Lady Antebellum almost as hot as Chesney

Ask Hillary Scott of the emerging country group Lady Antebellum about her musical preferences, and you may be surprised.

Here's a hint: She felt a tinge of jealousy at the recent CMT Awards watching Taylor Swift do a duet with hip-hop star T-Pain.

"People would be surprised to know that I listen to a lot of R&B and rap," says the singer of the group that's playing the Verizon Wireless Virginia Beach Amphitheater tonight along with Kenny Chesney and Miranda Lambert. "My nickname on the bus is 'Dance Party.' I can't stop listening to Ne-Yo," she says, then says she's still jamming to Jamie Foxx's "Blame It" - and sings a few bars of the song to prove it.

But it's not just Lady Antebellum's proclivity to meld traditional country with touches of soul and rock - and apparently crank the Soulja Boy on the tour bus - that hint at their hipness. Impeccably styled, their look leans toward indie rock and H&M more than honky-tonk. And the musicians have one of the most comprehensive online components in country, replete with links to their spots on social networking sites, a blog and video diaries. In sum, their up-to-the-minute cultural references and untraditional marketing suggest that they might be one of the bands that are the future of country music.

Lady Antebellum has also made social awareness an integral part of its agenda. The band has a "Pay It Forward" program that encourages people to perform good deeds locally, and it encourages people, through its Web site, to get involved with assisting Africa.

Given all that, it could be easy to forget that they're first and foremost a music group - and one that put out one of the more impressive albums of 2008. "Lady Antebellum" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Country charts, and, proving their music's crossover appeal, hit

No. 4 on the Billboard's overall album chart. Their breakout success was fueled largely by the slick duet "Love Don't Live Here" featuring Scott and lead vocalist Charles Kelley, with help, of course, from bandmate Dave Haywood.

Though the midtempo ballad rehashes the traditional country theme about broken hearts and lost love, it is delivered in a musical format that lands somewhere between folk, rock and country. It is the musical equivalent of a discovering that a new acquaintance, whose speech bears no trace of accent, is actually from deep Mississippi.

"Both my parents are in the music industry," says the Nashville-bred Scott, the daughter of country singers Linda Davis and Lang Scott, both of whom carved out impressive careers. "So I have learned to be open-minded musically and find the art in it all."

Lady Antebellum formed in 2006, when Kelley persuaded his old friend Haywood to move with him from Winston-Salem, N.C., to Nashville so they could pursue longtime dreams of musical stardom together. As the story goes, Scott was poking around the MySpace page of country singer Josh Kelley and saw Charles, who is Josh's brother. She spotted him out one night in Nashville, and they soon started performing together.

First spotting your future friend on MySpace: Could anything be more modern?

Still, as they become one of the bands leading country into the 21st century, they're certainly not burning bridges to the past.

"A lot of country fans are rural and don't have Internet, or they have dial-up," she says, "so we make sure to keep doing the traditional things like newspapers and radio - that's important, too. We have to be open-minded and not assume that everyone is going to see us online."

Of course, the group is very new, so there's a lot to learn. Touring with Chesney, they've seen how to put on a good show. With a tour sponsored by Corona, it might be easy for them to overindulge, but that's one country tradition they've learned to avoid.

"You can't, honestly," Scott says, "because the voice is the first thing to go. Plus, we're working on the new record when we're in Nashville, and we can't use that time to recover from the weekend. I'm not going to lie - we are having a great time. But there are no keg stands and beer bongs."

Malcolm Venable, (757) 446-2662, malcolm.venable@pilotonline.com