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The two most-nominated artists at this year’s CMA Awards are also among this year’s initial round of performers.
Lainey Wilson, this year’s leading contender with nine nominations, and Jelly Roll, with five nominations, will both perform during the 57th annual CMA Awards, which airs live on Nov. 8 on ABC from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.
The star-studded lineup will also feature one of this year’s co-hosts, two-time CMA entertainer of the year winner Luke Bryan, as well as performances from Megan Moroney, Little Big Town, K. Michelle, Old Dominion, Carly Pearce, Chris Stapleton and newly-inducted Country Music Hall of Fame member Tanya Tucker.
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Though Jelly Roll is a first-time CMA Awards performer, he will have two performance slots during CMA Awards night, opening the show with his Billboard No. 1 Country Airplay hit “Need a Favor.” Later in the telecast, he will join forces with R&B performer K. Michelle to perform a tribute to The Judds, offering up the duo’s signature hit “Love Can Build a Bridge.” Jelly Roll, K. Michelle and The Fisk Jubilee Singers recorded a version of “Love Can Build a Bridge” as part of the upcoming The Judds tribute album (A Tribute to the Judds) is out on Oct. 27.
Wilson — who earned her first nomination in the coveted entertainer of the year category this year — will perform “Wildflowers and Wild Horses.”
Meanwhile, Bryan will celebrate his more than two dozen No. 1 Country Airplay chart-toppers, offering a medley of hits including “Play It Again” and “Country Girl (Shake It For Me).”
Three-time nominee Chris Stapleton will also pull double-duty as a performer this year, offering his new single, “White Horse,” and teaming with Carly Pearce (up for female vocalist and musical event of the year) to perform their duet “We Don’t Fight Anymore.”
Little Big Town will join Tucker for a performance of her debut 1972 hit “Delta Dawn.” Meanwhile, Old Dominion (who are up for vocal group and music video of the year) and Megan Moroney (up for new artist and song of the year) will perform their collaboration “Can’t Break Up Now,” featured on Old Dominion’s recent Memory Lane project.
The CMA Awards will be co-hosted by Bryan and NFL legend Peyton Manning. Additional performers and presenters will be revealed in the coming weeks.
CMT will salute pioneering women artists with CMT Smashing Glass: A Celebration of the Groundbreaking Women of Music, a new franchise that premieres Nov. 15.
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R&B legend Patti LaBelle and country icon Tanya Tucker are the first two recipients. They will be honored for breaking down barriers by artists they’ve inspired before each recipient will perform. The acts participating in the salutes will be announced shortly.
“We’re beyond excited to bring this electrifying and empowering new franchise to life by honoring iconic women who’ve fearlessly smashed glass ceilings and kicked in doors, holding them wide open for past, present and future generations,” said Margaret Comeaux, CMT’s senior vp of production, music & events and executive producer, in a statement. “Both Patti and Tanya deserve to be celebrated for continuing to set the industry gold standard with boundary-breaking crossover success, bold, uncompromising lives and careers, and creating timeless music and impact that remains as powerful and relevant as ever.”
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LaBelle, who began her career in the early 1960s, is best known for such hits as “Lady Marmalade” (with her group LaBelle), and as a solo artist with “You are My Friend,” “New Attitude” and “Stir It Up.” The multiple Grammy winner has also made her mark as an actress in such film and TV projects as A Soldier’s Story, A Different World and Out All Night.
Tucker, who was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame earlier this month, was still a teenager when she began topping the charts in the ‘70s with songs like “Delta Dawn” and ”Would You Lay With Me.” She experienced a career resurgence when her 2019 album, While I’m Livin’ won the Grammy for best country album.
Additionally, CMT Smashing Glass will posthumously pay tribute to a trio of women artists with “Moments of Respect” performances that will salute Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner and Sinead O’Connor: “Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, who forever altered the path for women with her legacy of demanding ‘R.E.S.P.E.C.T,’ the ‘Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Tina Turner, who empowered the world with her resilience, and Sinead O’Connor, who broke the traditional ‘pop star’ mold and used her life and music to illuminate the world’s burning issues,” added Patizia DiMaria, executive producer.
In addition to Comeaux and 21st Floor Productions’ DiMaria, the rest of the all-female production team includes director Lauren Quinn, who also serves as an executive producer with DiMaria and Michelle Mahoney. Jackie Barba and Heather D. Graffagnino are executives in charge of production, Leslie Fram is executive in charge of talent and Suzanne Bender is talent producer.
“CMT Smashing Glass is a grand finale to a landmark 2023 which we dedicated as our ‘Year of the Woman,’” said Fram, who is CMT’s senior vp of music and talent. “Kicking off in January with a milestone 10th anniversary of the Next Women of Country (NWOC) franchise, we celebrated female voices across all programming and events—from our women-led headliners at CMT Music Awards and ‘Equal Play’ honoree Shania Twain, to bi-monthly NWOC artist showcases and the greenlight of our CMT Defining series, we remain dedicated to ‘Equal Play’ and advocating for the trailblazers of the past, superstars of the present and the future voices in our format.”
It’s a love song and a history lesson, presented as an audio version of a classic Western movie.And it’s already rustled up a gold single for Ian Munsick and collaborator Cody Johnson.
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Now, in the spirit of an authentic American cowboy, Munsick goes it alone as he trots off to country radio with “Long Live Cowgirls,” a ballad that captures the unique mix of trail-rider lonesomeness and rodeo grit that inhabits his Wyoming-bred vocals. The Paramount+ Western series Yellowstone recently expanded into CBS’ prime-time lineup, and there’s good reason to think “Cowgirls” might similarly find its way from digital platforms into over-the-air audio.
“I’m really excited about it,” Munsick says. “People are fascinated with the West and the Western lifestyle and cowboys right now, so for me to come from where I come from and have the background that I have, and taking along ‘Cowgirls,’ in my opinion, it’s the return of Westerns in mainstream country music.”
“Cowgirls” is a remnant of pandemic isolation, created during a Zoom writing session in August or September 2020 with one of the three participants, Aby Gutierrez, working from the bedroom in Wisconsin where he wrote his first song as a teenager. The other member of the trio, Phil O’Donnell (“Back When I Knew It All,” “Doin’ What She Likes”), came prepared with the “Long Live Cowgirls” title. He doesn’t know where it came from — it had likely been living in his list of hooks for a couple of years — but he knew when the date popped up on the calendar that it was a good setting to introduce it.Munsick was emphatic about chasing that idea, and he started creating a mood for it by strumming a lazy pattern on guitar in 6/8 time.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh, no, not a waltz. You’ll never get anything on a waltz. You have to have arena rock’n’roll,’ ” recalls O’Donnell. “That just goes to show you how wrong our thinking can be.”
O’Donnell didn’t voice his reservations. Instead, he chipped in the opening lines: “She’s a gooseneck on a dually/A longneck at the bar.” To many listeners, that first image is likely a head-scratcher, but to anyone who grew up in or around modern cowboys, it’s an instant sign that the singer is authentically engrossed in the subject. O’Donnell’s daughters competed in rodeos, so he definitely knew the trailer-hitch lingo.
“I had a green dually Ford and then a Featherlite trailer, and I pulled those girls — Alabama, Georgia, around Middle Tennessee, Murfreesboro — you know? We went to a lot of a lot of barrel races,” he says. “The older cowgirls — and when I say ‘older,’ I mean the 18- and 20- and 30-year-old ones — they would have their own and be driving themselves. But I had [daughters] that weren’t old enough to drive yet, so I towed my girls around to a good many barrel races and rodeos.”
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They built the song on Western images — John Wayne, saddles, canyons and mustangs — sometimes used literally, sometimes as metaphors for a woman who’s both tough and desirable. The first verse portrays an individual cowgirl, though the chorus breaks into a recognition of covered wagons, embracing a historical sweep of the cowgirl as a societal role.
That lyrical shift is accompanied by an uptick in the melody, driven by Munsick to take advantage of a vulnerable spot in his tenor range.
“I always like to make sure the chorus musically elevates,” he says, “so for this tune in particular, it was a pretty obvious choice to go to the minor [chord] for the chorus to really make you feel that heaviness. And musically, it kind of goes lower melodically [at the end of the verse] for the lyrics to go higher. And that’s always just a cool trick that I like to incorporate.”
Hitting the “long live cowgirls” punchline was tricky. Gutierrez wanted to avoid rhyming “world” with “cowgirl,” finding it a little too predictable. An alternative was available in Western fashion. “Philbilly actually came up with ‘snaps on her pearls,’ and then we went the whole song without rhyming ‘girl’ and ‘world,’ which is probably the go-to rhyme in most songwriting,” says Gutierrez.
They did revisit it, though, in the second chorus. They had determined that “Cowgirls” didn’t need a bridge, but for a slight deviation, they wanted to insert an extra line into that last stanza to bring it to a lyrical peak. They came up with “She’s been there, and she’ll be here/’Til the end of the world.” It brought a weight to the song’s finale that exceeded the usual “world”/“girl” rhyme scheme. “The way we use it makes all the difference for me,” Gutierrez says.
He also pictured the cowgirl through a seasonal filter, characterizing her as “tough as December … Make you fall like September.”
“That’s some true cowboy poetry,” notes Munsick.
“I was happy that they dug that line when I threw it out there,” Gutierrez says. “Growing up in Wisconsin, knowing what it takes to get through winter, I feel like Wyoming’s a pretty similar place. Not only do you have all of these pressures from the world, like trying to pay bills and trying to keep everybody happy, there’s also six months out of the year where Mother Nature is coming for you as well.”
Munsick documented “Cowgirls” with a simple voice-and-guitar iPhone recording, which he presented to producer Jared Conrad (Randall King) ahead of a February 2021 tracking session with a full band. Fiddler Ross Holmes revamped a section of the chorus melody and turned it into a burning intro lick, but other parts were a little too much.
“With the lyrics, it really felt like cinematic cowboys sitting around a campfire, in the middle of a field singing a song,” Conrad says. “So I came back in and muted the drums and electric guitars.”
Conrad overdubbed a banjo and nylon-string guitar, labeling the results the “campfire version.” And he used Foley sound effects to include the crackle of burning logs and the howl of a distant coyote. He actually expected Munsick would have those sounds removed, but they provided some continuity with his debut album, Coyote Cry, so they left them in. Meanwhile, the unconventional structure — verse, chorus, verse, chorus, done — influenced the song’s arrangement.
“In a traditional song, when you’re focusing on the dynamic build, it’s usually biggest at maybe the solo and/or bridge section, and then the very biggest is the third chorus,” Conrad notes. “With this song, obviously, I had to kind of reapproach that. The last chorus is still the biggest section. It’s just kind of more of a gradual ramp the whole way through.”
Munsick toured with Johnson, who ended up singing on the version that appeared on Munsick’s sophomore album, White Buffalo, released April 7. Once “Cowgirls” went gold, Warner Music Nashville targeted it for terrestrial radio, though it conflicted with Johnson’s own plans for a single and they resurrected the solo version. Munsick resang a couple of sections to better reflect how he was performing it live, and some of Johnson’s harmony parts remained uncredited in the background. WMN released it to radio via PlayMPE on Oct. 9.
“I’m actually glad that we waited as long as we did,” says Munsick. “It’s allowed it to reach an audience organically, that I think, if we would have taken it to radio out of the gate, it wouldn’t have had the time to find its audience. I think having that audience already behind it kind of proves to the mainstream that this song already is a hit.”
Thomas Rhett, Dierks Bentley and Billy Strings will spearhead the music lineup for the inaugural Big as Texas Festival slated for May 10-12, 2024, at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Conroe, Texas, just outside of Houston.
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In addition to Bentley, Strings and Rhett, the lineup also includes 49 Winchester, Anne Wilson, Clay Walker, Amanda Shires, Dwight Yoakam, Hannah Dasher, Maddie & Tae, Midland, Morgan Wade, Tracy Byrd, Julia Cole and Warren Zeiders.
The three-day festival will feature more than 26 hours of live music from 35 artists. The curated performance lineup also nods heavily to the festival’s Texas stomping grounds; one-third of the artists set to perform hail from the Lone Star State.
“We are stepping out in grand fashion for our inaugural year, and I couldn’t be more excited about the stellar music lineup we have curated for next May. It’s ultimately meant to be representative of the many facets of country and Americana music because we like to think there is something for everyone at Big as Texas Fest,” Big as Texas’ co-executive producer and talent buyer Steve Said noted in a statement.
“With an incredible lineup secured for year one, my team and I now turn our attention to curating all of the major aspects of the festival-going experience for fans — from the food and drink to the nonprofit partnerships to the immersive activations. We already have a lot of amazing plans in store for our fans, and I’m hopeful Texans will show out in major form to support our independent locally owned festival,” added Big As Texas’s co-executive producer Trey Diller, a lifelong resident and community advocate based in the Conroe community.
Beyond music, the festival will offer activities including custom car shows, equestrian exhibitions, art installation and camping.
Additionally, the festival aims to give back by focusing on raising awareness around mental health issues and suicide prevention. Festival organizers will invite local experts, doctors, therapists and more to join onsite in May. In addition to offering resources during the festival, organizers will donate 10 percent of net ticket proceeds from each individual ticket sold to 501 (c)(3) nonprofits that promote suicide prevention in Montgomery County and across Texas.
Three-day general admission passes are on sale now at bigastexasfest.com.
A little more than a year after Garth Brooks’ popular The Garth Channel ended its six-year run at SiriusXM, the station is resurfacing on streaming audio platform TuneIn.
The Garth Channel is the third TuneIn channel announced as part of Brooks’ Sevens Radio Network, a suite of stations Brooks launched in June with The Big 615. The country music channel bowed simultaneously on more than 200 connected devices and vehicle platforms, according to TuneIn CEO Rich Stern, and is available to TuneIn’s more than 75 million global monthly users.
In August, Sevens Radio Network bowed Tailgate Radio, hosted by sports commentator and producer Maria Taylor. While the station does not air the games — TuneIn provides access to live play-by-play from more than 100 Division 1 colleges and universities on other channels — Tailgate Radio plays pre- and post-game entertainment for sports fans.
Now, the Garth Channel, similar to its programming on SiriusXM, will feature Brooks’ favorite artists across different genres, as well as feature stories from Brooks. “The Garth Channel has always been my music, my heroes, my favorites. So, how do you make it better? You make it global for starters so the whole world can see how much I love music and where it comes from,” said Brooks in a statement. “More stories … from me and other artists. It seemed what people loved most on the Garth Channel were the stories. The new Garth Channel will now send out invitations for other artists to tell their stories behind the music and their careers.”
The Garth Channel will bow this fall — exact date still to be determined — and will broadcast from Brooks’ Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky Tonk in Nashville. “You’re going to put Haggard right next to Beyoncé, Luke Combs right now to Ray Charles, Bruno Mars right next to the Statler Brothers. Great music works,” Brooks explained further on Monday’s (Oct. 23) Inside Studio G. Brooks’ songs will be interspersed with the other selections.
Though the official opening date for Friends in Low Places has not been announced, Brooks will host one of his dive bar concerts at the venue on Black Friday, Nov. 24. Fans could win free tickets to the intimate concert through The Big 615, with more than 1.7 million applications for tickets already registered, according to Brooks. Previous Dive Bar concert stops included Joe’s on Weed Street in Chicago, Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, California, and Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas. It’s named after Brooks’ 2019 duet of the same name, with Blake Shelton.
Though TuneIn did not provide specific numbers, Rich Stern said in a statement that Sevens Radio Network is already a success even with only two out of its seven stations on the air. “What we have seen already in terms of listener engagement and excitement on The BIG 615 and Tailgate is remarkable,” Stern said. “Simply put, people want as much Garth as they can have.”
Fans will get more Brooks this fall as the singer has announced plans to release a new limited series seven-CD box set, including a new album, exclusively through Bass Pro Shops starting Nov. 27. Brooks continues his Las Vegas residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace on Nov. 29.
Iam Tongi, season 21 winner of American Idol, has been hard at work since being crowned the show’s champion in May. The 18-year-old Hawaii native has been releasing solo music and posting covers of his favorite songs, the latest of which includes a cover of Morgan Wallen‘s “Sand in My Boots.” The singer’s acoustic take […]
This week’s crop of new music includes established artists and newcomers alike. Carolyn Dawn Johnson returns with a churning, empowering new track, while newcomer sibling trio The Castellows offer a twangy, lighthearted debut single. Hannah Dasher issues a brash redneck anthem, while Cody Jinks celebrates the free spirits and Riley Green brings a tender ode.
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Catie Offerman, “OK Cowboy”
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Texan Offerman revels in smooth, classic country sounds on her latest, which she wrote with Joe Clemmons, Matt Dragstrem and Adam James, with production from Dann Huff. Here, Offerman’s voice — honeyed, slightly husky and always commanding — makes it clear that barroom infatuations don’t automatically equate to long-lasting romance: After all, as she sings, she “ain’t a stranger to a dust cloud heartbreak song.” Swirling fiddle and guitars converge to make this fan-favorite track a hit contender.
Hannah Dasher, The Other Damn Half
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Singer-songwriter Dasher has gained a solid following on TikTok due to her music/cooking series “Stand by Your Pan,” but her music deserves greater recognition than it’s garnered. While her retro aesthetic and effervescent personality have drawn more than a few Dolly comparisons, the material on her latest project leans more toward Gretchen Wilson’s tell-it-like-it-is compositions. The songs on Dasher’s new project range from brash “Redneck A**” to the witty “Crying all the Way to the Bank” and the tender, faith-filled “Ugly Houses.”
Throughout, the album is soaked in glossy country twang and offers a perfect foil for her rough-hewn, expressive vocal, as she sings of hard-fought faith, hopeful romance and standing your ground all with the same fervor. She also wraps in her own version of “Go to Bed Early,” a song she cowrote that was recorded by Brad Paisley on his Love and War project, another nod to her underrated songwriting talents.
Cody Jinks, “Outlaws and Mustangs”
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Since he debut project in the early 2000s, “Must Be the Whiskey” hitmaker Cody Jinks has done things his own way and has found success on his own terms in the process. Following his 2021 album Mercy, Jinks’ new song glories in the enlightenment-seeking rebel journeys of the free spirits. A glimmering gospel choir ushers the song to its closing zenith moments.
“You ain’t leaving me worried … The thing about outlaws and mustangs is they always come home,” he sings on this track he wrote with Thomas James McFarland (Tennessee Jet), offering a vote of confidence to a lover deadset on chasing their own dreams–and letting them know he innately understands that same drive.
Riley Green, “My Last Rodeo”
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Green broke through with his wistful 2019 hit “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and he returns to similar ground on this tender outing, which also serves as the title track from his newly-released, dozen-song album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The song is a solo write from Green, one that details an older gentleman’s last moments before dying — though he views it as another step on a long journey. Green’s warm vocal is stately here, bolstered by swirls of delicate instrumentation.
The Castellows, “No. 7 Road”
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This sibling trio from Georgia recently signed with Warner Music Nashville, and is also repped by Make Wake Artists and WME. Sisters Ellie (acoustic guitar), Powell (banjo) and Lily (lead vocals) make their debut with “No. 7 Road,” a jangly uptempo number filled with charming twang that offers gratitude for their rural roots. A melodic outing is a promising start from this newcomer group.
Carolyn Dawn Johnson, “Road Blocks”
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A singer-songwriter known for not only for her own 2000s hits such as “I Don’t Want You To Go,” as well as a writer on Chely Wright’s 1999 hit “Single White Female,” Johnson returns with her first new music since 2020’s “Light Changes Everything.” With “Road Blocks,” she brings a sultry, hard-charging empowerment anthem that elevates sheer tenacity, maintaining that setbacks don’t have to be permanent. The song is a preview for her new album, There She Is, out in 2024.
Sierra Ferrell, “Fox Hunt”
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Ferrell follows her recent string of collaborations with Diplo, Margo Price and Zach Bryan with this cinematic solo outing, a first taste of an upcoming album. Here, Ferrell’s distinct, wisened twang and blistering fiddle work embody the frantic pace and hunger-fueled impulse to steer a fox hunt fast and intensely — capturing a time when a failed hunt meant forfeiting the next meal. The instrumentation and Ferrell’s voice display a masterful musicianship that can veer on the edge of untamed, while maintaining exquisite control.
Charley Crockett, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
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Americana Music Awards winner Charley Crockett teamed with T-Bone Burnett to craft this song two years ago, inspired by the 1920s killings of at least 60 members of the wealthy Osage nation in Oklahoma, after oil was discovered on the tribal lands; the land was inherited or deeded to their guardians, local white businessmen, while the Bureau of Investigations found that the murders were led by William Hale in order to steal the Osage nation’s oil riches. The story is also currently covered in the Scorsese film of the same name, as well as the 2017 David Grann book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.
It takes a roughened, commanding voice to match the harrowing tale depicted here, and Crockett has that in spades. Cushioned by cinematic, Western sonics, the song succinctly and hauntingly lays forth the story’s hazy details in classic country murder ballad fashion.
In a city filled with frequent celebrity-studded events, it marks an even more momentous occasion to bring together more than a dozen members of the Country Music Hall of Fame — including Bill Anderson, Kix Brooks, the Oak Ridge Boys, Connie Smith, Brenda Lee, Vince Gill, Dean Dillon and Randy Travis.
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But the Sunday (Oct. 22) celebration held at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s CMA Theater was just such a worthy occasion, as these titans of country music gathered to help welcome three more artists into the fold — artists Patty Loveless and Tanya Tucker as well as songwriter Bob McDill — bringing the number of Country Music Hall of Fame members to 152 esteemed artists who are now part of the coveted club.
Country Music Hall of Fame CEO Kyle Young launched the evening, detailing the multitude of accomplishments from Loveless, Tucker and McDill. Country Music Association CEO Sarah Trahern noted that the evening acknowledged “those that make country music exceptional.” Trahern called Loveless and Tucker “strong, distinctive voices in our format,” and McDill “a songwriter’s songwriter.”
Mary Ann McCready recognized the members of the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Circle Guard, while the Medallion All-Star Band backed each of the performers during the evening. The collection of top-shelf musicians consisted of steel guitarist Paul Franklin, keyboardist Jen Gunderman, bassist Rachel Loy, guitarist Brent Mason, drummer Jerry Pentecost, vocalist Carmella Ramsey, fiddle/mandolin player Deanie Richardson, bandleader/acoustic guitarist Biff Watson and acoustic guitarist/vocalist Jeff White.
Bob McDill
Since arriving in Nashville by way of Memphis in 1970, McDill proved himself one of the most skilled songcrafters in the genre’s history, contributing numerous hit songs to country music’s canon. Don Williams recorded over 30 of McDill’s songs (“Amanda,” “It Must Be Love,” “Good Ole Boys Like Me”), while McDill also wrote Keith Whitley’s “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” Alabama’s “Song of the South,” Dan Seals’s “Everything That Glitters (Is not Gold),” Mel McDaniel’s “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On,” Sammy Kershaw’s “She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful” and Alan Jackson’s “Gone Country.” Bobby Bare recorded an entire album’s worth of McDill’s compositions on 1977’s Me & McDill. In 2017, McDill donated 217 legal pads of notes and lyrics to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
On Sunday evening, McDill was inducted into the Hall of Fame in the songwriter category by fellow Country Music Hall of Famer and “The Gambler” writer Don Schlitz, who recalled the numerous times McDill took the time to mentor him as a budding songwriter, noting that among the lessons he learned from McDill was a sense of respect for the music, the process of songwriting and the songwriter.
“You cannot write country music [by] looking down your nose at it,” Schlitz quoted another key lesson.
Performers honoring McDill were Charley Crockett (with “Louisiana Saturday Night”), Dean Dillon (who offered up “All The Good Ones Are Gone,” a song he co-wrote with McDill, which Pam Tillis turned into a Grammy-nominated hit) and Jamey Johnson (who turned in a thundering rendition of “Good Ole Boys Like Me”).
“To say you are one of my heroes is a gross understatement,” Johnson told McDill, seated in the front row.
In accepting his honor, McDill noted that there were eight non-performing songwriters who had been previously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame: Dean Dillon, Fred Rose, Bobby Braddock, Schlitz, Cindy Walker, Harlan Howard, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. “I knew all these people except Cindy Walker — all brilliant,” he said. “Everyone knows their songs, a few people know their names … It speaks well of the Hall of Fame to include them.”
Patty Loveless
Golden-voiced Kentucky native Patty Loveless was inducted in the modern era artist category. Loveless started out singing as a family duo with her brother Roger, and while still in her teens, had earned the encouragement of Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton and had earned a slot touring with The Wilburn Brothers. After a brief detour into front local rock bands in North Carolina, Loveless returned to her first love, country music — and the blend of her high lonesome voice with country-rock fare would become her calling card. After earning her first Billboard Hot Country Songs top 10 hit in 1988 with a cover of George Jones’ “If My Heart Had Windows,” Loveless went on to earn more than 30 top 20 Country Songs hits, including five chart-toppers, “Timber, I’m Falling in Love,” “Chains,” “Blame It On Your Heart,” “You Can Feel Bad” and “Lonely Too Long.” In the 2000s, she delved into her Kentucky bluegrass roots, crafting the Grammy-nominated Mountain Soul, and its Grammy-winning successor Mountain Soul II.
Bluegrass group Sister Sadie (which includes Loveless’ longtime fiddle player Deanie Richardson) performed Loveless’ “The Sounds of Loneliness,” while Vince Gill pulled double-duty, performing Loveless’ 1996 hit “Lonely Too Long” and also inducting his longtime friend as a Country Music Hall of Fame member. Rocker Bob Seger surprised the crowd by performing “She Drew a Broken Heart” — the pair previously recorded the song “The Answer’s in the Question,” included on Seger’s 2006 album Face the Promise.
Gill said of Loveless, “It feels like this is the little sister I’ve always wanted to sing with. I hear in her voice that blood harmony I’ve yearned for my whole life.” He recalled first meeting her when she stood in line at his CMA Fest (then-called Fan Fair) booth and said that she loved his music and predicted they would sing together one day. “And boy, did we,” he said. Loveless sang on Gill’s debut solo country song “When I Call Your Name,” and other songs including “Pocket Full of Gold,” while they also had a hit duet with “My Kind of Woman/My Kind of Man.” It was Loveless and Ricky Skaggs who provided distinct harmonies on what would become one of Gill’s signature songs, “Go Rest High on That Mountain.”
In accepting the honor, a visibly emotional Loveless honored her late brother Roger, who died last year and who had long been a bandmate and champion for Loveless since the two were kids singing together as the duo the Singing Swinging Rameys.
“This was always a dream of ours as young kids coming to Nashville. When I would walk through the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum when it was over on 16th Avenue, it just felt so comforting to walk among those. To be a part of that now, it is truly an honor and I don’t think I could have done it without the people who supported me,” Loveless said. “It’s amazing to me that I have been allowed to live the life that I have lived and been blessed to know each and every one of you.”
She gave thanks to others who had supported her along the way, including The Wilburn Brothers, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton and Loveless’ husband and longtime producer, Emory Gordy, Jr.
Tanya Tucker
Tucker made her debut in 1972 as a precocious 13-year-old talent with a top 10 Hot Country Songs hit with “Delta Dawn,” and swiftly went on to notch six No. 1 Country Songs hits before she turned 18 –songs with mature themes, such as “What’s Your Mama’s Name,” and “Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone),” that helped redefine the boundaries for women in country music. She also blazed her own trail in terms of image, thanks to her edgy cover artwork of her 1978 album TNT, which featured Tucker in leather, while the music embraced rock and pop.
In the more than five decades since her debut, she’s etched her reputation as a magnetic, rock n’ roll-inspired entertainer and commanding hitmaker. Along the way, her tenacity, determination and acute sense of hustle have brought multiple chapters to her career. After a three-year hiatus from recording, she returned to the country music spotlight, earning 24 top 10 Country Songs hits from 1986 through 1997, including “Love Me Lke You Used To,” “Strong Enough to Bend,” “Down to My Last Teardrop” and “Two Sparrows in a Hurricane.” In 1991, she earned the honor of CMA female vocalist of the year. In 2019, she reached yet another career zenith, earning the first Grammys of her career for the Brandi Carlile- and Shooter Jennings-produced album While I’m Livin’ and the song “Bring My Flowers Now.”
Earlier in the evening, Young had called Tucker “a one of a kind stylist, a maverick,” and in true, unfiltered Tucker fashion, her induction brought some of the evening’s most spontaneous, raw moments.
Wynonna Judd performed a sterling, commanding rendition of Tucker’s 1972 debut single “Delta Dawn,” with harmonica courtesy of Charlie McCoy, who played on Tucker’s original recording of the song. Jessi Colter and Margo Price followed with Tucker’s 1992 top 5 Country Songs hit “It’s a Little Too Late.” Carlile also made a surprise appearance to perform “Two Sparrows in a Hurricane.” A performer through and through, Tucker couldn’t sit idly in the front row, but rather joined Colter and Price during their performance, and later joined Carlile for the conclusion of “Sparrows.”
“Me and Shooter are so proud of you,” Carlile told her. “You have carved out an ass-kicking path for every girl, and for me, and I will forever be trying to make it up to you … tonight, I saw you be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. You did it.”
Smith and Lee officially inducted Tucker into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
“She’s so real,” Smith said. “When I grow up I want to sing like Tanya Tucker … she belongs in the Country Music Hall of Fame along with Kitty Wells, Jean Shepard, Patsy Montana, and Loretta [Lynn] and Dottie West and Tammy [Wynette] and Dolly [Parton]. She is one of us and I’m so proud.”
“She’s one of the most giving, loving kind-hearted people that I know,” said Lee, who knows better than most the tenacity and sacrifices a music career demands, as a former child star herself. “You are one of the few people in this industry that, doing what we do, has stayed real. You stated your case, you said, ‘Like it or leave it, it don’t matter to me. I’m going to do what I want to do, sing what I want to sing, and if you don’t like it, don’t listen.’ She was one of the first in this town that was brave enough to say that … she is who she is and you have to respect that.”
Accepting her honor, Tucker called her journey to the Hall of Fame “a 52-year experience — and I’ve had a lot of ups and downs.” She thanked her three children, who were in attendance, as well as members of her management and touring teams and paid tribute to her father, champion and early manager, Beau Tucker. She recalled sitting with her father, watching a Grand Ole Opry performance when she was a child and hearing her father say, “Now, don’t you wish you were up there doing it, instead of sittin’ down here watching it?’ I said, ‘Yes sir, I do.’ From that moment on, I’ve never been a good audience member — and I haven’t been a good one today,” she said, referencing her moments joining Colter, Price and Carlile onstage during their performances.
After getting a fist look at the bronze plaque that commemorates her induction into the Hall of Fame, and the plaque that will hang in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s rotunda, Tucker again thanked the audience. Tossing her Elvis-esque white, bejeweled jacket over her shoulder, Tucker sashayed off the stage, with Wynonna soon returning center stage to lead the audience in what has become the customary closure for the evening, a singalong of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” From there, the gathered music industry denizens walked upstairs in the Country Music Hall of Fame for an after-ceremony party to further celebrate the Hall’s newest members.
Head versus heart; science versus art.
In the digital era where data abounds, old-fashioned music skills and modern spread sheet analysis can coexist, but deciding when to employ them is part of the art.
That was a key takeaway from an Oct. 18 panel discussion featuring two Big Loud executives, senior vp/GM Patch Culbertson and senior vp of A&R Sara Knabe, presented by the Association of Independent Music Publishers at SESAC Nashville.
In the Big Loud model, gut-level assessments dominate in signing artists and writers, while number-crunching drives the decisions when the label takes singles to radio. But with digital consumption providing the bulk of record-company revenue, getting onto the nation’s airwaves isn’t even a consideration unless the numbers justify it.
“Radio’s honestly the last thing we talk about with any artist that’s interested in partnering with Big Loud,” explained Culbertson. “It is the last thing we talk about in terms of your marketing strategy and campaign. What I want to equip all our radio team with is the power of the audience telling those stations that [something] is a hit, not that the radio person has to convince them.”
He added, “Especially for developing artists, you’re talking about the 55- to 60-week debut-single campaign. If you don’t have the hit in your hand, why are you going to go and do three or five months of radio setup and launch with that, and it’s going to be crickets when you are performing those records in front of those fans?”
The label’s roster houses 27 artists, he said, and only three of them were “research signings”: “Everybody else was a story of just either an incredible voice, incredible songs, just flooring us either performing on a stage somewhere or in our own offices, or just star quality they give off when they walk into the room.”
The approach has worked. Since its 2015 launch, Big Loud has signed and developed the genre’s most-consumed current artist, Morgan Wallen, plus HARDY, ERNEST and Hailey Whitters, a Country Music Association Award nominee for best new artist. It has also developed gold singles for Larry Fleet and Lily Rose — signs of strong market penetration, even if the songs didn’t become top 10 titles at radio.
Big Loud’s volume approach to recording may play a part as well. Since core fans demand a constant supply of new music, the label encourages artists to cut songs when they’re ready, even if no album or EP is planned. It’s part of the development process — “Even studio experience is part of their growth,” Knabe said — and more music increases the possibility that something breaks through with strong numbers.
In the Big Loud model, that’s when the head takes over from the heart.
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For a third consecutive year, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit is bringing their tightly-honed, poetic country-rock stylings to Nashville‘s Ryman Auditorium for a multi-night run of shows. This year, the group’s eight nights kicked off Oct. 12 and will end Sunday (Oct. 22).
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Long a luminary and musical beacon in Americana music circles, Isbell has played over 50 shows at the Ryman. Saturday night’s (Oct. 21) performance, the seventh of the eight Ryman shows, served as a testament to not only the strength of the band’s nuanced performances, but a confidence in the room itself, whose sturdy acoustics and intimate capacity over just over 2,300 have become a trusted counterpart.
In 2021, the opening slots for the group’s slate of Ryman shows showcased mighty talents from several Black female artists, including Brittney Spencer, Allison Russell and Mickey Guyton. For 2023, the opening slots highlighted several LGBTQ+ artists, including artists that identify as nonbinary or trans. During his headlining set, Isbell praised Saturday night’s opener Adeem the Artist (known for the 2022 album White Trash Revelry), calling Adeem’s music “true, honest, and great music.”
Isbell and company launched the headlining portion of the evening with “24 Frames,” from the 2015 album, Something More Than Free, followed by the neo-classic “King of Oklahoma,” from his 2023 album, Weathervanes, which brought rowdy cheers from the crowd thanks to what became a lengthy guitar jam with scorching work from bandmember Sadler Vaden. From there, Isbell and company roared through over a dozen songs, a mix of songs from Weathervanes and dipping into the group’s previous albums. Along the way, the set brimmed with anthemic choruses, well-crafted narratives and free-wheeling rock.
“Take the spirit in here with you when you go out there, because they need all the help they can get,” Isbell told the packed Ryman Auditorium audience, which spanned generations of devoted Isbell fans, many of whom were attending multiple nights on this Nashville run of concerts.
Like so many singer-songwriters in Nashville and beyond, four-time Grammy winner Isbell’s musical sketches are largely drawn from his own life — a journey that has seen the Alabama-born songcrafter get his start in the alt-country group Drive-By Truckers, before issuing his debut solo album, Sirens of the Ditch, and forming the 400 Unit, along the way embracing sobriety (captured in his much-heralded album Southeastern), marriage and fatherhood. All the while, maturity and his gift for keen-eyed observations have further steeped his music in layer upon layer of timely-and timeless-sketches of his own experiences and of those around him.
From Weathervanes, they offered “Strawberry Woman,” “Death Wish” and fan-favorite “Cast Iron Skillet.” The crowd cheered their approval at Vaden and Isbell’s roaring-yet-intimate guitar tangling on “This Ain’t It.” The somber “Save the World” drew on the impact of school shootings, touching on parental anxieties with lyrics that ponder keeping a child home from school and details a heightened urge of self-preservation.
The set included the rollicking “Speed Trap Town,” which details the narrator’s need to escape a small town where his father is dying and his family’s story is known by everyone, as well as “Super 8,” a bleary-eyed look at wild nights on the road. They followed with “Streetlights,” “If You Insist,” and the sobering “Elephant.”
He closed with “Cover Me Up,” which has become a mainstay in his set and a lofty fan-favorite, and favored cover song for several other artists. Isbell slowly, painstakingly built the song from its threadbare beginnings — with just Isbell alone at the mic — as members of the band joined in, the song swelling into a righteous, half-sung, half-shouted plea. As it does in most Isbell shows, the torn-from-personal-experience line “But I sobered up and I swore off that stuff/ Forever this time,” brought a wave of cheers and applause.
As Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit left the stage, the audience cheered, clapped and stomped, demanding an encore. To the band’s credit, they made fans work for it a bit, waiting several minutes until the crowd had frothed to a fever pitch before returning to the stage to play “Alabama Pines,” followed by ceding the spotlight to drummer Will Johnson to play one of his own compositions.
The nine-time Americana Music Honors & Awards winners’ final Ryman show on on this run concludes Sunday (Oct. 22), one of several shows leading up to the group’s opening slot on “I Remember Everything” hitmaker Zach Bryan’s stadium tour next year — an appropriate pairing, given Bryan’s frequent nods to Isbell’s music as a key influence and the surge of Americana/rock-soaked, guitar-fueled artists such as Bryan and Noah Kahan into mainstream, genre-blurring music leaders.