Love and Theft Tell Traumatic (Yet Funny) Childhood Story

When Love and Theft teamed up with The Boot to answer a wide range of Twitter-submitted questions from fans, the guys offered some honest, revealing answers (with the humor you'd expect from three close friends who clearly spend way too much time together)!

But while Eric Gunderson recalled being recognized while shopping for a bathing suit, and Brian Bandas confessed he's lagging way behind his band mates when it comes to getting tattooed, it was Stephen Barker Liles who was in for a real surprise when he read a "tweet' from 'John Collins' asking: "Is it true that Stephen's friend hit him in the head with a hammer as a child by accident?"

Stephen replied: "Oh my gosh, are you serious? How does he know that story?! This is a crazy story -- I could've died. I was probably 10 years old, and I always looked up to this guy named Carl. His brother, Christophe, was my best friend growing up. Behind my house was a tree fort and there was like a bunch of land ... Well there's this one annoying girl in the neighborhood -- we went to the tree fort one day and all of her stuff was there. We were like, 'Aw, no way. We're getting rid of this stuff. Let's bury it!' So we were burying her stuff, but I'm standing right behind the guy and he's got a pick axe. And I'm standing behind him like an idiot, and the sharp end comes and hits me right in the forehead! I lost my balance and started walking straight to the house. And his brother, Carl, who was my big role model, walks out and goes, 'Stephen dude, you're bleeding!' And I started crying."

We doubt the guys are doing much crying these days. Their debut album, 'World Wide Open' just claimed the honor of being the top-selling newly released country digital album of the week, and their hit single, 'Runaway,' logged the highest first-week sales for a digital single by a debut country artist this year.