Some of your favorite country music stars talk about Thanksgiving traditions and more…

“The first Thanksgiving I ever had here, which was 25 years ago, ’cause I’ve been here a long time now. But the first one I ever had, I remember going to this family’s home, they invited me to Thanksgiving, and I couldn’t believe the volume of food. It was insane. I’ve never seen so much food in my life. Then after the food, there was like 12 desserts. I was like, ‘Why are there so many desserts?’ They said, ‘Well, because every Aunt and every Grandma, everybody brought their thing, their special dessert, and you have to try every one of ’em.’ I’m like, ‘There’s like THREE apple cobblers.’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, but they’re made by different people and they’re all watching, so you have to make sure you try everything up there (laughs).”

“I love thanksgiving man. It’s my favorite time of year. I don’t get to see my family a lot which is you know sad to say but I’m super busy as of right now. So, I love getting home and watching the Cowboys, and the Lions, you know the teams that always play on thanksgiving. The Packers and stuff like that. But I love being home and you know seeing Grand Ma and eating the food and all my cousins and everything, and everybody’s so proud of me and so supportive so it’s always great to go home and reconnect with the fam.”

“My favorite part of Thanksgiving is easy – it’s food. It’s eating. It’s hanging out with family and getting some great food, ’cause that’s really what Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving is about giving thanks for all of the great things you’ve got, and I always give thanks for the greatest thing I’ve got and that’s my family.”

“Something I think we’ll never forget is we did the Macy’s Day Parade on Thanksgiving early on and we were on a plane, and that’s when you could still go to the gate. And our moms were waiting for us inside the terminal and they were watching it and our flight gear didn’t come down off the plane. So we had to keep coming down, they’d shoot these big spotlights underneath there and the whole first class, we were in coach, the whole first class was flight attendants going home for the holidays. So when you start seeing a whole first class full of flight attendants looking at the emergency landing (laugh) pamphlet, we’re going okay?”

“I have more than one TV. (laughs) I can’t just watch one. I mean, I’m probably one of the more dedicated, even if it’s not my team. Like, if they had a national dice-throwing championship, I would know who was good and what their stats were so, I’ll definitely be watching both of those games on Thanksgiving.”

“Pumpkin pie. It’s my dad’s favorite, my favorite. My mom makes a seriously amazing pumpkin pie and I think that my dad and I eat it? She gets mad at us because we dabble into it before it’s probably time to and she wants it to look perfect. My mom’s very much a perfectionist and wants everything to be set and nice and my dad and I could care less. We’ll eat it off of a plastic plate.”

“I’m a pie guy, man. Some of that sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie. I love the collard greens, mustard green, turkey, of course … I mean, it’s Thanksgiving, you know. Just traditional food, you know, traditional-style Thanksgiving, country style, you know, Mississippi stuff.”

“On Thanksgiving the last three or four years for our family, I’ve fried a couple of turkeys. So that’s kind of our tradition now and that’s my contribution. I don’t make dressing because my mom and some of the other folks in our family do it better than I do. My mom and dad usually make that. My father-in-law makes the best sweet potato casserole I’ve ever eaten, so I’ll leave that to him. But I do fry the turkeys.”