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The dining room is often used to host the Sweets’ large families, like last Thanksgiving when they had 20 people over for dinner.
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One of Phillip’s favorite things to do in the morning is retreat to the great room play around on the real ivory keys of the dark brown piano Ramsey found through Nashville Piano Rescue.
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Little Big Town may be out on the road touring more often than not, but when it came to creating a Tennessee refuge, singer and guitarist Phillip Sweet and his wife Rebecca desired a home with space for entertaining, relaxing, andmost importantlymaking music that they could settle into for the long term.
Though the band has been active since the late 90's, its breakthrough didn't happen until 2005 when 'Boondocks” became their first top 10 hit on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. The Sweets continued to live in a cozy condo in Germantown until 2008 when they traded their Werthan Loft for a 3,500-square-foot house in Nolensville. At the time, the band had no record label and was in the process of changing managers, but Phillip and Rebecca had a newborn daughter and they wanted to get into Williamson County for the schools sooner rather than later.
'I knew about Nolensville from growing up here [in Brentwood], and back then, we could get a new house there without paying an arm and a leg,” Rebecca says.
But eventually, five years later, it was time to move on. None of their livesPenelopi's school, their jobs, Rebecca's Brentwood-based familywere in Nolensville, rather 'we were just over there because we wanted to be,” Phillip says. After looking for land for a year and a half and not finding anything that was a good fit for their taste and budget, they wandered into their now home in Franklin.
At first, the Sweetswho looked at dozens of houses and have, what Rebecca jokes, 'a bit of a real estate addiction”didn't consider the large house. But when they saw the spacious back lawn on nearly two acres, awash in foliage with a rectangular pool as the centerpiece, they knew they'd found their place. They relocated in November 2013 and got to work sculpting it into the home of their dreams. There's even a lake out back that Phillip can fish.
'It was hard to find the size of land we wanted with the privacy we wanted and at the price we wanted,” Rebecca says. 'We weren't even considering buying this house but once we'd walked into it until we stepped onto the back patio, we were like, ‘this is it.' It has so much potential.”
While 7,700 square feet is a good amount of space for a family of three to fill, there's rarely a time when the Sweets don't have people over, whether the band and their families, other musicians who co-write with Phillip, or any of a number of their management teams. There's often a gaggle of kids running around, too, as Rebecca and Phillip both have many siblings and a total of 10 nieces and nephews ranging in age from 1 to 23. Not to mention, Penelopi, who turns seven this winter, has regular play dates with her dad's bandmates' childrenthey even have their own band they call 'Little Big Kids.”
So having areas adaptable for entertaining were important to the social couple. Even though the house, built in 2002, is not yet 15 years old, many of the features like the telephone system were already already out-of-date, so they slowly started to upgrade everything, little by little. But when it came to the overall interior design of the home, they went straight to the professional: Brad Ramsey of Ramsey Interiors.
'We told Brad we don't want an ‘insta-house' and move in instantly having everything done and furnished,'” Phillip says of what he describes as a collaborative design effort with Ramsey. 'We like to collect art, we like to pick things up from our travels and our experiences and incorporate that into our home. Brad did all of thathe took all our little pieces and found places for them, connected them for us.”
One such revered accent they found in Portland is a massive piece of driftwood that a local artist carved figurines into.
'That thing rode in the back of the bus for a long time,” Rebecca says, adding that the band loves to go scouting for new bits of home décor while on tour. 'It's fun and easy because all of us [the band and spouses] like to go shopping. Kimberly found this gorgeous window that's in Daisy's room, Karen finds all her fabulous turquoise pieces out on the road, and we bring home large pieces of furniture!”
With a few accents to start with and a lot of shopping to do, Ramsey got to work, beginning with the music room upon Rebecca's insistence.
'Poor Phillip never really got a music room because we got married and had a baby soon after, so his writing room turned into a nursery because we only had so much space,” she says. 'When we came here, I told Brad, ‘Phillip has to have his own room. I don't care if the rest of the house isn't done, we've got to focus on this room.'”
For his retreat, Phillip desired an open space where he could showcase accomplishments, like Grammys and other awards, and leave out a bevy of musical instruments to 'set up and jam” when the urge strikesbut that was also without clutter. Ramsey says the size of the room allowed him to fulfill those wishes, as well as install plenty of seating. It serves a dual purpose, too, as the family uses it for movie nights and Mario Kart competitions, thanks to the 70-inch TV, and Penelopi takes any opportunity to use the room as her stage (her current go-to is Sheppard's 'Geronimo”).
'We've got to have some room for some dancing!” Phillip says. 'It's really nice to have a space where I can just go and create anytime I want. I've written a lot more since it's happened, too, because I can go focus on it and be immersed in music. And any instrument I want to pick up and try to play, I can do it, which I never really had before. It's not like a studio in there. It's just a room where I can make sounds and record work tapes and stuff.”
The musical theme doesn't end in Phillip's writing lair. Ramsey framed six pages of an old classical piece to set the tone in the great room, and while the song he chose was based purely on artistic merit, Phillip says the message couldn't have been more apropos.
'It's kind of cool what it saysit says it's the bard and it's in four voices, and I'm in a band with four voices,” Phillip says. 'Even the lyrics are fitting, because it's about persevering the test of the storm. That's exactly our story.”
Phillip spends many mornings in the great room playing around on the piano because he loves to hear the melodic echo, which he calls 'inspiring,” generated by the tall ceilings. Penelopi has already shown a knack for the instrument, too, and having a piano in the central area of the house has proven to be the catalyst for plenty of father-daughter bonding.
The room is also outfitted with a big painting by Marilyn Johnson, what Rebecca jokingly calls 'our first real piece of art,” gifted to the Sweets by her uncle that hangs in the great room.
'I just love how the house is a collection of those things: gifts and love and our own treasures,” Phillip says. 'Brad tied all the threads together and added the new things to make it pop and beautiful. We love a classic kind of timeless feel with a little edge.”
The edge Phillip refers to can be experienced in the front whiskey room, which Rebecca says originally was intended to be an office.
'There's a record player, and it's fun at the end of the day to go in there and curl up in those big chairs, throw a record on,” Rebecca says. 'There's not a TV in there, so you don't get sucked into that world.”
Phillip adds that it was important to have rooms where the sole purpose it enjoy each other's company, though they also use their love of whiskey as a conduit to conduct meetings. 'That is the office, man,” he says. 'It's where all the good business happens!”
Thanks to Ramsey's guidance, the bulk of the main level renovationsincluding the couple's master suiteare now complete, though eventually the rest of the home will be given the same care. Currently, the basement is in a state of transition after flooding earlier this year, so the Sweets had no choice but to tackle it next. The ultimate goal is to provide a more comfortable space for their large extended families to gather, with a rec room for the kids an a bar for the adults (OK, and maybe a wine cellar, too).
'We pulled out the wall of the basement, and there was exposed brick behind it,” Phillip says. 'I was like, ‘yeah!'” Rebecca adds, 'We always have this thing about exposed brick because our first place in Werthan was all exposed brick, so it's kind of nostalgic. At our old house in Nolensville, we built it and then put in a brick backsplash.”
Though the couple may eventually invest in a second home if the timing is right, Rebecca says this is where her family will live forever.
'We always talking about having a lake house eventually,” she says, 'but for Nashville, this is it for us.”
