State Champ Radio country power players
It’s not every day that a roomful of music industry executives keeps quiet during a party.
But Billboard’s annual Country Power Players Party celebrating the leaders in the genre, hosted June 4 at Category 10 in Downtown Nashville at Category 10, yielded respectful silence as a series of emotional moments highlighted the importance of health initiatives in the business.
Music Health Alliance founder Tatum Allsep challenged the industry to help financially in meeting the increasing mental health needs of the creative community as she accepted the Impact award from Brothers Osborne. Billboard country chart manager Jim Asker announced plans to step down from his position on Aug. 15, citing health issues, as Christian artist Lauren Daigle presented him with a farewell commemorative Billboard cover. And Little Big Town applied precision harmony to the poignant “Rich Man” as the band picked up the inaugural Ben Vaughn Song Champion award from songwriter Liz Rose (“Girl Crush,” “You Belong With Me”). The Song Champion hardware is named for the former Warner Music Nashville president/CEO, who died in January at only 49.
Vaughn “has left an indelible mark on our hearts,” LBT’s Karen Fairchild said, acknowledging his daughter, who attended the event. “I don’t feel at all worthy to talk about your dad, other than to just say that we miss him, and I know you do, and we’re here for you. You have a community of people here that will stand by you forever. All you do is just reach out and you tell us what you need, because that’s what your dad always did for us.”
Following a welcome by Melinda Newman, Billboard‘s executive editor of West Coast and Nashville, rising country artist Reyna Roberts hosted the Power Players Party, which included a surprise appearance by Garth Brooks, who handed the prestigious country executive of the year trophy to AEG/Goldenvoice executive vp Stacy Vee, recognizing her contributions to the high-profile Stagecoach Country Music Festival in Indio, Calif.
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Brooks portrayed Vee as an underdog in a male-dominated industry.
“In this business, like so many businesses, a female needs to work 1000 times harder than a male to get a tenth as much as the male gets,” Brooks said. “That’s just how it always has been. The blessing on that – I think that’s what makes Dolly Parton, Dolly Parton. I think that’s what – and I was firsthand watching this – makes Reba McEntire, Reba McEntire. You can’t outwork her, right? I’m married to one of the greatest singers of any format (Trisha Yearwood). I watch her every day work 1000 times harder than me to get a 10th as much as they give me. So with that, I think that kind of describes Stacy.”
BigXThaPlug scored the Innovator award, presented by Shaboozey just weeks after topping the Hot Country Songs chart dated April 19 with “All The Way,” a rap-and-country hybrid featuring guest Bailey Zimmerman from his forthcoming collaborations project.
“X is someone who didn’t just break the mold,” Shaboozey enthused. “He melted it down and made it his own.”
Ella Langley snagged the trailblazer award, presented by Lainey Wilson, while Riley Green – who collaborated on Langley’s “you look like you love me” – was handed the groundbreaker award by Ronnie Dunn, one-half of the duo Brooks & Dunn.
“Any wisdom that has been passed along to me from the women in the business, I’ve tried to share it with Ella, and Ella seems like she’s all ears,” Wilson told the crowd. “She wants to listen. She wants to know more and do more and be more, and that’s what makes her just a superstar. I’m proud of Ella, not just for being the trailblazing artist that she is, but for the heart that she’s got to go with it.”
Asker announced his intention to pass the torch on the influential Billboard country chart position while recounting challenges he’s faced as a stage IV non-Hodgkins cancer survivor.
“They didn’t think I’d make it through the first two weeks in the hospital,” Asker recalled.
He beat those odds and subsequently ran 15 26.2-mile marathons, raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. He expects to continue teaching writing classes at Columbia State Community College in Tennessee, and to study for another degree.
Music Health Alliance, meanwhile, has made assisting cancer patients and other members of the music community its non-profit mission. In the 12 years since its inception, the organization has reportedly benefited more than 32,000 people and saved the industry more than $145 million in health care costs. That’s particularly noteworthy; the majority of music-industry workers are independently contracted and historically face greater difficulty accessing insurance than corporate-employed staff.
T.J. Osborne hailed Allsep as “Nashville’s very own Mother Teresa.” Allsep, in turn, sought to motivate the movers and shakers in the room to step up their game in an increasingly difficult emotional period.
“In the last few months, MHA has seen a 250% increase in requests for mental health support,” she noted. “Y’all, that’s not a statistic. That’s a screaming flare. It is a fucking S.O.S. call, and we have got to do better.”
“We’ve got to have a plan for the long haul,” she continued, noting the MHA’s new mental health initiative in partnership with Universal Music Group. We know that music heals, but even the healers need healing. So here’s the ask to every label, to every publisher, to every platform, to every artist, everybody who makes a living in this industry: please don’t just admire the mission and the impact. Feel it. Fuel it. Fund it. We so desperately need you to stand with us, to nurture the noise, and then we can truly heal the music.”
When Chappell Roan accepted her trophy for best new artist at the 2025 Grammy Awards in February, she asked a question that quickly went viral. The pop star used her speech to advocate for livable wages and health care for recording artists, concluding with the line, “Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”
Tatum Allsep, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Music Health Alliance, posted the speech to her Instagram account that night. “THIS!!!! Music Health Alliance has got you, your band, crew, team, songwriters, engineers, etc. #HealTheMusic,” read her caption.
“At first, I was jumping up and down and elated,” Allsep recalls, “and then, after I started reading the articles coming out, I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Chappell lost a record deal in 2020. We were here.’ We could have helped her in two seconds, but she didn’t know. And that’s on us.”
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By Feb. 13, Music Health Alliance and Universal Music Group partnered to launch the Music Industry Mental Health Fund, with the goal of providing mental health services to music industry professionals. The two organizations first started working together during the pandemic, creating a concierge program for UMG artists, songwriters and employees. Yet the Mental Health Fund is the latest step in Allsep’s decadeslong career as an advocate for health care in the industry, and on June 4, she will be honored with the Impact Award at Billboard’s Country Power Players event in Nashville.
“[Awareness] has got to come from the industry internally,” she says. “Just letting people know that we’re a safe space and we exist. All the funds we raise go right back into our programs and services. We want it to be that way, but we also want those that need us to know we’re here.”
How were the Music Health Alliance and UMG able to move so quickly following Chappell Roan’s speech?
We were already working with [UMG], and six months before the Grammys, we had started to talk about doing something in the mental health space. Chappell’s speech [made us say], “OK, now’s the time. This is what we need to do.” It was a great opportunity for the industry, for the label and for us to do something really meaningful at a time when people were listening.
You founded the Music Health Alliance in 2013. Why is it still necessary for an artist like Roan to give the speech she did 12 years later?
It’s not black and white. It’s a complicated issue. You get health insurance by being an employer of an organization — and you can negotiate anything, I understand that. But talking about Chappell specifically, if she was going to be an employee of UMG, they would own her creativity. And that’s suffocating for artists. We’ve got to prioritize their health, and that needs to be equally as important as making sure their vocal cords work when they’re going out.
What kind of uptick in artists reaching out to you did you experience following the formation of the Mental Health Fund?
For February, March and April, it was a 250% increase over last year. And that’s specifically for mental health.
The first Music Health Alliance fundraising event was hosted with Jack Clement for his “living wake” in 2013. What are more recent examples of working alongside an artist to create change?
Dierks Bentley is a great example. We went to college together and started in the music industry the same week. He was in the tape room at [The Nashville Network] and I was the receptionist at MCA Records in the promotion department, and we thought we had arrived. I think we were each making like $12,000 a year. And so, when I started Music Health Alliance, he was one of the first people that was like, “I support this.” About two years in, his team called and they were like, “Dierks wants to provide group health insurance for his band.” And I’m like, “I don’t know anything about group health insurance.” That was over Christmas break of 2016. By Jan. 1, we had a game plan, and by Feb. 1, his band and team were fully insured.
What are the goals for the Mental Health Fund in 2025 and beyond?
Where there’s a gap and a really serious need is for outpatient counseling. Vetting counselors is huge. You can’t just watch a 30-minute video and be music industry-informed. You have to understand the creative brain, and that is not the same. Once [an artist or executive] knows that they can trust us, we can help them for as long as they need.
This article originally appeared in the May 31, 2025 issue of Billboard.
Under president/CEO Ben Vaughn, Warner Chappell Nashville consistently dominated country music publishing. In 2024 alone, WCN was crowned publisher of the year at the SESAC Nashville Music Awards and at the BMI Country Music Awards (for the fifth time).
But all those accolades aside, Vaughn, who died Jan. 30, stood out due to his respect for and belief in songwriters. With an unwavering confidence in those he worked with at WCN, Vaughn guided them to where they needed to go creatively and professionally.
To honor his memory and his love of songwriters, Billboard has created the Ben Vaughn Song Champion Award, presented to an artist who uplifts songwriters just as Vaughn did.
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The first recipient is Little Big Town, whose relationship with Vaughn, Billboard’s 2020 Country Power Players Executive of the Year, goes back more than 25 years to when it was just a nascent band and Vaughn a Belmont University student running Scott Hendricks’ Big Tractor publishing company. “We all were kids,” LBT’s Karen Fairchild recalls. But even then, Vaughn had a way of connecting with songwriters. “He just was always so vibrant, and his personality just always so encouraging.”
Years later, shortly after Vaughn moved to WCN in 2012 following a long stint at EMI, LBT’s publishing deal at WCN was set to expire — and the band was determined to leave. “Ben was like, ‘What would it take? Let me take you to dinner and let’s discuss,’ ” Fairchild remembers. “Ben and [then-Warner Chappell Music chairman/CEO] Jon Platt reworked our deal, but Ben was definitely the catalyst. He was our champion. He had our catalog there and he believed in all those songs. People can sign you and be vacant, and Ben was never that guy.”
“He listened to our hearts and to our music and said, ‘I’m going to give this band what they deserve,’ ” LBT’s Kimberly Schlapman recalls. “He made us feel so good because he gave us value at Warner Chappell, not only as an artist but as songwriters. We felt like he wholeheartedly had given us his endorsement, his adoration and respect. We never thought again about going anywhere else.”
Vaughn took a hands-on approach in helping the group find outside songs for its fifth album, 2012’s Tornado, which included “Pontoon,” LBT’s first platinum single. It marked the first time the quartet, which also includes Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook, worked with noted songwriters Natalie Hemby, Luke Laird and Barry Dean. “He was always sending songs and [suggesting] collaborations and asking who we wanted to write with,” Fairchild says. “Just an encourager creatively, giving us renewed hope, and that’s very, very important when you’re diving back in and making a record.”
Vaughn frequently sent the band members songs from writers they hadn’t previously worked with, including “Next to You,” which opens LBT’s 2020 Grammy Award-nominated album, Nightfall. “ ‘Next to You’ was a total Ben moment,” Fairchild says. “Ben sent it to me first and said, ‘Listen to this song. You’re gonna die.’ It was some L.A. writers that we wouldn’t have known, but he just heard all the harmonies and he’s like, ‘This is going to be so epic.’ It was the cornerstone of Nightfall.”
Vaughn also suggested that Fairchild and Schlapman write with the Love Junkies (Hemby, Liz Rose and Lori McKenna), who penned some of the group’s biggest hits, including “Sober” and “Girl Crush.” “He always encouraged us to write with them because he loved what those three ladies and Karen and me were doing together,” Schlapman says. “He has a huge hand in that relationship.”
At Billboard’s Country Power Players cocktail event on June 4, the group will perform “Rich Man” in tribute to Vaughn. “Ben was rich in so many ways,” Schlapman says, “and he gave away his richness to others through his kindness and his encouragement and his love.”
Accepting the award is bittersweet for the band members, but they’re honored to pay their respects to Vaughn’s legacy. “I hope his family knows what an indelible mark he has left on all of us,” Fairchild says. “Just what a good publisher, friend and human he was.”
Vaughn “elevated the entire town,” Schlapman says. “He made the songwriters shine, and especially in this day when they don’t get nearly the credit and the money and the accolades that they deserve, he made them feel like superstars. He made everybody believe in themselves because he believed in them and the power of their music.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
It’s around 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, a few hours before Riley Green’s Duck Blind will open, and its eponymous proprietor is giving a tour of his Nashville bar and restaurant. The multistory complex in Midtown features a few private areas where the singer-songwriter and his friends can hang, including a small lounge that doubles as a podcast studio and a cozy outdoor porch with recliners where Green intends to hold screenings of some of his favorite movies, like Tin Cup, Secondhand Lions and Bull Durham.
Though he’s only 36, Green laments that the younger generation, raised on TikTok videos and Instagram Reels, doesn’t have “the temperament to sit down and watch Shawshank Redemption. And because they don’t, they’ll never be decent people,” he says. That’s a strong indictment and he’s kidding — but only slightly: “You don’t think that at some point in your life you’re a better person because you watched that movie?”
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The get-off-my-lawn rant is ultimately good-natured; Green admits he’s a bit of an old soul, which he credits to his upbringing in Jacksonville, Ala. (population: 15,000). “The majority of my [youth], all four of my grandparents I saw every day. My great-grandmother was alive until 2020,” he says. “I think that’s where I get a lot of the more traditional values.”
A nostalgia for simpler times is reflected in Green’s back-to-basics country sound and in many of his songs — most notably his 2019 triple-platinum smash, “I Wish Grandpas Never Died.” (Though both had died by the time he wrote it, he gave his two grandfathers songwriting credits “as a sign of respect,” he says.)
But in the past year, Green has also leaned into his playful, romantic side — and it has kicked his career into overdrive. His flirty duet with Ella Langley, “you look like you love me,” which recalls classic country songs from the ’70s and ’80s like Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” and George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today” with its spoken interludes, won musical event of the year at the 2024 Country Music Association Awards and three trophies at May’s Academy of Country Music Awards, including single of the year. Green admits he wasn’t sure the track (on which he’s the featured artist) would do well, but it reached No. 1 on Country Airplay and No. 30 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. “I thought the talking verses were probably too traditional to be a big hit on country radio,” he says, “and I’m so glad I was wrong.”
Riley Green
Eric Ryan Anderson
With fans looking at him in a new light, Green and his camp smartly followed “you look like you love me” (and its sultry video) with “Worst Way,” a sly, sexy song with an even steamier video that plays up Green’s leading-man charisma (and re-creates a love scene from Bull Durham).
Though he played guitar in high school, it wasn’t until Green was in college at his hometown’s Jacksonville State University (where he was also quarterback on the football team) that he got serious about music. He started playing four-hour shifts in local bars and restaurants, filling his sets with covers of songs like Jamey Johnson’s “In Color,” which he still plays every show. (In a full-circle moment, Johnson will open for Green on tour this fall.) But Green didn’t rely on outside material for long. “I never thought of myself as a great singer, [but] I knew how to entertain people,” he says. “When I started writing songs, that was how I saw I could set myself apart from somebody who was more talented as a singer or player.”
While Green writes with many top-tier country songwriters, some of his most acclaimed and diverse songs were penned solo, including “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” “Worst Way,” “Don’t Mind If I Do” (another Langley duet) and “Jesus Saves,” about a homeless veteran. “From a songwriter standpoint, Riley has really embraced his versatility,” says Jimmy Harnen, president/CEO of Green’s label, Nashville Harbor/Big Machine Label Group. “He’s at the point in his career where he’s not afraid to express what he’s feeling and seeing around him.”
BMLG founder and CEO Scott Borchetta recalls a conversation he had with Green two years ago that helped focus the artist for the future. “He said, ‘I’m writing so much and I need to get it out.’ So we set it up to where he could go into our studio anytime he wanted to just start letting all of this music out, and then that led to trying some different production styles. We really focused on his vocals more than ever and had him try a couple different things. And through this, I think he discovered a new voice and discovered his own attractiveness and sexuality, and that wasn’t there when we signed him.”
Riley Green
Eric Ryan Anderson
Billboard’s 2025 Country Power Players Groundbreaker, who had never been on a plane before he signed his record deal with Nashville Harbor in 2018, is now expanding his audience beyond America. He opened for Morgan Wallen in front of 50,000 people at London’s BST Hyde Park last July 4, played several shows in Australia in October and headlined a string of Canadian dates this spring. He jokes that Canadian fans were severely disappointed that his Instagram-famous dog, Carl the Cowboy Corgi, didn’t tag along: “Everywhere we went, in my meet-and-greet people would come in, they’d be looking at my feet to see if he was there. They didn’t care about me at all.”
Carl and Green’s other two dogs were at his 680-acre Alabama farm, which Green only managed to visit five times last year. His trips there could become even less frequent. “Riley called me about a year ago and asked about Tim McGraw and how did Tim [get into acting],” Borchetta says. “That’s something that he is going to spend some energy on, and I think we could see another gear with him in that space.”
“When things are going well, you’ve got to go. ‘Make hay while the sun is shining’ is what Granddaddy would say,” Green says. “And I feel like that’s where I am. Things are going really well.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” a curious fan asks BigXthaPlug as the rapper and his entourage are escorted through Coachella’s artist entrance.
BigX has probably heard that phrase a lot lately. From Beyoncé using the good-naturedly boastful “The Largest” as part of an interlude on the Cowboy Carter tour to earning a top five hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for his Bailey Zimmerman collaboration, “All the Way,” the Dallas native radiates Texas-sized star power.
And while BigX’s booming voice and larger-than-life stage presence have helped him become one of rap’s most recognizable newcomers, the 26-year-old born Xavier Landum is preparing to take his outsized charm across genre lines with his highly anticipated country-trap project.
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“Everybody is realizing I’m not just a rapper — I’m an artist,” BigX says while reclining in the cavernous living room of the Indian Wells, Calif., estate he’s calling home for Coachella, as vitamins flow through an IV drip into his beefy bicep. “I feel like it’s not [me] trying to take over somebody’s situation. It’s more like, ‘Hey, I’m an artist and I want to see if I can do this as well.’ ”
BigX landed on the country scene in 2022 with his platinum-certified breakout hit, “Texas,” and its music video, in which he threw on a cowboy hat while rapping over bluesy acoustic slide guitar. Some believed BigX had country roots, having been raised in the 214 — but the self-described “city boy” bluntly admits he “never listened to country music in my life.” Instead, he grew up on the mix of rap, soul and R&B, ranging from Lil Wayne to 2Pac to The Isley Brothers, that his parents played.
But as his career picked up steam, some of his biggest new fans turned out to be country superstars like Morgan Wallen, Jelly Roll (who just brought BigX out during his 2025 Stagecoach set), Post Malone and Luke Combs. “So many people from the country world said they f–ked with me and wanted to do something with me,” says BigX, who was genuinely surprised by the crossover appeal.
The seeds were planted for a country project. “We buckled down and did it before the next person would do it,” he says. BigX’s right-hand producers — Tony Coles, Bandplay and Charley Cooks — collected different sounds to create a perfect country-trap blend that remained true to BigX’s signature soulfulness.
“I wouldn’t say my version of country music is country music. It’s kind of mixing the two sounds,” he explains. “I’m rapping on a bunch of country-style beats, but it’s not just country. I’m not on there sounding like no cowboy; I’m rapping. I’m just doing it from a country standpoint. I’m not saying it was easy — it definitely was a challenge.”
Among those challenges: For a country project, BigX felt he needed a different mentality from the one he has had while recording his upcoming rap album. “I was just coming out of my sad era and I don’t really drink liquor like that, [so] it was kind of harder to do,” he admits.
But the early returns on his country gamble have been both immediate and massive: First single “All the Way” debuted at No. 4 on the Hot 100 in April and became BigX’s first Hot Country Songs No. 1.
“All the Way” was a year-and-a-half in the making before its release. After hearing the rapper was working on a country project, Zimmerman thought it would be “insane” to work with BigX. A few months later, “All the Way” was in his inbox.
“It didn’t feel like we were trying to be something. It just felt right and a great song,” the rising country artist says, adding that he hopes “All the Way” encourages other artists from different genres to team up. “It always felt off to me that we wouldn’t go have fun with Snoop Dogg or go have fun with Eminem like Jelly [Roll] did.”
While BigX considers the project done on his end, his team is still awaiting verses from potential collaborators and doesn’t want to shut the door on any 11th-hour tweaks. As it is, BigX’s country rodeo is already shaping up to be a star-studded affair, with Jelly Roll, Post Malone, Shaboozey and more onboard.
“I didn’t think I was going to get as much positive feedback as I’ve been getting,” he says of the wide-ranging approval he has received from the country community, including being honored as Billboard’s 2025 Country Power Players Innovator. “A lot of people, I feel like, wouldn’t even accept that. A lot of people don’t even accept people of my color even trying to be in that lane. Just to be accepted the way it’s being accepted and everyone wanting to work with me — I’m grateful.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
At this year’s Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards, Ella Langley was the biggest winner of the night — but she can still recall fighting to perform in sweaty, hole-in-the-wall clubs in her home state of Alabama.
“I was the only woman, really, in that scene,” the 26-year-old artist says. “I was living with two other artists who were getting gigs over me. I was like, ‘I play just as good as they do. My band’s just as good as theirs. Give me a chance.’ There were times I’d have to send a couple of extra emails, but once they let me in [the venues], they would want me back. It made me work harder. But I grew up with a lot of strong women, so I’ve never looked at myself as anything other than equal.”
In the male-dominated country genre, Langley’s determination — along with her blockbuster single, the flirty, recitative Riley Green collaboration, “you look like you love me” — has helped usher her to the forefront of a new generation of country artists. Her lyrics are frank and unfiltered, her music a blend of neo-traditional country with a folk-rock edge, and she approaches her shows with the swagger of someone who battled for the attention of fans in those sweaty clubs and won.
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Onstage at the ACM Awards, while accepting the trophy for music event of the year for “you look like you love me” — one of five awards that she received — Langley again acknowledged the power of following her vision and instincts. “Everyone said this song was going to be the most underperforming song on the record,” Langley said of the duet — which ultimately defied expectations by topping Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in December and becoming her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100.
The video for “you look like you love me” has an Old West saloon vibe, but Langley has cultivated her own version of vintage-rock style that has drawn comparisons to 1970s music icons like Linda Ronstadt and Jessi Colter.
“I’m a tomboy [who] grew up with brothers, but I love to do my makeup and get dressed up,” says Langley, who can often be found in the forest deer hunting when she’s not onstage. “Jessi Colter was the outlaw of the outlaws. She didn’t put up with s–t, and I don’t either. I think the things they wrote about were very honest. That’s all I’m trying to do — write songs that mean something.”
That goal has roots in her Hope Hull, Ala., upbringing. Growing up in a musically inclined family, Langley says she learned to read by singing from a hymnal and became a disciple of classic artists such as Ronstadt and Stevie Nicks, but also modern ones including Miranda Lambert. (Langley performed Lambert’s “Kerosene” with her at the ACM Awards.)
Langley’s love of nature led her to study forestry at Auburn University, but she ultimately decided to pursue music, refining her performance and songwriting skills and honing her craft. She relocated to Nashville in 2019 and signed with Columbia Records/SAWGOD in June 2022, releasing the song “Country Boy’s Dream Girl” later that year and then following it with her EP Excuse the Mess in 2023. She wrote songs recorded by Elle King and collaborated with Koe Wetzel and Kameron Marlowe, but broke through in her own right with “you look like you love me,” which she began to work on with songwriter Aaron Raitiere while on tour opening for fellow Alabama native Green in early 2024.
Langley’s musical chemistry with Green, who contributed the song’s second verse and joined her on vocals, was undeniable — as was the catchy chorus. The track officially arrived in June, and the pair performed it on tour. When she issued her debut full-length album, Hungover, in August, “love me” surged on the charts. The 14-song set highlighted her unapologetic brand of songwriting, fusing it with rock’n’roll acuity (“Girl Who Drank Wine,” “I Blame the Bar”) while also conveying raw vulnerability (“People Change”).
This fall, Langley will extend her headlining Still Hungover Tour with additional dates, and she’s at work on a new album, which could arrive next year. “It’s unlike anything I’ve put out, and it’s the most me I’ve ever felt on a record,” she says of her forthcoming music. She dreams of one day adding acting and writing cookbooks to her résumé (“My kind of cooking is redneck cooking”) — but for the moment, music is her focus. Though it’s too early to tell whether the album will feature duets, “There will be things this year with collaborations that will appease the fans,” she teases.
Whatever shape the new album takes, one thing is certain: Billboard‘s 2025 Country Power Players Rising Star will keep making music her way.
“Where’s the damn rulebook that people keep telling me about?” she says. “I have yet to see it.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Growing up in rural Minnesota, Stacy Vee didn’t have particularly lofty ambitions. While attending St. Cloud State University, she says, “my dream job was maybe I could be a special events planner at this hotel on the freeway one day and do weddings and conferences.”
Vee did end up planning events — just on a far larger scale than that highway-adjacent hotel. Now she’s executive vp of Goldenvoice/AEG, where she has been in charge of the world’s largest country music festival, Stagecoach, since 2015, greatly expanding the three-day, Indio, Calif.-based event that launched in 2007 — and altering perceptions of country music in the process. Attendance at the late-April festival, capped at 85,000 per day, rivals its eclectic cousin, Coachella, which Goldenvoice holds on the same grounds the previous two weekends each year (and which Vee is also involved in booking).
On the day Billboard meets with her, Vee is sentimental, sad, elated and tired. It’s the last day of Stagecoach and she’s sitting in her trailer in the artist compound, which she has made cozy with a bowl of fresh nectarines, macrame pillows strewn on the sofa, vintage lamps, Christmas lights and cowboy boots and hats.
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After all these years, she still gets pre-festival jitters. “On the night before day one of Stagecoach, I woke up at one and I just couldn’t get back to sleep,” she says. “It’s excitement and nerves and we’ve been working on the show for so long.” In fact, she adds, “I’ve been working on 2026 for a year already. It’s 80% booked.”
Vee, who is 48, has her hand in every facet of the festival. She smiles as the clock strikes 1 p.m. and Quiet Riot’s “Cum on Feel the Noize” blasts through the loudspeakers, signaling that the grounds are open for another day. “Heck, yes. I pick the song that plays when gates open for Stagecoach!” she says. The first day’s choice was AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” and day two was Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” but high winds delayed the opening, so no song was played. “I was feeling a little metal this year,” Vee says. “I very seriously don’t take myself and Stagecoach too seriously.”
When Goldenvoice president Paul Tollett started Stagecoach eight years after he had co-founded Coachella with the late Rick Van Santen in 1999, Vee would’ve seemed an unlikely choice to be his successor to helm the festival, given how little she followed country music.
“I listened to a little Mavericks, a little Dwight Yoakam, a little Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks in high school,” she says. “But then after that, I was really into indie and alternative and college rock.”
Stacy Vee
Ashley Osborn
So much so that after graduation, Vee worked as promotion director at a Minneapolis alternative radio station for two years before moving to Los Angeles in 2000. She became an agent’s assistant at WME before shifting in 2002 to Goldenvoice (which AEG had acquired the previous year), where she started as former Concerts West co-CEO Paul Gongaware’s assistant and quickly joined Tollett’s team as well.
“I had noticed [Tollett] didn’t have an assistant and Coachella was coming up, so I asked if I could also assist him. Paul Gongaware’s response was, ‘Well, if you want to work twice as hard for the same money… go for it!’ I said, ‘Thank you!,’ thinking it was the coolest thing that had ever happened to me, professionally,” she says.
That willingness to step in wherever needed made Vee stand out, says Tollett, to whom she still reports. “She was organized from the beginning and could always follow the conversation. That’s what I love about Stacy,” he says.
The two worked hand in hand on Coachella and then Stagecoach. Though her indie and alternative rock tastes were more aligned with Coachella, she learned country through osmosis. “Over the years, I began anticipating needs, studying and putting ideas in front of him,” she says. “Paul graciously allowed me the opportunity to run with the ball, make decisions and get my feet wet booking.”
Vee took on increasing responsibility until, in 2015, Tollett told her, “You’re ready,” and handed her the Stagecoach reins.
“You could turn over anything to Stacy. That’s the key,” he says. “It turned out to be Stagecoach, but it could have been anything. When you’re someone like her, where success is where you just want to be, she’s going to work toward it, no matter the challenge or the hurdle.”
Plus, by then, country was shifting; edgy country-rock artists like Nikki Lane and Sturgill Simpson had come onto the scene. “The first time I heard those two, it was a switch that kicked on for me,” Vee says. “I was like, ‘OK, this s–t is cool.’ It always was, but I just really identified with it.”
From left: Nikki Lane, Stacy Vee, Diplo, and Sierra Ferrell backstage at Stagecoach Festival on April 25, 2025 in Indio, Calif.
Julian Bajsel
Just as Coachella’s aesthetic reflects Tollett, Stagecoach’s now reflects Vee. She has made country cool again by, paradoxically, expanding Stagecoach’s purview beyond the genre’s strict musical parameters. That’s especially evident on the Palomino Stage, a tent that has far less capacity than the Mane Stage but is viewed as the hippest spot to play. At Palomino, Vee books acts that, if not country, are compatible and share fans with core country artists; legends like Tom Jones, Smokey Robinson and, this year, Lana Del Rey have appeared there.
Regardless of the stage, Vee says, “I think my stamp on Stagecoach is looking just outside of country and bringing these artists in. Nelly toured with Florida Georgia Line, so he belongs at Stagecoach. Post [Malone], he’s Texan. During the pandemic, he was doing at-home performances, and I saw him cover a Sturgill Simpson song. I was like, ‘That man has to come play Stagecoach.’ ” In 2024, Post Malone performed a full set of country covers on the Mane Stage months before the release of his star-studded country album, F-1 Trillion. “I keep my eyes and ears peeled for people who just belong in the space,” she says. This year, that also included rapper BigXthaPlug, who has a collection of country collaborations coming out.
She has learned that veteran acts of all genres — in addition to Nelly, this year’s Palomino roster included Backstreet Boys, Goo Goo Dolls, Creed, Crystal Gayle, Sammy Hagar and Tommy James & The Shondells — pack the tent. “All bets are off in there, and I can get as creative as any person ever could at a festival,” she says. “People just love to sing some of these iconic anthems and songs where everyone just puts their arms around each other.”
Still, Vee knows she can impose her personal tastes only so far: “I still have to sell 85,000 tickets, so I have to get the biggest headliners. I have a job to do, but I can put some of myself in there, too.”
Vee is always looking for ways to enhance the experience for festivalgoers, such as Stageshop Marketplace, a vintage clothing store run for several years by Lane that also included its own performance space. That’s also how both Diplo and Guy Fieri ended up as cornerstones of the festival. Fieri’s Stagecoach Smokehouse, which serves barbecue and holds cooking demonstrations with music guests, debuted in 2018 and has become a popular hangout. “This was Stacy’s idea,” Fieri says. “If you’re going to bring people here and you’re going to set this environment around country music, you have to give them all the senses. Stagecoach is Stagecoach because of Stacy Vee.”
Even before Diplo put out his first country album in 2020, he wanted a platform at Stagecoach, but Vee, protective of her patrons, had to be convinced he was coming for the right reasons. “Diplo’s managers really wanted him to come and play Stagecoach,” she says. “I was like, ‘I don’t think so. He can’t come here and make fun of people.’ They said, ‘He wants to respectfully come into this space. He wants to collaborate with these artists. He wants to write.’ His managers came to Stagecoach [in 2018], and each of them were wearing T-shirts that had Diplo wearing a cowboy hat.”
Diplo played a late-night set in 2019 and now curates the Honky Tonk Tent, which programs during the day as well. The tent has become so popular that even members of the Backstreet Boys were left waiting in line late one afternoon this year when Paris Hilton’s DJ set, with special guest Lizzo, packed the tent so tightly that security quit letting people in.
“Stacy is a superstar. She took a random idea me and my managers cooked up in a trailer backstage at Coachella and turned it into a full-blown tent at Stagecoach with my name on it,” Diplo says. “She saw the trend of country taking over pop light-years before anyone else and has built such an amazing festival with something for everyone — old school, new school, outlaw and pop. Stagecoach is my favorite show every single year… Stacy truly is the queen of Stagecoach, and I always look forward to seeing her, even though, somehow, she always manages to have better outfits than me.”
Stacy Vee
Miranda McDonald
Vee considers Fieri and Diplo part of her brain trust. “I find it fascinating — other people’s interpretation of Stagecoach, other people’s interpretation of country music,” she says. “I want to know what draws Guy in. I want what Diplo is excited about. A way for me to keep learning and to keep expanding is to have this trusted posse of people that we work with and see what ideas they bring in.”
In addition to Stagecoach, Vee is in charge of Morgan Wallen’s new festival, Sand in My Boots, which took over the Gulf Shores, Ala., grounds and mid-May calendar slot of former all-genre Goldenvoice fest Hangout. She also runs June’s Buckeye Country Superfest in Columbus, Ohio, and is on AEG’s touring team for Zach Bryan, who this year headlined Stagecoach alongside Jelly Roll and Luke Combs. “Anything high level for country music domestically, or even internationally, I have my hand in,” she says.
Beyond country, she runs Goldenvoice’s Just Like Heaven, a May indie-rock festival in Pasadena, Calif., and is on Coachella’s five-person booking committee. “We lock ourselves in a conference room a lot and just discuss ideas,” she says of the Coachella booking process. “We throw up a lot of grids, throw up a lot of stats. Take a look at playlists. Just all the things.”
Her future seems limitless, bolstered by a team, including Tollett and AEG Presents chairman/CEO Jay Marciano, that supports and empowers her. And unlike the college kid whose goal was to work at the local hotel, her aspirations have greatly expanded, especially when it comes to her role in building country music.
“[I want to] pull people into our community because it is such a loving, vibrant, supportive, artistic, fulfilling community,” Vee says. “I want to not let people underestimate the genre or the fans. I want to grow the genre. I want to change country music. That’s my dream.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
We had all met up for dinner in Santa Fe a couple of years ago. It was Chris, Morgane, me, my wife Kathryn and several band and crew members very close to Clan Stapleton. It was a humbling night in that no matter the status of our perceived successes, we all seemed to resort to naked-in-a-dream, childish reactions when the stress mounted. But in sticking with said dinner, it turned out full of a nectar that ended the night in everyone’s favor.
The owner and maître d’ of this Mexican restaurant came in on his day off, a little tipsy, I think, sporting a rhinestone-studded cowboy hat, and he welcomed us with grand sweeping gestures, overenunciating as he introduced each course with a rolling monologue. After his many waiters (one assigned to each of us) served us with aristocratic flair, he instructed us, with great drama, to, basically, pick up our spoons.
“Break the outer coating!” We did. “Now spoon up a small portion of every color on your dish. Every color!” We did as we were told. “And on the count of three put it in your mouth.” He was whispering at this point. We were getting scared. “One!” I looked up at Chris across the table from me, and his mouth, behind his beard and mustache, was neither grinning nor frowning, but something twisted in between. “Two!” We all had our spoons at exactly the same height, most shaking. After a long pause… “Three! In!”
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Like Willy Wonka, the owner knew precisely what was happening — delectable, divine, an otherworldly Disney ride in our mouths — as it happened. “You will next be getting a slight chile burn in the back half of the inside of your cheeks riiiiight now!” He was spot on. This was sorcery, Mexican f–king magic.
I had a similar feeling when I heard Chris play for the first time so many years ago at the Ryman, but I never put the two together until now.
It was 2017, and I was in Nashville promoting a film, and Kathryn and I were asked if we wanted to go see Chris Stapleton. “Who’s that?” I asked. Then, that night, I was slapped in the face with that visceral charge I hadn’t felt in music in that familial of a way since I was a kid.
Chris and Morgane Stapleton are country rock stars. There’s no question about it. Since I was 8 years old, a boot-toting rancher’s hanger-on at The Palomino Club in Los Angeles with my parents watching the likes of Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, Charley Pride, Mel Tillis and the great Willie Nelson, I have sought whatever that thing is that Chris and Morgane ooze: the presentation toward fans as family, and an added innate strut that suggests there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye.
I text Kenny Chesney that I’ll soon be seeing Chris and Morgane, and he replies right away: “I love them. Say hello for me. He’s a gift from God. He wrote a big song for me called ‘Never Wanted Nothing More.’ It put a lot of gas in the bus, for sure.”
Chris Stapleton and Josh Brolin photographed April 10, 2025 in Nashville.
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
Chris has also written songs for the likes of Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw, Sheryl Crow and Luke Bryan. But as a performer, something drives him. When I look at early videos of him sitting bespectacled and beardless, singing as if he is possessed, it hits me with both awe and envy and I, like him, am transported into the song-glory. I am living it while he is belting it free from wherever it sat in wait until now:
“Oh, why you gotta be so cold?Why you gotta go and cut me like a knifeAnd put our love on ice?Girl, you know you left this holeRight here in the middle of my soulOh-oh, oh, why you gotta be so cold?”
The “Cold” lyrics are simple and straightforward. The song sounds as much like a calling out to God as to the Devil himself, and it surpasses the cosmetics of how we all pretend we live broken love into what it’s actually like as we scratch at our faces and write the 15th letter in hopes of reconciliation.
Today, we are in Nashville. Kathryn and I flew here, then drove to a big metal warehouse where Chris and his band practice. Inside, there’s an eclectic mishmash of fan art, memorabilia, Grammys and awards of all sorts strewn about; paintings of a smiling Dolly Parton and an ingenue Audrey Hepburn; and there is a back room with a collection of guitars reaching into the hundreds, an obsession of his. This place was a rental during the coronavirus pandemic where Chris could perform remotely, but over the years they’ve grown attached to it, happily purchased it, and it’s where everything musically happens now. It’s theirs, very theirs. Poncho, who manages the place, sees us in. And there they are, Chris and Morgane, standing with open arms. They show us around, and we get the awkwards out. When we eventually leave a couple of hours later, Morgane’s sneaking a cigarette outside, waving.
The next morning, when Chris and Morgane walk in at around 11:30, I’m sitting on the couch draped with Native American blankets stuffing guitar picks into my pocket. There’s no reason to do it. I could just ask and I’m sure Chris would give me a thousand of them — but something about stealing them just feels right.
Morgane and Chris Stapleton photographed April 10, 2025 in Nashville.
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
“You want to listen to the new song?” Morgane asks. She turns on a high-fidelity record player that suddenly bellows a raw duet with Miranda Lambert through the room. The song immediately has Morgane and me dancing on the disco floor that they just laid, the one used in their “Think I’m In Love With You” video. I’m no Rick Rubin but it just has that thing that makes you move, that everybody can’t help but want to play again and again. He keeps surprising us (and himself, I’m sure) with who he chooses to work with: Taylor Swift, Adele, Justin Timberlake (the video for his “Say Something” featuring Chris might be the best music video I’ve ever seen, as a one-take, anything-can-go-wrong vibe gone right in every way). “This is amazing!” Kathryn yells from behind her camera. Chris is off meandering through his gaggle of guitars.
I ask Morgane to play it again and I sit down at a drum set surrounded by speakers. Chris grabs a chair to sit in that I later find out he brought with him when he first came to Nashville. “My mom recovered the seat pad sometime in the ’90s, but this is one out of four we had when I was a kid,” he says. “I brought this one with me. It’s so uncomfortable. I don’t know. I like it.”
He gets up and takes me into a long closet on the other side of the room.
“Lemme show you something,” he says.
The double door is locked, and I can see Morgane smiling as I pass her. Poncho unlocks it and we walk into what feels like miles of guitar cases, wall to wall. Chris finally stops at one that isn’t particularly a standout: “And this.” He pulls, then slowly opens it as if he’s revealing One-Eyed Willy’s personal hidden treasure; I even half expect at this point to see a golden-amber glow of some sort coming from inside. And there it is: an acoustic 1950s Gibson LG-2 steel string. It’s worn and scratched and looks like it’s trying to speak but is too old to.
“This is the first guitar I ever bought after I got to Nashville. I bought it for $380.”
He holds it up.
“Where’d you buy it?” I ask.
“Chambers guitar store, which I don’t think exists anymore.”
He runs his hand over it, almost longingly.
“There is nothing about it that is precious to anybody else. It’s got a million crack repairs. There was even mud in it when I first bought it, I think.”
“Except it means everything to you,” I say.
“That’s right.”
Chris Stapleton photographed April 10, 2025 in Nashville.
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
There are silences between us that will come and go all day, natural silences that come from people not needing to fill space all the time. This is one of those moments. I relish it. I don’t look at my phone. I don’t really look at him. Morgane and Kathryn are talking outside, and Poncho is getting himself a glass of water.
“If I had to walk out of here with one thing, it would be this. All the other stuff — I would be sad about it — but whatever I’ve done, whatever I’ve made, whatever I’ve turned into has pretty much been built on this thing.”
And for the first time this morning, he smiles. Then he walks out of the storage closet, leaving me in there holding his old friend.
Chris sits back down in his chair, his arm now around a 1976 bicentennial Gibson Firebird that Tom Petty used to play a month of shows at The Fillmore in the ’90s. The vibrato chords and Travis picking are coming through a shoulder-high amp that I find out later is the one that Jimmy Page used when Zeppelin toured America for the first time in 1969, a Rickenbacker Transonic. The amplifier that rests on top belonged to John Lennon. I’m not much of a drummer, but I return to sit behind the drum kit in the middle of the room and try and hold a beat… and Stapleton starts riffing. What the hell?!
After a while we stop and he looks at me. “It’s the buzz I look for. That buzz that starts with me then connects me to the band that connects to the audience then back around. I’m always looking for that electrical current.
“I had no voice before, no guitar skills,” he continues. “But something drove me to it. My uncle had a regional band, so maybe that. My dad listened to all the great country too — Waylon, Willie, Merle Haggard — but he also played R&B: Otis Redding and Ray Charles. He loved all of it. So music was always there, but sports became less prevalent, and the music just stayed.”
Chris grew up in Kentucky with big dreams of being a football player: “I couldn’t watch ball for years because it just hurt too much.”
“Were you a good football player?”“I thought I was.”“But something happened?”“Nope.”“It’s a sensitive subject.”“Not so much anymore.”“But it was.”“Yes, it was.”
Chris Stapleton and Josh Brolin
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
We speak about what keeps him grounded to his roots, as he’s accumulated 11 Grammys, 15 Academy of Country Music Awards (including 2025’s male artist of the year honor), five Billboard Music Awards and 16 Country Music Association Awards. His latest album, Higher, won the ACM award for album of the year in 2024, earning Morgane her first ACM award as an official co-producer. Since we saw him that night at the Ryman in 2017 his career has skyrocketed. There isn’t anyone out there who doesn’t seem to love his music, his lyrics or him.
“I’m grateful.” He looks at me over his arms that are still draped over his guitar. “I’m grateful I get to do this. I’m grateful for what it brings my family and that’s all that matters at the end of the day — those five people who call you daddy.”
It’s something we’ve talked about before, but the longer we sit there it’s obvious that words can’t describe the depth of what he feels, or even what he knows. I get it because I have the same push/pull with my profession, so we stammer through the personal stuff. That’s the whole point, I’m realizing, sharing that struggle with someone you trust, and this is that time and place. We never land anywhere with it, but, rather, travel in it, witnessed.
“Let’s go eat!” Morgane says. “What do you want?”
Suggestions: Mexican, chicken or burgers? “S–t, you’re from California. We can’t take you for tacos. Y’all have your Mexican food covered.” We land on Hattie B’s, a staple hot chicken joint in town known for its added spicy sauce.
We hop in the car, the four of us, the AV crew, Poncho and whoever else wants to come, with Morgane driving. She got a new car, a mom car. We pull into the small parking lot and there’s one spot. “Ain’t no way you’re going to make that,” Chris challenges. “Watch me,” Morgane retorts. She seven-point turns until she slips right into the space like a hand into a baseball glove. “Damn, woman!”
Chris Stapleton
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
We get a table outside.
“What’d you get, medium?” I ask Chris, curious if he is one of those burn-until-you-have-to-call-911 eaters.
“No, mild. I don’t mess with that medium stuff. It’s not real medium anyway. Somebody’s temperature gauge must have broke.”
“What about the hot?”
“There’s mild, medium, hot, ‘damn hot’ and ‘shut the cluck up!’ I stick with mild.”
“Want to try the hot with me?” Morgane asks.
“Yeah,” I excitedly and blindly reply.
They bring us some hot, along with some quarter and half birds, fried pickles, a few orders of “dirty bird” fries, a black-eyed pea salad and a few banana puddings. Morgane hands me my drum stick with the hot goop on it and we each take a bite. It’s not bad.
Right at that moment we hear Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” from across the street. We all look over and see a man on a fully dressed, cream-white Harley-Davidson unapologetically karaoke-ing to the blasting coming from his motorcycle speakers: “Then I look at you/And the world’s all right with me/Just one look at you/And I know it’s going to be/A lovely day…”
We are all smiling. The man on the motorcycle is stopped and looking up at the sun, also smiling.
And my mouth is getting hotter.
“Look at him! How great, man. Does anybody have water?” I start to panic, but everyone is focused on the Bill Withers guy on a motorcycle, so I don’t start screaming.
Morgane starts laughing, “This is f–king hot. My lips.”
Chris’s face is in the direct sun, and I know he’s getting sunburned, but he’s too polite to say anything. My lips are burning, and this is exactly what I want to be doing with my day: extraordinary people doing ordinary s–t.
Chris Stapleton and Josh Brolin
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
The man with the motorcycle drives away, taking the song but not the feeling away with him.
We finish our banana puddings, and Morgane and I each wipe our now blistering lips.
“Let’s get outta here,” somebody says, though I don’t know who.
The plan when we got back was to continue the interview, but that moment has passed. We’ve talked. We’ve jammed. Kathryn needs to take her photos so she and Chris go somewhere that she feels will inspire, and Morgane and I are left to reminisce on what today has been.
“I wanted you guys to go back to the roots thing,” she says, looking at me like a mother taking care of her boy. “The drive your book [Brolin’s memoir, From Under the Truck] came from was from your mother and his was from his father. That’s the connection between you guys — you trying to please your mother and him his father.
“After SteelDrivers [the bluegrass band that Chris started and was subsequently fired from] he went solo on a heavy riff, sex rock’n’roll-type music,” she continues. “A departure. And he had a lot of fun doing it, but it didn’t hit. This was before the Traveller album. So we were sitting on the couch one night talking about what we were going to do. And I’ll never forget it: He looked at me and said he needed to do something with meaning.”
I hear Kathryn and Chris laughing from across the room.
“He had already written all the songs. Brian Wright and him. You know, a close-knit team. And he said, ‘I would like to make a record that would make my dad proud.’ And that’s the root. I think he’s been chasing that ever since.”
“When did his dad die?”“2013.”“Before Traveller.”“Yep.”
We were supposed to leave, get back to our respective kids, but we ended up at the table on the disco floor, just shooting the s–t: me, Kathryn, Chris, Morgane and Poncho. Poncho used to work at the used car dealership in town. He knows a lot about guitars too. Chris, Morgane and him met and they hit it off. He takes care of the warehouse now. He’s family. It’s obvious how deep the mutual care is. He lost a son. His wife then said he needed to leave because it wasn’t good for their daughter, his drinking and staying out so late every night. He couldn’t imagine life without his son. Then God came into the fold. Saved him from himself. Reminded him that there were others that needed taking care of. He got his s–t together and showed up, and today they are all together, slogging through the moments, as a family.
I have tears in my eyes (even as I write this) thinking of that late-night talk at the table on the disco floor, Chris easy with whatever wanted to happen. All the talks that day, but this one, especially.
Yes, Chris and Morgane Stapleton are country rock stars; there’s no refuting that. But when it comes down to it, they’re all about finding meaning in the music and in the moments — with their fans, their families and between each other.
We spent the day together just shooting the s–t, eating hot wings, singing along with Miranda Lambert and Bill Withers and, yeah, it’s true, I got to play the drums with Chris f–king Stapleton.
Amen to it all.
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Lainey Wilson, the reigning entertainer of the year at both the Academy of Country Music Awards and the Country Music Association Awards, has set an opening date for her new Nashville bar.
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Wilson’s Bell Bottoms Up Bar, located at 120 South 3rd Ave., will open May 31 — the same day Wilson launches her Country’s Cool Again Tour with two headlining shows at Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheater.
The Bell Bottoms Up bar will feature two stages, four bars and a mezzanine floor, while the rooftop level will feature 1970s western-inspired details, a dance floor, disco-inspired decor and frozen drinks. The three-story, 27,000-square-foot venue will open in partnership with TC Restaurant Group, the business that has also helped launch Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa, Luke Bryan’s 32 Bridge Food + Drink and Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Rooftop Bar.
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In revealing the upcoming bar and giving fans a sneak peek via social media, the singer-songwriter said, “Yank up them britches and make plans to check it out on Broadway before my Country’s Cool Again tour kicks off that weekend in Nashville!”
Wilson also previously said in a statement, “I’ve always wanted to create a destination for all my fans to visit and create new memories at, in the heart of country music city. So, to have a permanent destination in Nashville, is such a dream come true. I can’t wait for all my Wild Horses to get to experience my home away from home.”
Wilson, the cover star for Billboard’s recent Country Power Players issue, is set to release her latest album Broken Bow, Whirlwind, on Aug. 23. She previously told Billboard the album is “the Western sister of Bell Bottom Country.” She added, “I feel like it’s got a little bit more character [and] cinematic storytelling.” She is working on the album with Jay Joyce, the same producer behind her 2022 album Bell Bottom Country and its predecessor, 2021’s Sayin’ What I’m Thinkin’.
The War and Treaty will make you believe.
Whether playing to industry insiders at Clive Davis’ exclusive Grammy Awards preparty, attendees at the Country Music Association Awards or Newport Jazz festivalgoers, precedent suggests just about everyone in any given audience will be on their feet by the time the husband-and-wife act finish one of their explosive, emotive, genre-bending and deeply spiritual sets.
“The fans will walk up to us afterward and say, ‘I don’t know what I just experienced, but something happened to me while I was listening to you,’ ” says Tanya Trotter, the duo’s better half. Universal Music Group Nashville (UMGN) CEO Cindy Mabe became one of those fans the first time she saw The War and Treaty, in 2022. “I was filming them and crying all at the same time,” she remembers. “I went home just talking about this band.” That same day, Mabe signed the act to its first major-label deal. Since then, this year’s Country Power Players Groundbreaker has continued broadening the genre with riveting and endless exuberance — even if country radio has yet to catch on.
Both Michael, 42, and Tanya, 50, started singing in church before they hit double digits; Michael has a video of himself singing “If Anybody Asks You Who I Am” standing on the congregation’s organ bench at just 3 years old. Those early experiences translated into a lifelong love of music-making and performing for both, though their path to The War and Treaty was far from linear. Tanya (née Blount) had a modest solo career in the 1990s following a cameo in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit singing alongside Lauryn Hill, including one track that cracked the Billboard Hot 100 in 1994; Cleveland native Michael dabbled in rapping, influenced by the success of local heroes Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, before eventually enlisting in the Army in 2003. While serving two tours in Iraq, he composed songs for his fallen comrades, even winning a “Military Idol” contest.
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The couple met shortly after Michael had returned stateside — fittingly, at an arts festival where he was trying to launch a solo career. Tanya had long since stepped away from music and was working as a worship leader; the couple married and had a son, Legend (yes, named for John), in 2011. They didn’t realize the potency of their combined voices until several years later, though, while recording a demo of a song Michael had written for Tanya’s brother. A friend heard it and practically demanded they keep making music together.
Tonya and Michael Trotter photographed on April 15, 2024 at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
Robby Klein
That off-the-cuff duet in 2014 opened their eyes to a world of musical possibilities, but their path forward wasn’t easy or clear-cut. Michael still struggles with PTSD — at times so severely that he has said he contemplated suicide — and the couple also faced homelessness. Musically, they first found a home in Americana: In 2018, Thirty Tigers distributed their second album, Healing Tide, which featured a collaboration with Emmylou Harris, and they have won three Americana Music Awards. As the duo’s star kept rising, major country labels came calling, leading to the pair’s UMGN signing and subsequent major-label debut, 2023’s Lover’s Game, produced by Dave Cobb.
This past year, The War and Treaty were one of two country acts nominated in the Grammys’ best new artist category; the other was Jelly Roll, whom the Trotters consider a peer in making the genre more inclusive. “The space we occupied was really important,” Michael says. “The two artists representing the genre were not representative of that genre at all, if we’re being completely transparent. You got Jelly Roll, a tatted-face rapper who can sing a little bit, and Mike and Tanya, these Black, overweight, gospel-trained singers. Country music is actively trying to attack the narrative it has created, and I’m proud to be part of that change.”
Though they are self-described outliers on the still-too-homogeneous Music Row, the Trotters say their Nashville peers have strongly supported them. It started with Dierks Bentley — who invited them to join him onstage for their first country awards show performance in 2021 and included them on a live album shortly thereafter — and continued with Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert and Chris Stapleton, for whom the duo will open three dates in May. Zach Bryan asked the Trotters to sing with him on his self-titled album after hearing them at the 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards, converted just like all the rest. The resulting song, “Hey Driver,” reached No. 14 on the Hot 100 — The War and Treaty’s highest chart entry to date — and the act will open Bryan’s three-night Los Angeles arena run in June, inevitably earning even more new fans.
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Michael and Tanya are relentlessly positive, but they won’t ignore the obvious. “How about Mickey Guyton?” Michael says. “It all begins with her saying, ‘This is what country music looks like, too.’ ” With Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter shining a new spotlight on country music’s long history of racial exclusion, the duo readily acknowledges the work that remains to correct that past. (Beyoncé reached out to the Trotters after Cowboy Carter’s release but did not seek to collaborate with them.) “Have we experienced it?” Tanya asks. “Of course we have. Do we see it in the crowds? Of course we do.”
But they insist on pushing forward. “We’ve been sort of a healing balm, and I won’t allow anyone to take that away from Tanya and I,” Michael says. “We’ve been taken out on the road not to check a box, but literally because we’ve impacted some of the most powerful artists in our genre today.”
“My purpose is to really broaden what country music is and has always been,” UMGN’s Mabe says. “Finding them was like finding a needle in a haystack. They are an evolution of a format… Absolutely, we will eventually end up [bringing them to] country radio.”
That impact has been made because of the way Michael and Tanya translate their gospel bona fides into potent, generous and agnostic performances. “When you think of a gospel sound, you’re thinking of that sense of urgency — regardless of what my message is,” Michael says. “That sense that I need you to understand what I’m saying, that’s what we’re after. When somebody taps into that good truth, it just comes out with that roar and that fire.” There’s no scorched earth in the Trotters’ wake, though, just the one thing they’re interested in evangelizing: love.
This story will appear in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
