[lastfm]Joe Nichols[/lastfm] knows 14 years can be a lifetime in country music, and that’s how long it’s been since he showed up at his first CMA Music Festival (okay, Fan Fair). He’s happy to be indoors these days, not not on the verge of dehydration and death in the barn. We sat down with Joe and he told us all about watching fans swelter in the heat back in the day.

When was your first CMA Music Festival or Fan Fair?

My very first year was back in 1997, back when I had an independent record deal, and I had a song called ‘Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other,’ and I spent that Fan Fair in the old live stock barns at the old fair grounds. It was purely miserable. I didn’t have to wait in any lines, and I felt so bad that people were waiting in these lines for hours, and they’re wearing shorts and tank tops and you can just see the look on their face like, ‘I’m gonna wait five more minutes, and then I’m just gonna lay down here and just die. I’ll write a will right now.’

Who are you most excited to see play at the CMA Music Festival?

They’re all good.

What’s next for you?

Working on a brand new record. It’ll probably be out in September sometime. It’s a fun record. It’s country, but at the same time, it feels hot, it feels fresh, it feels lively. We got some serious stuff in there too.