When West Tennessee musician Phillip Lemmings discovered in 2005 that his wife was pregnant, he faced a crossroads.
He played guitar and mandolin in a five-piece country band, Forty5south, that had released two albums. But with his daughter, Lakelin, due to arrive in May 2006, it meant the family would have two kids under the age of three. Staying out on the road with a job that was an economic drag no longer made sense, so he quit the band, and Forty5south broke up.
Phillip remained friends with the group’s lead vocalist, Ash Bowers, who became a successful songwriter-producer (Matt Stell, George Birge). As Lakelin hit her teen years, she demonstrated real talents as a songwriter and singer, and Phillip lobbied Bowers periodically about her potential. When she reached age 17, Bowers started pulling her into writing sessions and crafting songs that fit her voice and story. With “Get Around Boy” — her first single released to radio — Lakelin, now 20, picks up professionally where her dad left off.
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“It’s a real full-circle thing,” she says matter-of-factly.
The Lemmings home-schooled their children, which allowed Lakelin to see much of America in an RV.
“We were able to enjoy our childhood and travel and do all the things,” she says. “I was really thankful.”
Her songwriting efforts required travel, too. She continued to live in Henderson, Tenn., and routinely drove 135 miles for co-writing appointments with Bowers in Nashville. Mike Mobley (“Billy’s Got His Beer Goggles On,” “Easy”) became one of their collaborators, and when the three of them explored her story, she mentioned breaking up with a guy back home to devote her attention to her career.
“You see a little tear in her eye,” Mobley says, “just enough there to go, ‘Yeah, she’s still caught up on the boy.”
That comment didn’t become a song that day, but before their next appointment — June 6, 2024, at Bowers’ Wide Open Music in Nashville — Mobley spent more time connecting the dots between her travel and the sacrifice of relationships that often accompanies a touring lifestyle. He came back to their next writing session with an idea.
“I just started picturing her driving across the country, chasing her brand-new life, and meanwhile, [the memory of] this first love from back home riding shotgun the whole time,” Mobley says. “He’s still getting around because he’s going with her emotionally.”
That turned into a title, “Get Around Boy,” and he brought an opening line for the chorus, about a “beach out in California,” plus a semblance of a chorus melody to that next writing session. They turned it into an audio travelogue, and began listing places at least one of them had visited. She had traveled to 30 states, so it was easy finding locations she knew firsthand. In fact, the only one they incorporated in the song that she hasn’t experienced is Sedona, included because it rhymes loosely with California.
They took some liberties with her real-life story, projecting in the verses that the relationship had been expected to lead to marriage, and that she anticipated he’d be waiting. By the final verse, she discovers he is, in fact, marrying someone else, guaranteeing he remains in her rearview. And yet, the bridge emphasized, his memory was “still so close.”
“By the time we got to that bridge,” Mobley says, “I realized the whole song was just this push and this pull between chasing a life she wants and missing the life she had.”
To personalize it further, they inserted a couple West Tennessee references into the final chorus. They dropped in a Beale Street lyric and namechecked “Walking in Memphis.” They also indicated his memory’s travels were “not too bad for a plowboy.” That’s a subtle nod to the late Eddy Arnold, who was born in Henderson and was nicknamed “The Tennessee Plowboy.”
“In our downtown area, there’s a big sign and stuff, and a description of him and what he did,” she says. “So he’s still alive and well here in Henderson.”
They recorded a guitar-and-vocal work tape, with Mobley playing six-string. He added an intro riff on the fly, based on the chorus melody, and Bowers later overdubbed a programmed kick drum. It was one of the songs that helped her secure her Quartz Hill recording deal the following spring.
Lakelin didn’t record it initially for the label, but when the company held showcases at Eric Church’s club, Chief’s, last year during Nashville’s CMA Fest, she worked up the song with her band.
“Everybody inside the label over the next week or so mentioned that ‘Get Around Boy’ sounded like a hit,” Bowers says.
They recorded it at Nashville’s Sound Stage, owned by Black River, which represents Kelsea Ballerini, who made a surprise appearance. She wandered in unexpectedly that day with then-boyfriend Chase Stokes on a sort of mini-tour for a small group. Ballerini gave Lemmings props for a sparkly pair of boots Lakelin had chosen to give her a bit of an uplift that day.
“A little sparkle,” Lemmings says, “is never bad.”
The studio band understood the vibe from the work tape and settled into a framework that gave “Get Around Boy” a hopeful mood without calling attention to itself. The instrumental intro riff was replayed on electric guitar, instead of acoustic, and Sol Philcox-Littlefield crafted a solo that took a trip in just a few bars.
“Sol is so good,” Bowers says. “Every time I’ve ever been in the studio with him, he’ll give me a handful of options, and it’s really hard to pick which one. But we did have a conversation [that] this works because it does feel like a bit of a journey.”
Lemmings recorded her final lead part at the Couch Room, a Music Row studio owned by Eric Torres, who sang background vocals. The song had been shaped specifically for her, so it posed little trouble, outside its ambitious chorus.
“It’s a pretty big chorus, but it’s also very strategic,” she says. “It moves around a lot — the melody goes up and down — so getting that right and really nailing the pocket on those [melodic hills] was a little challenging.”
The writers hadn’t recognized that the travelogue motif and midtempo pace made “Get Around Boy” similar to the Tim McGraw song “Everywhere,” though several programmers made the comparison on her radio tour. They also said it was her best bet as a single, and Quartz Hill founder Benny Brown agreed.
“Obviously, he’s had plenty of hits,” Lemmings says. “He knows.”
“Get Around Boy” was shipped to country radio via PlayMPE on April 13. Promoting it has given Lakelin the opportunity to get around herself, using some of the same roads her father traveled during his time in Forty5south. And she carries his story everywhere she goes, doing the same sort of work that he dropped when she arrived.
“I crushed his dreams,” she says. “Now we’re chasing mine together.”
