Big Little Lions Encourage Kindness in Nashville Session (premiere)

Following up on their first Nashville Session with PopMatters, Big Little Lions are appealing to their listeners to just be a little kinder in their second. “Kind” is a gentle reminder that there is hope even when life feels like its at its worst, and a subtle, infectious plea to help one another recognize that universal fact. As per usual, the duo’s live arrangement of the song at Nashville’s Mount Monkeymore Studios is as rich, warm, and compelling as we have come to expect of Helen Austin and Paul Otten.

Austin tells PopMatters, “This was written in the few days following the 2016 election when a lot of us had our head in our hands and were lamenting. There was so much nastiness and blame flying around. It felt like such a toxic environment, and all we could think of was, “Why can’t we just be kind? Let’s try kindness instead.” Sometimes when you feel hopeless, being kind is the only way to keep your head above water because kindness changes people. There is a kind of pleading to this song to keep going while things are falling apart. When we play it live, we get the audience to join in with the chorus at the end as it builds. It sounds amazing like we have our own choir.”

On the video sessions, she says, “As I mentioned previously, all these videos were filmed at Mount Monkeymore Studios in Nashville. Nothing went as planned, but it ended up all the better for it. We were originally supposed to film two weeks prior, but the video guys bailed, and so we found Jon Grimson last minute to at least shoot some b-roll in Nashville while we had time. We were pretty grumpy about having wasted a lot of the day but ended up having such a good time with Jon that we shuffled things around when we were coming back through Nashville two weeks later.”