because it sounded so good, and make it our own.”

There’s a more personal, if slightly indirect, connection as well. “We should tell you: Akil Thompson that plays in the band — he’s on keys, but he plays everything — his dad is Chester Thompson. Well, Chester, created the drum part on this. There are so many followers of drummers of just his part on that, on YouTube. So that’s why there’s so many drums out there on the CMTs stage — because Hubert (Payne, the group’s drummer) is channeling his inner Chester Thompson… with Akil sitting next to him. Akil showed us a picture of himself standing side-stage at a Phil Collins concert, watching his dad play on this song, so it’s kind of a full-circle moment for him.”

There is plenty of full circling happening now with the Little Big Town/Sugarland reconnection, which couldn’t have happened that many times in other recent years, since the latter duo’s Jennifer Nettles and Bush have been pursuing solo activities more than band work for the most part.

Says Fairchild, “We used to hang out with them because we went to see them open up for Brooks and Dunn, and we played cards one night, and then we just became fast friends.” Although LBT has been in existence as a unit slightly longer, Sugarland broke big in country first, so she tells a story of Nettles and Bush being helpful as they struggled.

“We ran into them again at a festival, back in the day when we were broke and we didn’t have any gear. The guys were locked down on wired packs and we really wanted to invest in some wireless packs — ad this seems really silly now, but back then that was an important thing; we didn’t have any freedom to move around the stage. Sugarland had just had their first big No. 1 or something. And they bought us wireless packs — gave ’em to us and said, ‘Just pay the kindness forward.'”

Says Westbook, “They were so sweet, and I know they felt like they were investing in in our future and helping us out, because they know what that means.”

“And then they bought us wardrobe cases!” adds Fairchild. “And then we gifted those wardrobe cases to Old Dominion, but they kept our names on there, so the guys had Kimberly, Karen, Phillip and Jimi on their wardrobe cases. They just gave those cases away — I don’t know who they gave the old ones to — but we’re trying to just keep the tradition going.”

As for their collaborating now… four-part harmony is hard enough. Isn’t six-part harmony going to be tougher?

They laugh. There isn’t quite so much of that, in actuality, as usually someone is singing a lead vocal that doesn’t have to fit in with the background parts. “The great thing about that is, there’s so many like ad libs in this song,” Schlapman says. “The rest of us keep the harmonies going while the ad libs also go along, so that’s where the six voices come in really handy.” But, as CMT Awards viewers say, all six members of the two groups got in at least a little lead-vocal time as the song went on.

The concluding night of the tour at Nashville’s big arena will mark the first time Little Big Town has headlined in Music City since a multi-night residency at the Ryman in 2017.

“With COVID, we didn’t plan on staying away that long,” says Fairchild. “But touring in the last few years, we did play there with George Strait, but yeah, we have not headlined anything until this Bridgestone show coming up. And that’s gonna be the last night of the tour. So it’s gonna be a party.” Chimes in Schlapman: “Katy-bar the door.”

After the CMTs, Fairchild was trying to figure out how to stick around Austin long enough to get in some vintage clothes-shopping, as is her habit when visiting the city. “This is one of my favorite places to shop, and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to do that because they have us pretty busy. The vintage shopping here is phenomenal. I could stay and watch the eclipse, I guess, and shop.”

It’s suggested that she could shop in the dark, during the blackout. “She brought a headlamp,” quips Westbrook.

“Spelunking?” says Fairchild. “No, shopping.”

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Little big town, sugarland unveil ‘take me home’ song & tour.

Posted by Buddy Iahn | Apr 7, 2024

The song is available now with a tour to follow this fall

Little Big Town and Sugarland have unveiled new music and a joint tour. The two groups have released a cover of the Phil Collins hit “Take Me Home” and will embark on a joint North American tour of the same name this fall with The Castellows. The Take Me Home trek hits 18 cities starting on October 24th in Greenville, South Carolina before it wraps on December 13th in Nashville. The closing night is a special Nashville homecoming for the band as it’ll be Little Big Town’s first show in town since 2017’s iconic sold-out ten-night residency at Ryman Auditorium.

The bands shared the news ahead of their 2024 CMT Music Awards performance where they’ll make their world premiere performance of the song on CBS.

“25 years of music and we can’t wait to celebrate it with you ❤️ We will be hitting the road this fall as we celebrate #LBT25 with Sugarland and The Castellows on the Take Me Home Tour,” Little Big Town shares on social media . “Proud to share our cover of the legendary @officialphilcollins classic ‘Take Me Home’ out now.”

“Excited to be sharing the stage with our longtime friends Little Big Town tonight on the #CMTawards, as well as announcing our new song and tour together!” Sugarland states on social media .

Various presale tickets are available starting on Tuesday, April 9th at 10 am local time ahead of the general on-sale set for Friday, April 12th at 10 am local time via Ticketmaster . The tour will also offer a variety of different VIP packages and experiences for fans to take their concert experience to the next level. Packages vary but include premium tickets, an interactive Little Big Town coffee book, a limited edition and autographed tour poster & more. VIP package contents vary based on the offer selected.

Little Big Town and Sugarland’s rendition of “Take Me Home,” originally written and released by Phil Collins in 1985, gives the song a fresh new meaning but leaves us with a familiar longing. The performance served as a monumental homecoming for the two country music giants as they last shared the CMT Music Awards stage in 2008 for a rousing rendition of “Life In A Northern Town.” The groups will perform the song on the trek, produced by Live Nation and Sandbox Live.

Grammy, ACM, CMA, AMA, and Emmy Award-winning group, Little Big Town – consisting of members Karen Fairchild, Phillip Sweet, Kimberly Schlapman, and Jimi Westbrook – first entered the music scene 25 years ago with hit songs “Boondocks,” “Bring It On Home,” “Good As Gone” and the Grammy-nominated “Little White Church.” The band’s breakthrough albums Tornado and Pain Killer produced multiple No. 1 singles, including “Pontoon,” “Tornado,” and “Day Drinking,” as well as the history-making, best-selling country single of the year (2015) “Girl Crush.” 2017’s The Breaker debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Country Charts to critical acclaim. The album features their Grammy-winning, multi-week No. 1 single, “Better Man,” as well as the 2019 Grammy-nominated, “When Someone Stops Loving You.” The band’s self-produced ninth studio album, Nightfall , was released in January 2020 and hit the top of the Billboard Country Charts. The record included critically acclaimed and Grammy-nominated songs “The Daughters,” “Over Drinking” and “Wine, Beer, Whiskey” – the latter of which has reached almost 400 million global streams. In September 2022, they released their tenth studio album, Mr. Sun , which debuted as the Top Country Album released by a Group in 2022. Little Big Town has earned more than 45 award show nominations and has taken home over 20 awards.

Since the band’s inception in 2002, Sugarland has sold nearly ten million albums domestically, achieving high-mark sales with platinum-certified The Incredible Machine , two-time platinum  Love on the Inside, and three-time platinum  Twice the Speed of Life  as well as Enjoy the Ride . Their most popular songs include platinum-certified “All I Want to Do” and “Stay,” two-time platinum “Stuck Like Glue” as well as gold-certified “Baby Girl,” “It Happens,” “Settlin’,” “Something More” and “Want To.” Sugarland has also earned seven No. 1 singles and amassed over 600 million on-demand streams. Their critical and mainstream appeal has been magnified with industry accolades – five consecutive CMA Awards for Vocal Duo of the Year (2007-2011), five ACM Awards (including Song of the Year and Single of the Year), and Grammy Awards for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and Best Country Song for “Stay.”

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Little Big Town (@littlebigtown)

About The Author

Buddy Iahn founded The Music Universe when he decided to juxtapose his love of web design and music. As a lifelong drummer, he decided to take a hiatus from playing music to report it. The website began as a fun project in 2013 to one of the top independent news sites. Email: [email protected]

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Little Big Town and Sugarland joint tour, ‘Take Me Home,’ includes a stop in Pa.

Little Big Town and Sugarland Collaboration on CMT Awards Wasn’t a One-Off: LBT Members Talk Covering Phil Collins for Joint Single, Plus Fall Tour

For the group’s 25th anniversary, Little Big Town is pouring some sugar on it. Some Sugarland, actually, as the two country groups will be spending some quality time together later this year, in the wake of their joint performance Sunday night on the CMT Music Awards, where they hooked up to sing their newly arranged cover of Phil Collins’ 1985 smash “Take Me Home.” The day after the meeting of the vocal-group titans on the CBS awards telecast…

Watch Little Big Town, Sugarland Cover Phil Collins’ ‘Take Me Home’ at 2024 CMT Awards

For the second time in their careers, Little Big Town and Sugarland have come together to interpret a 1985 pop hit. The country groups performed “Take Me Home,” off Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required album, onstage at the 2024 CMT Music Awards in Austin on Sunday. In 2008, LBT and Sugarland, along with Jake Owen, performed the Dream Academy’s hit “Life in a Northern Town” at the CMT Awards. Onstage at the Moody Center, Little Big Town kicked of…

Before their historic night on the April 7 2024 CMT Music Awards, two iconic country music bands announced they will be going on tour together.

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• Little Big Town

Exclusive: Sugarland Shares Memories, Talks Future, Touring With Little Big Town

by Cindy Watts April 26, 2024, 7:13 am

No one knows much about the Sugarland/Little Big Town tour, which will kick off in October. Even the artists know little beyond the itinerary, ticket prices, and that The Castellows will open the show. Sugarland’s Kristian Bush recognizes it’s billed as Little Big Town + Sugarland. Yet, the duo’s founder understands a couple of other things, too.

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“You can’t win yoga, and I know you can’t win yoga,” Bush says.  “But Jennifer and I will try to win the stage every time. I know we’re bringing it.”

The Take Me Home Tour—named after the groups’ new cover of the Phil Collins song—is 18 dates strong and continues through mid-December. The arena run marks Little Big Town’s 25th anniversary as a group. It also falls on the 20th anniversary of Sugarland’s breakthrough hit, “Baby Girl.” Tickets are on sale now and start at $36.50.

While Little Big Town has been together longer, Sugarland—comprised of Bush and Jennifer Nettles—first enjoyed significant mainstream country radio success. The duo gifted Little Big Town with members’ first wireless packs. They also took them on an arena tour, gave them wardrobe cases to transport their clothes in and spearheaded the Sugarland/Little Big Town/Jake Owen collaboration on “Life In A Northern Town.” The song earned award show nominations from the Country Music Association, the Academy of Country Music and the Recording Academy.

“They’re just lovable people, and we made great music together,” Little Big Town’s Kimberly Schlapman says. “‘Life In A Northern Town’ led us to the Grammys and got a Grammy. We adore them, and the fact that we get to do this again with them is  just going to be incredibly fun.”

Sugarland and Little Big Town Share a Sweet, Unexpected Success Story

“Life In A Northern Town” was never intended to be a radio single – or released to the public. Sugarland took Little Big Town and Jake Owen on their headlining CMT tour in 2007. Sugarland was based in Atlanta, and Atlanta media personality Leslie Fram had just started work at CMT. Because Sugarland and Fram were part of Atlanta’s music scene, they knew Fram loved ’80s music. Sugarland had recently wrapped a tour with Kenny Chesney who taught them to always bring the opener out at the end of the show to share a song. Sugarland, Little Big Town and Owen worked up a cover of Dream Academy’s “Life In A Northern Town” to create that inclusive moment.

At the end of the tour, the artists filmed Fram a thank you video, which was them singing “Life In A Northern Town.”

“It was fun, and it was kind of an esoteric song, but it had this really cool sort of way that the chorus was huge and a bunch of people could sing it,” Bush says. “And by a stroke of fate, but also good luck, she actually put it on television.”

The unexpected collaboration coincided with the stratospheric acceleration of the duo’s career, and radio stations started downloading the song from the internet to play on air. Sugarland began getting inquiries about when it would be released.

Sugarland released the version pulled directly from the live recording of their show.

“It was always a reminder to me how it’s special doing things because they’re fun without an end goal in mind,” Bush says. “There’s no commerce at the end of this conversation. It was just pure joy singing the song and recording it, not because you needed it to be great on a record, but because you wanted to say thank you to somebody who helped you.”

When Bush got the call earlier this year to find a song to help the bands repeat that triumph, he had one thought – impossible.

The path to rerecording “Take Me Home”

He suggested Phil Collins’ “Take Me Home” because he loved the record and the man who produced Bush’s first duo Billy Pilgrim —Hugh Padgham – also produced the original version of the song for Collins. Bush, who co-produced the new “Take Me Home” record with Little Big Town and produces country phenom Megan Moroney, learned a tremendous amount from watching Padgham work.

“He had agreed to let these 22-year-old folk rock kids from Atlanta, Georgia, come to London for a month or two,” Bush recalls of Padgham. “I’m so proud of what I’ve been able to do with what he taught me from a production standpoint.”

Bush hopes Padgham will be proud of the new version of “Take Me Home.”

He presented his “Take Me Home” idea to Nettles and Little Big Town, and everyone agreed.

They unveiled their newest collaboration in April on the CMT Music Awards. Like before, Bush chose the song and CMT helped them launch it. Sharing it with the world was more carefully planned than the bands’ first ’80s collaboration. The groups recorded the song and released it to streaming services a few hours before the award show. They had its namesake tour mapped out. But even in the moments leading up to the performance, Bush says they were still rehearsing the song. Sugarland and Little Big Town had never performed “Take Me Home” in front of people.

“I’m Comfortable With These People”

“It felt very comfortable because I’m very comfortable with those people,” Bush says. “It doesn’t just happen by complete happenstance. We rehearse. But what was fun was watching the habits of professional artists show up. Everyone was concerned.”

Bush remembers Nettles making notes in the notebook on the side table in her hotel room about who sang in what order. Little Big Town’s Jimi Westbrook was singing two different parts, and his wife, Karen Fairchild, offered to cover one of them.

“Everyone was trying to make it work all the way up until five minutes before we walked on stage, even though we all recorded it and we knew it,” he says.

The group of longtime friends delivered one of the most critically acclaimed performances of the night.

“That’s how good all those people are and how much they care about the music,” Bush says. “When you care about your job, you don’t have to take yourself seriously, but you should always take your job seriously. Especially this one because it’s so impossible to get.”

Bush predicts fans should expect more Sugarland/Little Big Town collaborations on the Take Me Home Tour. He doesn’t know what they’ll sing yet, but he is certain of one more fact.

“I can’t imagine that it’s not going to be awesome,” he says.

(Photo by Jay Conlon/CBS via Getty Images)

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