NASHVILLE PEOPLE: Becca Stevens, Founder of Thistle Farms, Music Family Wife & Mom & The Beat Goes On & On…

Photo courtesy of 90 East Photography and Think Country/Nashville People

I need to preface this entire piece by saying my first encounter with Thistle Farms and their products was at Nashville’s City Winery during the CMT Next Women of Country Event on November 13, 2018. I needed to take a breather from the congestion of the main room and wandered out to the lobby, where I found a long table lined up with all sorts of interesting-looking products. Soaps, bath salts, the sort of thing that instantly grab my attention.

Photo courtesy of Thistle Farms

As you can imagine, I started picking up these items and smelling them and they were wonderful! The ladies manning the table were very friendly and seemed really eager to tell me all about the products and the company they worked for, so I was all ears. I ended up purchasing a bag full of things, not just because they looked and smelled amazing, but because of what these incredible women told me about Thistle Farms. I had never heard of it before, but now that I had, this was a company I wanted to get behind.

I could purchase bath products anywhere for prices that weren’t much different than these, but these products stood for something that mattered. Never did I dream a year later that I’d be touring the factory where they were made and sitting down to chat with the Founder of this outstanding company. You never know where life’s path will take you next, but I certainly feel grateful to have met someone like Becca Stevens.

Aside from the bright lavender Thistle Farms Cafe (that looks marvelous, although we didn’t get a chance to try it) that sits right at the street on Charlotte Pike in West Nashville, with the Thistle Farms Shop adjoining it, you might never realize there’s an entire operation out back. That’s where all of the on-site products are made, and the minute you enter the building, you know it. Unlike other factories or warehouses, it isn’t noisy and it definitely does not smell bad. It has an almost zen effect on you. On the day we were there, it smelled like a beautiful eucalyptus blend of something or the other and it’s so clean! You could literally eat off the floors in this place.

Photo courtesy of 90 East Photography and Think Country/Nashville People

The employees all seem happy to be there. As Becca Stevens guided us through the building, everyone that saw her greeted her with a “Hello Miss Becca, how are you today?” They know her by name and vice versa, no matter what position they hold. There’s a mutual respect, which was so refreshing to see. There were employees making soap. There were others filling orders. These were things I guess I might have expected to see. Business is brisk. Then, there were things I had no idea about.

Photo courtesy of 90 East Photography and Think Country/Nashville People

There were shelves with bin after bin filled with handcrafted items. Beautiful things. Everything from handmade scarves to baby toys, jewelry and just so many things I can’t even recall, and every last item was unique because it was made by hand. The best part of all of this is each of these quality items was made by a woman in some far off country and shipped to the warehouse in Nashville where Thistle Farms serves as a distributor. Once I get into the interview with Becca Stevens, she’ll explain just why all of that happens and just how important it is. I think you’ll even want to add Thistle Farms to your holiday gift giving idea list. The whole concept is not only fascinating, it’s beyond worthwhile.

Photo courtesy of 90 East Photography and Think Country/Nashville People

At the end of our walk-through of the factory and warehouse, we sat down in a conference room to talk with Becca Stevens and find out the story behind Thistle Farms and, of course, being Music City, there’s always a little bit more. Nashville People always have some connection to the music you know, or at least you do now. Grab a beverage, sit back and be ready for a story that takes you through a whole lot of emotions, but hopefully leaves you inspired and in a really good place in the end. I think that’s exactly where you’ll be.

Nashville People: Since we are Nashville People, how did you end up in Nashville to start with? Were you a Nashville native?

Becca Stevens: Almost. I moved here when I was four, almost five. So, my parents were from New York and Connecticut and had moved back and forth from New York and Connecticut and they moved down here. My Dad was an Episcopal priest and he had got called to start an Episcopal church in the south. He packed up a car with my Mom, 35 years old with five little kids, and they got down here, and my Dad, who we talked about, he was killed by a drunk driver.

Nashville People: Oh, my goodness.

Becca Stevens: That all happened that same year, so my Mom was stranded in Nashville with five kids. She didn’t have anywhere to go or any money to move. We were all born in New York or Connecticut, the five of us, and we all talk like “this” (alluding to her southern accent, which, to me, is very slight), it just changed her life that day. It just changed her life forever.

Nashville People: She must have been just stunned and lost.

Becca Stevens: My Mom was like, when I think of my Mom, she died years and years and years ago, but I think of her as like a lighthouse. Like, she’s steady, that beam that can be anywhere in the world and be that safe shore. She was like that through the whole thing, but there was a lot of stress. She worked in daycare for five kids, I can’t imagine.

Nashville People: She must have had nerves of steel.

Becca Stevens: That’s what I think, but anyway, I got here so young I don’t really remember life before that. I was in South Nashville, went all the way through school here, then went to Sewanee, which is about an hour and a half from here to go to school. After that I moved to DC to do work and then came back here to go to Vanderbilt Divinity School and never planned on staying in Nashville. Then the first week, I ran into Marcus Hummon, a very young, cute singer/songwriter here in town and that was all she wrote. (Laughing)

Nashville People: It’s always a man!

Becca Stevens: It’s a man, and he had just moved here and he had grown up all over the world, and he was out in L.A., the last place he was before he moved here. It was in that wave when all the country writers were moving to Nashville, you know, the mid to late-eighties. The big boom, the Garth Brooks boom, and he was here for good, so, well, we’re having a home here and three babies born in Nashville later, here I am.

Nashville People: It worked out!

Becca Stevens: It did. We’ve been married 30 years. I think it gets better.

Photo courtesy of Patti McClintic and Think Country/Nashville People

Nashville People: I think so too. You learn to laugh at the hills and the valleys because you know they’re always going to be there. In the beginning you tend to tear apart and dissect every little thing. Eventually the roller coaster goes back up the hill.

Becca Stevens: I always felt like when people ask, “Would you take a bullet for your kids?” Parenting is the long, slow bullet. You and your husband do that journey together, you’re in.

Nashville People: Yes. You’re all in.

Becca Stevens: It’s like, we’ve all lost our life over this. It’s not like, “Who did the dishes?”, “Who paid for what?” It’s all on.

Nashville People: Exactly.

Becca Stevens: When you have to survive the big stuff, like, just working here, when I come home from here, I don’t have any problems, I might have some issues, but I don’t have problems. When you’ve just come out of jail and you’ve been on the streets since you were 13 you have some real problems. Who picks up the dishes is like nothing.

Nashville People: That doesn’t even count.

Becca Stevens: Right, and I think that’s been one of the gifts of being here and being with really famous people in the country music business through Marcus, either way, we just feel so grateful.

Nashville People: So, what prompted you to start Thistle Farms?

Becca Stevens: After my Dad died, the guy that stepped in to help our family, and stepped in to run the church started sexually abusing me, and it started in the church, and it went on for years.

Nashville People: Oh, my goodness, that’s awful, and you were little.

Becca Stevens: Yeah, I was six, it started when I was six.

Nashville People: Oh, no. Horrible.

Becca Stevens: So, you know, I made it through all that stuff. It was horrible and it kind of messes you up about how you see the world and your safety.

Nashville People: I’d think that would be an understatement, wow.

Becca Stevens: Yeah, but I had a lot of good people in my life too, and that was the messed up part, but there was some good stuff. I ended up always kind of being for the underdog and really having a heart for women who were on the streets and in jail. I knew when I got ordained, I was ordained about 28 years ago as a priest in the Episcopal church, and I knew what I really wanted to do was to just start a sanctuary for women. I didn’t know at the time that the women I’d be serving really kind of went through the same stuff I had gone through, with the tragic death of a father, and then on top of that, the abuse, but that’s what happens. Kids get marked as vulnerable when they’re in poverty. Like, we were thrown into poverty, and that just opens the door for other people to do that kind of abuse, those are the kids that they pick on. The United States is one of the top three countries in the world for sex trafficking, and they say the most vulnerable people for sex trafficking are kids in foster care, kids who are undocumented and kids who have had a real lot of trauma.

Nashville People: Which is really scary.

Becca Stevens: It’s so sad. It’s just so sad the way the system works, then what we do is we criminalize the women. So, you’re on the streets at 13 or 14-years old, you know, a lot of these beautiful women have been runaways at 13, 14-years old. They’re runaways and they’re caught up with pimps that will traffic them around the country, or use them for downloading images on the internet. Anyway, the drug industry and the sex industry are all tied in together. Young girls get addicted and it keeps them on the streets forever, and then they end up in prison. So, it was just a really sad, sad story to me and I kept on thinking about the idea, in my mind, that none of the women ended up on the streets by themselves. It took a whole bunch of broken communities. It made sense to me if there was a community that really welcomed them home, without a ton of expectations, and if it was just like, it was your family and how you would want it done for you, like, here’s some time and space, just tell us what you need, that might turn them around. So, that was what we did. So, we opened up a house in 1997 and invited five women, all who had criminal records, all who had been prostituted, trafficked and addicted to come in, and it was like, I’m basically meeting myself, but not comparing my story to theirs. What they had gone through was horrific, more than I could imagine, but I recognized myself in some of the stories about their youth and their childhood, and it was kind of like the beginning of what I wanted to do with my life.

Becca Stevens: I wanted to be able to give back and help people remember themselves, and remember that community can be loving and good, not just this brokenness. So, we opened another house and another house, and then it was like, we talked about loving each other and community, you know, we love women, but everybody’s dirt poor and if I really do love people, I have to be concerned about their economic well-being. So, about four years after we opened the first house, is when we started the bath and body care company, and the reason I did that was because in my mind it was like, everybody’s been raped, 100 percent of the women had been raped, not 99 percent, not 82 percent, but 100 percent, everybody I was working with. I thought I wanted to make something really lavishing for our bodies, to say, these are our bodies, they’re good, we can live in our bodies and be in our bodies. You know, the whole “Me Too” movement, just confirming all that. This was long before all that, and long before people were using the word “trafficking”. It was recognizing if we can talk about it and be proud, and claim it, then we get to control the rest of the story. The story doesn’t go away, but it just becomes a chapter in a really beautiful story, so we started making bath and body care products. Just lavish your body. We have good margins, we can make a business, you can get your life back and you don’t have to keep going to job interviews and keep not getting hired because you have 40 arrests, 100 arrests on your record. You can let all that go. We can make a big old, fat ass company.

Photo courtesy of Thistle Farms

Nashville People: That’s awesome.

Becca Stevens: And we have.

Nashville People: You sure have, and your products are so, so nice.

Becca Stevens: I’m glad you like them. The best news about this is how kind people have been along the way to us. Strangers, communities of businesswomen, churchwomen, musicians, people have been really kind and nice to us. I mean, it’s amazing, so we have people come in and they volunteer and they help, or they get the word out like you’re doing, that’s how we survive. Somebody will read this story and they’ll go online and they’ll buy the products, and this is how they can help, because you have to buy your soap from somewhere unless you’re at home making it yourself, so just buy it from us. It translates into not just really good products for you, but healing for women, and people have been willing to do it. We grow about 30 percent a year.

Photo courtesy of Thistle Farms

Nashville People: That’s amazing, that’s so great to hear. It’s also important that people understand that these women aren’t damaged forever.

Becca Stevens: No, we’re different forever, but not damaged forever. We can have healthy relationships and recover. Two things, this is not a company that does it for women survivors. I would say about 70 percent of the women you have met, including the managers, are all survivors that have come through as residents in this program. The Director of Sales we just walked by and the Director of Marketing, they’re all women survivors.

Nashville People: That’s incredible.

Becca Stevens: They came through the program, they’ve done their job training, everybody at the cafe, it’s just almost everybody you’re seeing. You would not know, there’s no distinguishing features between somebody that’s gone through the program or somebody that was employed for a certain skill set to train with that did not go through the program. You can’t tell the difference.

Photo courtesy of 90 East Photography and Think Country/Nashville People

Nashville People: No, you can’t tell. If you saw someone walking down the street you wouldn’t know they survived some really horrific stuff.

Becca Stevens: Not at all. What I love is, Forbes Magazine just did an article on us recently, and they said the reason we’re so successful is we’re “a mission with a company”. We didn’t start out as a company to find a mission.

Nashville People: That’s true. That’s really a great quote.

Becca Stevens: So powerful. It’s like we started on this movement. We wanted to be a movement for women’s freedom and this company is an expression of it. The cafe is an expression of it. The global marketplace is an expression of it. There are a lot of expressions of it. We have a national network with more than 50 district communities and 300 beds, just like the ones in Nashville, that we train, mentor and refer women to. You know, it’s a movement.

Nashville People: It’s just incredible that you started off with one house and five women and it’s grown to this in a relatively short amount of time, if you think about the grand scheme of things. It’s really quite amazing.

Becca Stevens: What I’ve come to realize is, when you’re growing at first, 30 percent is a lot smaller at $50,000 than 30 percent is at $4,000,000. So, the scale, even though it’s been pretty consistent, is scaling much faster now than it did at the beginning.

Nashville People: What products did you start off with and what products have you grown to selling now?

Becca Stevens: We started with body balms and candles. The idea was like a spa, you rub all this stuff on your body and light a candle and you could be at peace wherever you are in the world. So, we started with that, and then we expanded to a whole line of soaps, lotions, bath salts, room sprays and roll-on healing oils, I mean, expand, expand, expand. The biggest expansion now, I mean, we’ll have new scents of candles and new scents of blends of oils people can use, but the big one is growing the global market, that’s where we’re putting the emphasis. So, the home goods is a whole new division for us. So, all that stuff you’re seeing from survivor artisans around the world, that’s especially kind of where my heart is. Those small groups of women that are sharing the same stories.

Photo courtesy of Thistle Farms

*Writer’s note: The global marketplace items were handcrafted items that were stored in bins in the warehouse that I described earlier. Everything from beautiful scarves, stuffed toys, jewelry and the list went on. They were all individually handmade by women survivors all across the world and everything was so amazing and of such excellent quality. What was truly interesting about some of these items is where they originated. Places that were often so remote, they didn’t even have addresses that you and I would recognize as “normal”. Some of them were marked with addresses that resembled something like, “Down the dirt road from the old wooden church”. What this really says is women on all points of the globe are victims of terrible forms of abuse and live to survive it. They are getting their lives back and thanks to programs like the global marketplace at Thistle Farms, which serves as a distributor for these handcrafted wonders, these women can remain hopeful for the future. Do be sure to visit that section of the Thistle Farms website and see the unique, gorgeous items these talented women create. I fell in love with the baby toys. The stuffed animals were precious!

Photo courtesy of Thistle Farms

Nashville People: Even if they’re thousands and thousands of miles away.

Becca Stevens: It’s the same. The same stories. Take advantage of poor, vulnerable women, use them for what you need and then throw them out.

*Writer’s note: At this point, I lost a portion of audio concerning the music community’s support for Thistle Farms. I will not be transcribing our direct conversation, but rather telling the story as I recall Becca Stevens telling it to me.

When Stevens was first starting out with her company, it was about the same time that her husband, songwriter, Marcus Hummon was beginning to have some luck in his own career. Hummon, who is now one of Nashville’s most successful songwriters, got his first really big break with a couple of songs from the 1999 Dixie Chicks album, Fly. “Ready to Run” and “Cowboy Take Me Away” became monster hits for the trio, and it certainly didn’t hurt Hummon’s bank account either, which Stevens openly admits helped her finance her own business early on. It was a lot of great timing for both of them, and let’s face it, those are two really amazing songs that just about any country music fan knows by heart. If you didn’t know who wrote them before, well, you do now.

Video courtesy of Think Country/Nashville People

Giving credit to her husband for sharing the wealth is something Stevens isn’t afraid to do, but she is also quite thankful for many others in the music business for being so very supportive of Thistle Farms. Country music artists such as Wynonna and Reba McEntire, are just a couple of the names she listed. I know there were a lot more, I just can’t recall the others for sure without the audio. She is extremely grateful and absolutely acknowledged the Nashville music community as one of her best support systems.

Photo courtesy of Lindsey Sipe

*Writer’s note: This is where the audio picked back up.

Nashville People: If you hadn’t had that stroke of luck with Marcus’s songs and had that help to launch your company and give it “air”, would you have done it anyway?

Becca Stevens: Oh yeah, I would have found another way. I would have found another country music husband (laughing).

Nashville People: (Laughing) Alright!

Becca Stevens: No, I was gonna do it. I mean, he made my path peaceful and secure, but I was taking the path. You know, Nashville’s a pretty generous city. It is the music community, but not just the music community. There are so many people in this city who are generous and philanthropically-minded. I think I would have figured it out one way or the other. I love this city.

*Writer’s note: Marcus Hummon was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame on October 14, 2019.

Nashville People: I do too. Even the regular people are giving and very accepting. I think even if you had to do it the long, hard way, you would have gotten there.

Becca Stevens: A perfect example is, the mayor’s race. I would have been okay with either one of them, like, we have good people. Good people who want good things. I just remember thinking I love that the choices are between two good options. I know both of those men and they’re both good men. I felt good about that. It was a good indicator that nobody was scary.

Nashville People: What does the future look like for you here?

Becca Stevens: You know, people say, “Do you believe how big it’s gotten?” Then I start thinking that I’m really surprised it’s not bigger. It’s such a beautiful idea and it’s such an effective, proven model for saving communities money and helping women restore their whole lives and producing amazing products, I’m kind of surprised it’s not bigger than it is. So, part of the next step for me is figuring out how we can really amplify the noise. There’s so much noise out there. To make noise as a community is hard.

Nashville People: It is, but I guess you just have to find that one loud mouth that will say the right things to the right people.

Becca Stevens: I’m trying. That’s what I’m trying to figure out, and I’m very committed to a lot of the small social enterprises below the border right now. For women who have stayed in those communities that are falling apart, the violence and gangs and all of that, there are women who are staying and trying to do that great work of healing their communities. There’s about ten groups that I’m really focused on south of the border, and I’m going to put a lot of time and attention into that.

Nashville People: Those are some brave ladies.

Becca Stevens: So brave, so brave, and we’re building our first house ever in Belize. A long-term house for women, and we’re really going to sink some money into a couple groups in Peru, Mexico and Ecuador. I really want to focus in and figure out how to get them to scale and sustain themselves, but there are real barriers. Women are really talented in those communities, but there are real barriers to understanding the global market and how to do that work. We have people in this community that can help, but you have to get laser-focused because there are so many distractions.

Nashville People: I can imagine. Now, do these women, does it ever get to the point where it gets dangerous for them? For some of the women, let’s say, that were trafficked? Obviously, some scary people are involved in that sort of thing.

Becca Stevens: Yeah there are, but it’s not dangerous once they come to us. When they come here it’s not dangerous. No, we’re safe. We’ve been safe for 23 years. It’s dangerous when they leave, whether they get shot or beaten, there’s a cost when you’re leaving somebody. That’s the most dangerous time. If you’re coming from prison, it’s not dangerous, but the sad thing to me, is nobody comes after them. It’s almost like they’re a disposable commodity.

Nashville People: You’re right. They’ve used them for what they needed them for and they move on to the next one. It’s sick.

Becca Stevens: It’s awful. So, the next thing for us is to grow the national network for residential programs and the global marketplace for helping many, many, many more women. Like, right now, all the stuff you saw in the global marketplace represents about 1,700 women that are employed, so again the scaling gets bigger, so, a lot of that. I have more writing I want to do.

Nashville People: I did see that you’ve written books.

Photo courtesy of Thistle Farms

Becca Stevens: I’ll have some more coming out. That’s someday, not right now, not today.

Nashville People: Where do you find the time?

Becca Stevens: Do it in the morning, early, instead of eating breakfast.

Nashville People: How has it been for you, trying to juggle a business and being a wife, a mom and having all of this going on?

Becca Stevens: I love juggling, I’m a good juggler, a very, very good juggler. So, that doesn’t bother me to do.

Nashville People: You had three boys, so it had to have been busy.

Becca Stevens: Well, you know, everybody’s been a part of this. This is not really like a job, it’s a community that I’m a part of. I can bring my boys, my dog, my husband, everybody’s a part of it. They take pieces of it when they come to my house. It’s a community. The truth of it is, that both our jobs, my husband and I, our careers are traveling and being home, so I’m on the road a ton, whether it’s raising money for another group or starting a new program, I’m on the road a lot, like, an easy 150 days a year.

Nashville People: Wow, that is a lot.

Becca Stevens: Yeah, so this week I’ll be in Raleigh and Jacksonville. I’m going to speak at a cathedral in Jacksonville, then I’ll fly up to Raleigh and do a fundraiser. There’s a new program that just opened called BLOOMHERE in Raleigh, North Carolina and I’ll speak there, so it’s a variety of stuff, but this week, I’m home all week, but Marcus just flew out this morning at 5 AM to do a writer’s retreat down in Key West, he’ll probably come home with no songs by the way (laughing). Anyway, he’s gone from Monday through Friday, but it’s like, it works. I don’t know how, but it always seems like it works. We’ll see each other Friday night and I’ll fly out early Saturday morning and see him next Tuesday. It’s just always been that way. We just don’t stress and it will always work out. It’s amazing to me, but it just works. People always want you to have a balanced life and that feels so stressful to me. Like, if I thought I had to balance it, that would be awful, I just couldn’t. Surrender to the day.

Nashville People: I don’t think there is such a thing as complete balance.

Becca Stevens: I think it just puts another layer of stress on a life. It’s like if you say, “Today I’m not going to get to the dishes,” I’m not going to stress about that.

Nashville People: No, you can’t.

Becca Stevens: I think people try to give you their stress too, that’s the other thing. Have you noticed that?

Nashville People: I have noticed that, yes.

Becca Stevens: I’m not going to accept your stress.

Nashville People: No thanks, you keep it.

Photo courtesy of Thistle Farms

Becca Stevens: No, it’s yours for the taking. You do what you want with it, but for me at least, I have my assistant. My assistant’s amazing.

Nashville People: She was quite amazing!

Becca Stevens: She’s a graduate.

Nashville People: Is she?

Becca Stevens: Yeah, I’m telling you everybody around here almost is, and she came off the streets and out of prison five years and she bought a house and a minivan and she’s livin’ the dream.

Nashville People: She told us she would never want to work anywhere else, that’s just what she said. She seemed absolutely wonderful.

Becca Stevens: She is, she’s amazing. So, she takes all my stress.

Nashville People: She takes it well.

Becca Stevens: That’s the thing, if you’re in a community, people can carry it for you. That’s the beautiful thing about marriage, if you’re (gesturing toward my husband Bill, who was also sitting at the table) having a really bad day, she (gesturing toward me) can carry the load, and if she’s having a really bad day, you can.

Nashville People: Yes, and we do that frequently.

Becca Stevens: It’s a give and take. It’s the biggest gift in my life, is the idea that you can have people carrying the load for you. You don’t have to burn out or freak out.

Nashville People: Right, because if you do burn out or freak out, it’s all just going to crumble.

Becca Stevens: Right, and if I thought that really the news in this world is like what I saw when I swiped left on my phone, I may not get out of bed.

Nashville People: I would not. Ever.

Becca Stevens: With this kind of news (referring to everything going on in her company), the good kind of news that I see all the time, you know, I’m a hopeful person, and I probably have more energy to do this now than I did ten years ago when my kids were much littler.

Nashville People: Yeah, well when your kids are little you’re so focused on just keeping them alive.

Becca Stevens: (Laughing) True. Yes, they were wild.

Nashville People: Rambunctious? They were boys, so I’m guessing they were.

Becca Stevens: Oh yes, you didn’t have that.

Nashville People: No, but we had a girl and just going through those teen years…

Becca Stevens: My Mom said 13-year old girls are why tigers eat their young.

Nashville People: (Laughing) Exactly! That is exactly true. She was so right. No joke. The whole drama of the middle school years. I think three boys over one girl has to be easier.

Becca Stevens: No, just money-wise. Just think daycare, or college or whatever. We had to build like, skate ramps out back. Then everybody needed their own $150 skateboard and $140 skateboard shoes and then they all switched and went to lacrosse, and there’s $10,000 in equipment right there.

Nashville People: That’s true, that’s a ton of money times three. We had dance and piano and that was enough.

Becca Stevens: You had clothes I bet.

Nashville People: Oh yeah, we had clothes and makeup and bags. Our daughter had a bag/purse fetish. She still has it, but she pays for her own now and has learned how to wheel and deal for a bargain.

Becca Stevens: She’s married?

Nashville People: Yes, she’s married.

Becca Stevens: Good spouse?

Nashville People: Yes, very good spouse. A Marine Veteran, served in Afghanistan. Good father.

Nashville People: To cap this off, I have one more question for you, because this interview will be part of our Nashville People series, when you “Think Nashville”, what do you think?

Becca Stevens: When I think of Nashville, I think of amazing parks, I think of great food and I think of a really exciting, growing community of people that want to get together and celebrate. We want to go to Centennial Park and hear music. We want to have a benefit for something. We want to go see a TPAC (Tennessee Performing Arts Center) show. We want to go see something down in the village. I love that part of it.

Photo courtesy of 90 East Photography and Think Country/Nashville People

Nashville People: We want to go see Levi Hummon!

Becca Stevens: Good! Go see Levi Hummon! We had to get his name in there somewhere.

Nashville People: I just saw him at the Opry not too long ago. It was in August. He was great. Everyone needs to go see Levi Hummon. Got his name in again.

Becca Stevens: Perfect. He’s cute, right?

Nashville People: He’s very cute. If I had a young, single daughter, I’d be pushing her to try and get a date with Levi Hummon.

Becca Stevens: (Laughing) Good to hear!