Classic Rock

The Cadillac Three

Say what you will about Taylor Swift, but she’s got good taste in music. A few years ago, The Cadillac Three were appearing at a show at the Country Music Hall Of Fame in their home town of Nashville, and the pop superstar came down to see them. It turned out Swift, a Tennessee girl who started out playing country music, was a big fan of White Lightning, the slow-burning love song Cadillac Three frontman Jaren Johnston wrote for his wife, Evyn. “We ended up talking to her for a while,” Johnston says now. “She was really nice.”

The next time Johnston met Swift, things were a little different. Brilliantly, he’d ended up at a Swift gig in New York, and somehow found himself getting stoned with Ed Sheeran and his tour manager. That’s when they hit the Candy Room.

“It’s where she does her meet-and-greets,” he says. “You walk in and it’s like one of those candy stores in the mall, where you open the drawer and all the shit falls out.”

Johnston did what any drunk and stoned musician would do: he filled his pockets. “Starbursts, Skittles, Snickers. And then Taylor comes in.

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