Little Big Town clearly has a soft spot for Columbus. The award-winning country quartet has played the Schottenstein Center in 2018, Ohio Stadium for Buckeye Country Superfest in 2023 and Nationwide Arena in 2024 — and its next central Ohio stop brings the group to Mershon Auditorium on Nov. 13, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
The Nov. 13 show is part of the band’s “For the Art of It” tour, with supporting artist Mae Estes opening, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Mershon, the intimate Ohio State University venue on North High Street, is a marked change of scale from the arenas and the stadium on the group’s recent Columbus itinerary — a room where four-part harmony, the band’s signature, carries the night.
That harmony is the whole design. Little Big Town is considered a music industry rarity because the band has no lead singer — the members alternate on vocal duties, according to The Columbus Dispatch. The group has featured the same lineup since forming in 1998: Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
The roots run through college music rooms. Fairchild and Schlapman — then Kimberly Roads — met while performing in a college vocal ensemble in the 1980s, later reunited in Nashville and started singing together, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Westbrook joined the pair in 1998, followed shortly after by Sweet.
Ohio fans of the era’s other harmonizing hitmakers will appreciate a piece of the band’s formative history: in Little Big Town’s early stage, Fairchild, Schlapman and Westbrook rehearsed as a trio with Gary LeVox and Joe Don Rooney, who went on to form Rascal Flatts, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Westbrook also played with future Rascal Flatts bassist Jay DeMarcus in college.
The group’s first gig was a country newcomer’s dream: the Grand Ole Opry. At their public debut, the group consisted of “one guitar and four voices,” Westbrook said in an NPR interview reported by The Columbus Dispatch.
The road after that debut was not straight. After a few setbacks with record labels in their early years, Little Big Town released a 2002 debut album that gave them two minor chart singles, “Everything Changes” and “Don’t Waste My Time,” according to The Columbus Dispatch. Their sophomore release, “The Road to Here,” was the breakthrough, yielding two Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, “Boondocks” and “Bring It On Home,” The Columbus Dispatch reported.
The hits kept coming. Little Big Town has landed on the country charts many times with songs including “Pontoon,” “Better Man,” “Little White Church,” “Day Drinking” and “Girl Crush,” according to The Columbus Dispatch — a catalog deep enough that a theater audience on Nov. 13 can expect the show to move between the early breakthroughs and the songs that made the band a fixture of country radio.
The newest material carries a pointed title. Their latest release, “It’s a Dying Art,” came out in August, its title a reference to the rise of artificial intelligence in music, according to The Columbus Dispatch. The album’s deeply emotional lead single, “Hey There, Sunshine,” addresses depression, The Columbus Dispatch reported — serious subject matter from a band whose tour name, “For the Art of It,” makes the same argument as the album title.
Columbus is one stop in a much larger local week. The Mershon date lands as the capital city plans for the growth a new MORPC forecast describes — NewsForce247 reported immigration driving central Ohio toward as many as 3.12 million people by 2055 — and as arena-scale infrastructure work continues around the city, including the Winchester Pike bridge over U.S. 33, closing Nov. 20 for a year-plus rebuild. A theater night downtown is the lighter side of that same growing city.
After Columbus, the tour’s road bends homeward: Little Big Town will head back to Nashville for the holidays to perform a three-night residency at the famed Ryman Auditorium, according to The Columbus Dispatch. What happens next for local fans is simpler — Nov. 13 at Mershon Auditorium, with Mae Estes opening and four voices, unchanged since 1998, doing the rest.