Karen Fairchild of Little Big Town talks about songwriting, football

So she jumped out, grabbed her iPhone and sang it into the handy little recording app.

“I dried my hands off, that was about it,” said the singer/songwriter/co-founder. “I was afraid I was going to lose it.”

That tune became the first single off the band’s new album, “The Reason Why,” which comes out Tuesday. The band begins an all-out publicity assault this week that will take them around the country (but not back to Atlanta until next year. They opened for Sugarland earlier this month in a sold-out show at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Alpharetta.)

Calling from Indianapolis (before performing at the Indiana State Fair) the Marietta native and Lassiter High School graduate took time to speak about collaborating on the songs for the band’s fourth album, 3 a.m. wake-up calls and about playing Powder Puff football.

. . . On harmonizing with Kimberly Schlapman, Phillip Sweet and husband, Jimi Westbrook:

That’s the great thing about the band. It’s kind of a natural fit for us. It doesn’t take a whole lot of talking about it to know where everybody should land.

. . . On Kimberly’s voice:

She’s got this pure-tone bluegrass kind of voice. It’s beautiful. She’s a lyric soprano. This time we had her on a song we wrote with John Singleton ["Why, Oh Why"]. It was yin and yang, it has great slide guitar work, a kind of gritty and nasty sound, which sounds really cool against her beautiful voice.

. . . On writing “Little White Church”:

I had that title written down in my journal. I thought maybe that’s some story-song we could have fun with. I didn’t have anything more than that. One morning we were going to get together in a few hours and I jumped in the shower ... Then it came to me. It’s a story, it’s a chick saying ‘No more.’ I jumped out of the shower singing into my iPhone ... Girls will relate to all these reluctant grooms in their life.

. . . On writing songs together:

We duke it out over lyrics sometimes but we’re pretty like-minded. I guess that’s why we’re still a band.

. . . On her football career:

I played on the Lassiter Powder Puff team. We did a scrimmage thing once a year, and I bit all the way through my lip once. I didn’t want to fumble on a carry, a foreign exchange student took me down hard. I popped right back up and said ‘I’m not hurt.’ My mom was there, she said ‘There’s a hole in your face." I still have a little scar on my lip. [The blood?] I kind of thought, secretively, it looked cool, dripping down my jersey.

. . . On doing "Good Morning America," "Fox and Friends," "Better TV," a showcase at Walmart headquarters, interviews at XM and Sirius all with early morning wake-up calls:

I’ve heard Diane Sawyer say you can survive on four hours of sleep. She got used to that, and she always looks fantastic. But I’ve got a 5 month old, Elijah Dylan, so I'm up at that hour anyway.