Lady Antebellum’s Dave Haywood Shares His Birthday Celebration With America

Lady Antebellum’s Dave Haywood had much more to celebrate on July 4th than Independence Day as a child. The singer’s birthday is one day after the patriotic holiday, so he often got to enjoy an extended celebration, complete with fireworks.

“My birthday is July 5th, so July 4th was always a big family vacation,” Haywood recalled of his early years. “We’d go to Hilton Head, South Carolina, shoot fireworks, have barbecue and just kind of hang out with the family.”

The fireworks were especially fun for Haywood growing up, since they were illegal in his hometown of Augusta, Georgia.

“We’d have to drive to South Carolina to get fireworks because they weren’t legal in Georgia when I was young,” Haywood recounted. “I’d love to get out with my buddies and light something on fire in the woods. But it was fun. It’s always my big birthday celebration. So, it’s an exciting time.”

Now that Haywood has his own family, he will likely celebrate his birthday with his wife, Kelli, and two children instead. The couple has been married for seven years, tying the knot after a whirlwind romance.

“Our story was we were friends for a number of years,” Haywood previously stated. “I really thought she was cute and we had a lot in common, but we didn’t date for probably four or five years. We were friends. We’d go on trips together with different groups of friends. And so we really had a great foundation. The very first date we went on was to a restaurant in Nashville called Kayne Prime.”

“Once we got together, we got engaged within a really short time, got married really quick because we knew each other so well,” he continued. “Having that foundation of knowing each other for five, six, seven years was really just a beautiful thing. We fell hard and quick and had a beautiful engagement and got married in April 2012.

Lady Antebellum is back at radio with “What If I Never Get Over You.” The song is from their upcoming, still-untitled eighth studio album.

“‘What If I Never Get Over You’ is definitely about that feeling – I think right after you break up, there’s that moment that whether you were the one that did the breaking up or got broken up with, that you wonder if you’ll ever find that same connection and love,” Charles Kelley said. “And I know I felt like that before. Before I met [my wife] Cassie, I had a longtime girlfriend, and I mean, it was years of feeling that, ‘Am I ever gonna find anyone like her? Was that the one?’

“I think that’s why it is kind of a universal message,” he added, “and that’s what this is about.”

Photo Credit: Getty / Roger Kisby