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Robby Klein
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Robby Klein
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Robby Klein
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Robby Klein
In the country music industry, perhaps no star is rising, or business expanding more rapidly than that of the Florida Georgia Line brand.
Over the last seven years, Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard, both halves of the superstar duo, have succeeded in their teamwork to the point of commodifying it. FGL House, the band’s bar in downtown Nashville, is one of Music City’s most popular nightspots. FGL Fest was arguably the most anticipated fall 2018 event in Indianapolis (before it was cancelled due to bad weather). And the band name FGL has become synonymous with success in country radio.
The duo achieved their 16th Number One song last October when “Simple” topped both the Billboard and Country Aircheck/Mediabase Country airplay charts. The single was released alongside “Colorado” on June 1, followed by “Talk You Out of It” in July and “Sittin’ Pretty’” in August. Rounded up as a self-titled EP, these four tracks were offered as a collective sampling of the pair’s fourth LP, slated for 2019.
“I think we’re gonna’ call it Can’t Say I Ain’t Country,” Hubbard says. “We’re probably getting back to our country roots a little more than our previous albums, which is exciting for BK and I,” he adds. “We’ve been working on this album longer than any others we’ve done, and we really do feel like it’s our strongest one.”
Produced by Joey Moi (Nickelback, Jake Owen), who has engineered every FGL release since their breakthrough EP It’z Just What We Do in 2012, Can’t Say I Ain’t Country is “paying a little tribute” to the ’90s country artists Kelley and Hubbard grew up listening to.
“What’s unique to this record compared to the other ones,” Moi says, “is that we went into the studio and cut the whole thing with a live band, which makes it feel a little more traditional than the other ways we were doing it.”
What’s also unique to this record is the altitude of FGL fame in which it will arrive. After the hit-making twosome released their third album Dig Your Roots in 2016, they made music history when “Meant to Be,” pop singer Bebe Rexha’s 2017 single featuring FGL, remained atop the Hot Country Songs chart for 50 straight weeks, the longest-running summit in the chart’s 61-year history. In December, they received a Grammy nomination for the collaboration in the Best Country Duo/Group Performance category.
Meanwhile, the titleholders also opened a creative compound last October. Home to three side-businesses—FGL’s publishing company, Tree Vibez Music; Kelley and his wife’s clothing brand, Tribe Kelley Trading Post; and meet + greet, a creative space available to members and guests who book it—the compound is located in Hillsboro Village, offering roots to the growing FGL empire while etching an indelible mark in Music Row history.
“I’ve been on Music Row for [about] 25 years,” Tree Vibez Music general manager Leslie DiPiero says. “And every building I’ve worked in, you’d hear, ‘You know what song was written here? Do you know who wrote here?’ Now, songs are being written in these buildings, inside brand new walls. It’s like, [we’re] making that history.”
Many artists who have expanded their brand into realms outside of music departed from their hometowns to pursue potential opportunities elsewhere. Jimmy Buffett, for instance, moved out of Key West after the Margaritaville company began to diversify. Kanye West has embarked on a legion of business ventures outside of Chicago and Los Angeles (and the U.S.). Nashville’s own Jack White moved from Detroit to Tennessee’s capital to broaden Third Man Records’ horizons. But Kelley and Hubbard have remained rooted to Nashville, despite two out-of-state operations.
“It’s just inspiring to be here,” Hubbard says. “We want to give back to Nashville, in a sense, and create opportunities for people to be innovative and have a good time. But also, BK and I are excited about expanding our brand, and getting outside of the city, possibly down to Florida. We’re always looking for the next opportunity.”
“I think we’ll continue to grow,” Kelley adds, “and grow naturally. That’s the main goal at this point. Just to control the fire, you know?”
The fire started in August 2012, when the act’s single “Cruise” was released to radio. After a lumbering retrograde up and down the Billboard Hot 100 the following months, a remix by rapper Nelly in April 2013 helped skyrocket the song to the Top Five, peaking at Number Four. Today, it’s certified 11X-Platinum—the best-selling digital country single of all time.
But when Florida-born Kelley and Georgia-born Hubbard first joined forces as graduating students of Belmont University in 2009, their aspirations were relatively humble. They independently released a six-track EP, Anything Like Me, hoping to score a record deal, before a chance encounter with Moi at a country fair established a new direction for the music.
“We set a very strong precedent from day one,” Moi says, speaking about his creative relationship with the duo. “That is, the best song always wins. They are either writing it or we are out there trying to find it, but we are always in pursuit of it. And they’ve always been meticulous, and relentless, and have always stood by the rule.”
After the success of “Cruise,” media outlets began calling similarly hip-hop-informed, rock-leaning country songs “bro-country,” a catch-all term for male-sung, mainstream country-pop centered on themes of good times in small towns, raucous nights, and alcohol. FGL’s debut LP Here’s to the Good Times in 2012, and follow-up Anything Goes in 2014 did much to round out the new sub-genre, offering blends of acoustic instruments and electronic sounds to their growing fan base. Other artists, like Kane Brown and Sam Hunt, emerged sporting songs in the same spirit, but the point was made: If bro-country is the newest chapter in the tome of country music, then “Cruise” is the urtext to which it will always be categorized. And given the rise of songs with crossover potential in country radio, it’s not far-fetched to list FGL as one of the most influential music groups in Nashville.
“Tyler and I—when we know, we know,” Kelley says, referring to the duo’s knack for picking songs to release. “You kinda’ trust your gut and your ear immediately. I think the biggest indicator is, we’re songwriters as well as artists, so when we hear something and are like, ‘Damn! I should have written that.’ Well, then we’re gonna’ cut an outside song,” he says, laughing.
The bandmates are tuned into each other’s creative instincts to an admirable extent—writing songs together comes natural. They say things like, “our brain” and “our gut.” They rarely disagree (or at least they don’t show it), and it seems that at times their synchronicity ignites into a sort of inextinguishable trailblazing. In fact, they received Billboard’s inaugural Trailblazer Award on June 5 for their exceptional artistry and entrepreneurial endeavors outside of show business.
The first of these was the Tribe Kelley brand, which launched in 2014. Then, they founded Tree Vibez Music in 2015. In August 2016, the same month the pair released their third LP Dig Your Roots, they launched Old Camp Whiskey.
“As soon as the music and playing shows weren’t taking up 100 percent of our brain space, we were pretty quick to continue to dream,” Hubbard says.
Their downtown Nashville bar, FGL House, threw its grand opening party on June 5, 2017. In December of that year, the duo opened the Tribe Kelley Trading Post in Nashville, and then opened a second location, Tribe Kelley Surf Post, in Grayton Beach, Florida in June 2018. The creative compound in Hillsboro Village was officially unveiled last October 2018.
“I think it was just a knack for wanting to be an entrepreneur,” Kelley says when asked why FGL started to branch outside of music. “But also, you know, aligning our brand with things that we want to be a part of. With the whiskey, we saw the benefits that a lot of other companies were having, and the opportunity. But we didn’t just stick our name on something. We took the time to do taste-testing, and we designed it in a way that it could outlive and be even bigger. How it looks, the branding, the name—everything is Tyler and I.”
The songs from Can’t Say I Ain’t Country released so far support Hubbard’s claim that it will be “100-percent FGL.” Meaning, it’s not short on inventive genre-fusions. “Simple” is a tuneful, train beat-driven song, taking stylistic cues from indie folk artists like The Lumineers and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes. “Talk You Out of It,” co-written by Michael Hardy, Hunter Phelps, Jameson Rodgers, and Alysa Vanderheym, is a sultry, slow R&B jam.
“The track was super left,” Vanderheym says about the demo of “Talk You Out of It.” “You know, very R&B. It started with this conversation I was having with someone before the write. We were talking about our favorite Justin Timberlake songs, and I was like, ‘dude, ‘Before The End of Time’ is my favorite. I’m gonna go make a track like that.’”
The fact that an FGL song started with a Timberlake-inspired beat supports the idea that, nowadays, Nashville songwriters looking to break genre barriers aren’t limited to equipping country songs with hip-hop/pop sounds—they can also strengthen hip-hop/pop ideas with country traditions. It indicates the tides are turning in the Nashville sound, and FGL has not only been a witness to that but also a large part of it.
“It truly comes from the magic of these guys,” DiPiero says, referring to the prosperity of FGL and its many teams. “I don’t know how they do it. From listening to all of the writers’ songs each week, to constantly communicating with everyone, to getting everyone onboard, to keeping their wives happy. They’re extraordinary. They’re aliens from some other planet, which none of us have yet to visit.”
For more with the country music entrepreneurs, pick up a copy of the January issue of Nashville Lifestyles, on newsstands now.