A husband-wife duo that needs no introduction, thanks to having exploded onto the scene with the second single in 2010 from their self-titled debut album going multi-platinum. The Grammy-nominated duo has toured the world; won multiple ACM, ACA, CMA, and CMT awards; appeared on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, NBC’s TODAY Show, and CBS This Morning, as well as numerous primetime TV specials and awards shows. Plus, they have earned No. 1 records in three countries. They are performing in the Florida panhandle this coming Sunday, October 6th, for the grand finale of the Pensacola Beach Songwriters Festival.
(Keifer) “There's a lot of great songs out there that will never be heard, will never be hits, that are probably the best songs that you're ever going to hear. They have to find the artist. They have to find the timing. The ecosystem and the music business has to be right. Everything has to be right for a hit.”
(Keifer) “We went from trying to get a record deal for 13 years in Nashville, to getting a record deal a month later, finding the song, and then the next year having the biggest song of the year. And it’s since gone on to be a multi-platinum single, and it actually ended up being the number four song of the decade.”
(Shawna) “(Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not?) literally changed our lives and to see the joy that it brings people when we sing it and to hear them singing it back to you, there is nothing else like that feeling.”
(Shawna) “I moved to Nashville in 1996, I was 18 and I had a development deal with Warner Brothers at the time… I was actually still in high school when that happened.”
(Keifer) “If you have a hit song with somebody else's song, that pays a lot more bills than just being a songwriter on a song because publishing just doesn’t hardly pay anything anymore.”
(Shawna) “We've always had the thing where we've always said we both have to absolutely be ‘in’ one hundred percent no matter what and that's always kind of been our rule… when we write we usually have to have a third in the room because we have to have a referee to kind of keep us straight.”
(Keifer) “(Shawna’s) project means personally more to me than probably anything that we've ever done collectively.”
(Keifer) “We do have music locked and loaded and ready to go, which, there's three amazing songs in this project and one in particular is just astounding… but we're not going to put out anything on Thompson Square until obviously we're free and clear, and until we've sat down and talked about it and see what decision, what direction, we want to go to, if we're going to try to do another record deal or if we're going to stay independent.”
(Keifer) “The best piece of songwriting advice I've ever gotten was to always write with someone who's better than you are and don't think you're better than the other writer.”
“Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not?” (Thompson Square)
“Bama Clay” (Shawna Thompson)