Refreshingly honest in a world of fake celebrities is country duo Thompson Square. Real-life couple Keifer and Shawna Thompson are known for staying true to their roots while cranking out hit songs, such as 2010’s double-platinum selling, #1 charting and Grammy-nominated “Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not.” Most recently, the duo has joined Florida Georgia Line on Luke Bryan’s Dirt Road Diaries Tour. If you still haven’t made it to the show, make sure to catch the tour’s second-to-last stop in Tampa on October 24 and 25.
To start off, you’re known as being very honest—an honest representation of your marriage and who you are. How do you manage to do that in such a media-centered world?
That’s a good question. I think as far as staying grounded, either you are or you’re not. I think if you let the fame and everything get to you, then you begin to lose a sense of who you’ve always been. We have each other to keep each other in check. As far as the music, the only thing you can write is what comes out of you and what you’ve been through. If you keep each other in check and you’re true to each other, then your music is going to reciprocate.
You’ve won your fair share of huge awards from the likes of the Academy of Country Music (ACM) and the Country Music Association (CMA). What goes through your head when you’re up there accepting an award?
Disbelief. It’s a really amazing, euphoric feeling to be noticed and recognized for your talents and hard work and lifelong pursuit of the dream. All of a sudden, you’ve been awarded for that by a jury of your peers, and it’s really hard to explain what that feels like. I’ve never felt that way before, so I don’t have anything to compare it to I guess.
Which one of those awards have you been the most proud of?
The ACM and the CMA, the duo of the year, I mean that’s our category. I think both of those have meant the most to us.
You wrote a book together—Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not—Where did that idea come from and what is it about?
We were approached by a publishing company to write a book basically on our story, and we just weren’t quite ready for that. Obviously the song “Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not” was a big song, and it reached a lot of people. We loosely based the book on the song; it’s not verbatim. But it’s a love story between a boy and a girl, and music is kind of the common thread between them. It kind of goes through everything in their life with them…It’s loosely based around [the song.] It’s definitely fictional.
You’re on tour right now with Luke Bryan—what can the audience expect at one of the Dirt Road Diaries Tour stops?
Well it’s definitely a party. Luke is just the biggest thing in country right now, and I think it’s the biggest tour. It’s sold out, and Florida Georgia Line has really exploded, and it’s really been a perfect storm for Luke. After the ACMs, all three artists [Thompson Square, Florida Georgia Line and Luke Bryan] won, and shortly after that the whole tour sold out. It’s very different—all three acts are very different—and that’s the way it should be. But we all like to have fun. It’s loud, loud guitars, and it’s a lot of fun. If you walk away from there and you didn’t have any fun, then you’ve got a problem.
If you could say you’ve gotten closest with one other person on the tour, who would it be?
Probably Luke. It’s hard when you’re out there and you have so many different things going on, and each artist is doing their own stuff. I had some vocal issues this past year, and Luke has helped me through a lot of that, talking with me and supporting me through that whole thing. He’s just really, really cool, and he wasn’t like “Hey, you’re going to lose your gig if you take off time” or whatever, he was actually kind of mad that I didn’t take off earlier. He’s suffered from some of the same stuff and so we got pretty close talking about all that. He’s just a really good dude. But I also got really close with Tyler [Hubbard] and BK [Brian Kelley] too. It’s probably a wash to be honest with you…We’ve all kind of become closer as a group.
You guys are ambassadors for Child Fund International, and you’ve done some work down in Honduras. What is that like?
Oh, man. It’s one of the most satisfying, if not the most satisfying, things we’ve ever done. We got involved with them two years ago, and they’re just a really great organization. They’re really truly saving peoples’ lives. We’ve done a lot of stuff in the States for kids here, but I believe things happen for a reason and this was presented to us. We try not to doubt things or overthink it, so we just took off with it. We sponsored a child in Honduras and one in Indonesia, and we were able to go meet Emerson in Honduras last year. When we were there, one of the children asked for, they passed on a note that they needed help with their studies. They needed computers and stuff. We got back in Nashville and got our team on it, and we partnered with Office Depot and took five computers down there six months later…It’s one of those things where the second time we went down there people realized that we weren’t joking around and that we weren’t into it for the publicity. We’ve really made some lifelong friends down there, and I hope that’s a relationship we continue for many, many years.
