Lady A’s Charles Kelley ‘Finding So Much More Purpose’ in Sobriety Journey

It was an uplifting vibe on the set of the Today Show this week when Lady A's Charles Kelley spoke sincerely about his sobriety journey. It gave me a moment to remember one of my favorite moments with Kelley not long ago. I'll get back to that in a minute.

On the Today Show, Charles was quick to express his joy and gratefulness for his new lease on life. "It's been just a new adventure. I know that sounds cheesy but...I'm finding so much more purpose. I'm connecting to my spirituality like I never have before."

The band went on to perform their newest single, 'Love You Back', which you can watch here.

It was a little over a year ago when Lady A postponed their Request Line tour so Charles Kelley could seek help for a severe alcohol abuse problem. His addiction had apparently spanned over the course of several years, taking a toll on himself, his bandmates Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood, and his wife and young son as well. "It just got really old and exhausting," Charles laments over his destructive former lifestyle. "It wasn't fun anymore, really. And I'm just loving this new lease on life."

I actually had the opportunity to see Charles up close and personal back when I worked in Raleigh. He was doing a solo show at City Limits Saloon where I got to watch from backstage. I’ll never forget when he decided he had enough of some loud fool in the crowd yelling, “FREEBIRD!” every 2 minutes (there’s always one, right?), and actually brought the dude on stage to sing the song himself.

Of course, the loudmouth folded under pressure. He sloppily muttered an off-key attempt at the first verse —in which he missed half the words – before Charles sent him off stage and performed a much better impromptu cover of the famous Skynyrd jam himself! To this day it remains my all-time favorite concert interaction that I ever got to witness firsthand.

Charles Kelley has made tremendous strides in his life over the past year. I have no doubt his natural talent and charisma will only shine through even brighter without the weight of his past vices holding him down. I respect him as an artist and as a person, and I’m happy to see him thriving and feeling "as free as a bird now."

Country music is like no other genre because country stars are very much like family. In that family, many lifelong friendships emerge between superstars and have been through the years.

Like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in the 1970s and Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn's great friendship before that. It's hard to overlook Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers's friendship that began when he first appeared on her 1970s Dolly TV show. Then they started to make music together when they recorded the iconic "Islands In The Stream" in the early 1980s. And who can forget Parton's friends and trio partners Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, who won a Grammy in 1988 for their Trio album.

Miranda Lambert has many friends in country music and even started a group with her buddies Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley to form The Pistol Annies. The trio of songwriting friends have released four albums together since 2011, including a 2021 holiday album called Hell Of A Holiday. Lambert has also made friends in a songwriting sense with Jelly Roll and Morgan Wallen, just to name a few. Her latest co-write friendship can be found on Brothers Osborne's latest self-titled album. The song they wrote with Miranda is called "We Ain't Good At Breaking Up," and she sings on the song.

Jason Aldean joined Luke Bryan, his friend for many years, to celebrate Bryan's recent 30 number one song party last week (9/12). Luke is also good friends with his one-time ACM award show co-host Blake Shelton and is friends with his current CMA Awards show co-host Peyton Manning, who might as well be a country star (although he doesn't sing) as much as he loves the music.

Darius Rucker has many friends in the entertainment industry and counts Lady A's Charles Kelley as one of his closest friends. Many of his country music friends have joined Rucker every June in Nashville for his annual benefit concert to help St. Judes Hospital. Past buddies helping out include Jason Aldean, Brooks & Dunn, Brothers Osborne, Kane Brown, Luke Bryan, Luke Combs, Sheryl Crow, Charles Kelley of Lady A, Ashley McBryde, A.J. McLean of the Backstreet Boys, Brad Paisley, and Kenny Rogers.

Let's look at five of country music's best friendships today.

These two friends will forever be linked not just for their duet "Never Wanted To Be That Girl" but because they won a Grammy for the performance in 2023 for Best Country Duo/Group Performance. When we interviewed McBryde recently, she told us of her friendship with Pearce, "We are opposites, especially in the way we enter a room. Carly always seems to me to be very well put together and has thought out what. She's about to say. I'm more likely to come in a room and be like (loud burst) 'Blahhhhh' and be kind of all over the place. I think that's why we got along so well. But that friendship started as a songwriter wanted. I wanted to write with Carly; I wanted to sing something with her."

These two sealed their friendship with a collaboration called "Famous Friends," which Young co-wrote. The collaboration's video for "Famous Friends" won the 2021 CMT Music Award for Collaboration of the Year. Early in his career. Kane told us about being a fan of Young's music. He said, "I probably did as many Chris covers as I did other people's covers. And then when I got signed with Sony, it was the same label that Chris was on, and they knew I loved him right off the bat."

Blake told us what Reba McEntire did for him early in his Nashville career: "The ACM announcements/ nominees three years ago (2009), way before they were asking me, host, she agreed to go, and Reba doesn't do this; she agreed to be on CBS' Early Morning Show to announce the nominees for the ACMs if they would let me be on there with her. Normally, they send a couple of new baby acts to go do that because nobody wants to wake up that early and go do that, but Reba did that for me. If there's ever a time she can lend a hand, she's always been that for me."

Reba sat in Shelton's chair in "The Voice" semi-final in May. She is a Season 24 Coach.

These guys have been friends since the beginning of their respective careers in Nashville. HARDY told us about when he first met Morgan after he heard Wallen's debut single, "The Way I Talk." He said, "I think it was like Top 30, and I was just a huge fan of the song, and I had not met him before, and it was just kind of the publisher route," HARDY explained that he called his publisher and asked to be contacted with Morgan's booker asking to write with him. HARDY said, "And two weeks later, he was on the schedule, and I got a text at like 10 am, and he was like, 'Hey, this is Morgan Wallen, what's your address?' and he just showed up to my house."

Lainey and Jelly Roll are not just friends; they have an award-nominated collaboration together, "Save Me." Jelly Roll recently told ET of his friendship with Lainey, "That's just my sister. That's how I look at her." He added that there's such a kinship with Wilson and noted that and the fact that they're both where they are in our careers right now, at the same record label, with a song together that's "Just on fire."