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Scott Stapp acknowledges that the 99-year-old Grand Ole Opry, whose storied membership includes Johnny Cash, George Strait and Tanya Tucker, is not the natural setting for “outliers like me.” But as the singer known for bombastic hard-rock Creed hits like “One Last Breath” and “Higher” prepares for his Opry debut Wednesday night (Oct. 23), he suggests he may be more country than people expect. “When I was young and poor, my grandparents were huge fans of country music and bluegrass. They would watch The Opry on TV in Florida. I can remember laying down on the floor with my hands under my chin with my grandparents behind me,” Stapp tells Billboard. “That’s why it’s a tremendous honor, and I want to do my best to bring my A-game.”
In the past six years, the Opry, which began in 1925 with Uncle Jimmy Thompson playing his fiddle at Nashville radio station WSM, has been more aggressive about opening its stage to non-traditional country performers. Post Malone, the pop and hip-hop star who this year released a chart-topping country album, performed in August; retired Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright, a singer-songwriter who put out an album this year titled Hey Y’All, made his debut in March; jam band Leftover Salmon and Andrew Farriss of INXS are scheduled for dates later this year. In 2018, 53 artists made their Opry debuts; last year, that number increased to 131, plus another 101 so far in 2024. For its 100th anniversary in 2025, the Opry is planning 100 debuts, beginning Jan. 18 with Shaboozey, whose “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” this year became the first song in history to reach the Top 10 of the Country, Pop, Adult Pop and Rhythmic Airplay charts.
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“It’s a great thing. It’s important, because it expands what country music is,” says Jared Cotter, Shaboozey’s co-manager, adding that the singer accepted the Opry invitation “in about two seconds.” “It needs to evolve. We’re really excited to be what I think is at the forefront of it.”
Shaboozey
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Dan Rogers, the show’s senior vp and executive producer, says his artist-relations team has emphasized “artists you might not normally expect to see at the Opry” — whether that’s African-American stars, like Shaboozey, who have historically been largely absent from the Opry stage, or performers who’ve built their music careers outside country, like Stapp. This is part of the broadcast’s tradition, Rogers adds — James Brown and Stevie Wonder, not known for their country inclinations, performed in 1979, as did rocker Peter Frampton in 2013. Similarly, in a throwback to Hee Haw, Jerry Clower, David “Stringbean” Akeman and others, the Opry inducted comedians Gary Mule Deer and Henry Cho as members last year. Until that point, the Opry had not inducted a comedian since 1973.
“It’s no secret we have opened our doors more broadly since the pandemic,” Rogers adds. “We’re always working to be steadfast in our programming philosophy, which is [to] present the past, present and future of country music every time that big red curtain goes up.” The strategy has worked so far — although he declines to provide attendance numbers, Rogers says “visitation” and “demand for Opry performances” has increased yearly since 2020 in terms of increased numbers of the 4,400-capacity shows.
The Opry’s inclusive definition of “country” in recent years reflects pop music in general, according to Brian Mansfield, a Nashville writer, historian and managing editor of radio-industry trade publication Country Insider. “You don’t really think of Post Malone as a country artist, but if you talk to him, he grew up knowing that stuff,” he says, then cites Beyoncé‘s Cowboy Carter album, even though the pop superstar has never performed at the Opry. “She wanted to show how the country music she grew up with in Houston, which has this unique blend of country and R&B and everything in its DNA, was part of what she was.”
Stapp, by contrast, did not set out to make a country song when he and his Nashville songwriting collaborators came up with “If These Walls Could Talk,” even though he spent his childhood watching Hee Haw on TV when it was recorded on the Opry stage throughout the ’80s. “The song was just born and created as-is,” says Stapp, who has lived in Nashville since 2016. “I don’t have any intent to try to change it into some kind of more country-leaning song just because I’m playing it at the Opry.” For his debut, Stapp plans to perform the song for the first time with Dorothy, the hard-rock singer who duets with him on the recording.
In emphasizing new and unexpected performers, the Opry is being savvy about expanding its audience. “Our research shows that 50% of the audience in the seats love country music, and that’s why they came to the Grand Ole Opry. And the other 50% are in Nashville, and they know they’re supposed to see the Grand Ole Opry,” Rogers says. “Both of those halves will appreciate when someone they wouldn’t expect shows up at the Opry.”
Post Malone at his Grand Ole Opry debut on Aug. 14, 2024.
Chris Hollo
NBCUniversal and a private-equity firm, Atairos Group, invested $296 million for a 30% stake in the Opry’s parent company, Opry Entertainment Group, in 2022. (The group also owns the Ryman Auditorium, which hosts numerous Opry shows, and Blake Shelton‘s Ole Red brand of country bars.) It makes sense that investors are happy to see the lineup expand as widely as possible — in the first half of this year, Creed’s catalog streamed 263 million times, and its 2024 reunion tour is headlining arenas, including Madison Square Garden next month. Of Stapp, Rogers says, “I’ve read two or three times now, people saying to him, ‘This sounds country, were you influenced by country artists?’ So that made sense. And the fact that he is so passionate about songwriting feels really authentic. It turns out, as it often does, he fits really interestingly with the show.”
Another recent unexpected Opry debut was Katharine McPhee, the former American Idol runner-up who is best known as a pop singer, although she starred on 2021’s Netflix series Country Comfort. In her Oct. 12 debut, McPhee performed two songs, “She Used to Be Mine” and Gretchen Wilson‘s “Redneck Woman,” and dueted with fellow performer Riley Green on “Don’t Mind If I Do.” Unlike Stapp, McPhee didn’t grow up watching country music on TV, although she was a fan of Martina McBride, Shania Twain and Faith Hill.
“I didn’t know [Opry attendees] would be so attentive and friendly. They’re just music lovers. They just want to be there and root for whoever’s up on that stage,” McPhee tells Billboard. “I walked out to an audience full of smiling, warm faces, and that was really delightful.”
A string of Nashville hitmakers and rising artists will take over Ascend Amphitheater Wednesday night (Oct. 2) for the inaugural Red Bull Jukebox Nashville concert, headlined by Grammy-winning duo Brothers Osborne.
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The lineup will also feature Shaboozey (who is in his 12th week atop Billboard’s Hot 100 with his song “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” BRELAND, Tucker Wetmore, Priscilla Block, Muscadine Bloodline and sibling trio The Castellows.
Ward Guenther, founder/owner of the popular music discovery series Whiskey Jam, will be on hand to host the event. He tells Billboard he and his team “worked very closely with them on curating the lineup.”
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“We try to include Whiskey Jam family members, ‘Jam Fam,’ as we like to call ’em, people that have played our shows through the years and honestly just bring the best blend of music and entertainment that we could find,” Guenther said. “Brothers Osborne has one of the best live shows you’ll ever see. So as a headliner, they’re going to encompass exactly what we want to do with this event, having a high-energy set that is as much for the audience as it is for the artists involved. We chose [outdoor venue] Ascend Amphitheater as a good place to start — it feels like a mini-festival.”
The Nashville show will be the Red Bull Jukebox series’ first event within the United States, having previously been held in countries including Japan and Switzerland (the Switzerland show featured the artist Hecht).
A key differentiating factor in the Red Bull Jukebox shows is the setlist, which is curated through fan voting. Fans offer their choices to a set of questions posted on the Red Bull Jukebox website and on artists’ socials, such as selecting whether they would prefer Brothers Osborne to play with a marching band or a bluegrass band, whether they would want to see Block covering hit songs from Jason Aldean, Keith Urban, Paramore or Riley Green, or if BRELAND should welcome one of his musical cohorts from the genres of country, hip-hop or songwriting as a guest. Fans will also have the opportunity to vote in-person during the show on Oct. 2 through using wristbands that will be distributed to attendees.
“It’s all going to be as much a surprise for us and the artists as it is for the people in the crowd,” Guenther said.
The event’s houseband will be led by celebrated Nashville musicians including ACM Award-winning guitarist-producer Derek Wells.
“It’s going to be fun to watch the artists do [their performances] on the fly,” Guenther says. “We’ve got a world-class band that’s backing up all the artists and they’re having to learn tons of songs so they can be prepared for whatever happens. But I think that is going to be a big part of the magic of this show. If you’ve seen everybody on the lineup, you’ve never seen this show.”
Red Bull Jukebox Nashville
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Since launching in 2011, Whiskey Jam has put on over 1,000 shows, spotlighting rising Nashville songwriters and artists, with Luke Combs, Chris Stapleton, Lainey Wilson, Morgan Wallen and Jelly Roll being among those who have appeared at Whiskey Jam over the years. The Red Bull Jukebox show’s similar mission was part of the appeal for Guenther.
“The focus on the upcoming artists is a big deal. As we’ve done in Nashville with Whiskey Jam, you have to have some kind of recognizable names to get people in the door, but the hope for this event, and the future of this event, is we are bringing the future of music,” Guenther said. “When you come and see a Red Bull Jukebox show, you’re getting a sampler of what’s to come. It’s been a great collaborative effort…it’s like Whiskey Jam magnified with the power of Red Bull.”
Red Bull Jukebox Nashville show will put rising artists in the spotlight—though in this case, one of those rising artists, Shaboozey, has seen his artist profile skyrocket since he signed on for the show.
“When we started the conversation with Shaboozey, he hadn’t even been featured on the Beyonce record [Cowboy Carter], and then when [“A Bar Song (Tipsy)”] came out, and he had that [packed show in the middle of downtown Nashville at] CMA Fest, we were like, ‘Wow, we’re about halfway to Red Bull Jukebox and this is already the response. We can’t wait for the October roll around.’”
Guenther says another Nashville-based Red Bull Jukebox show could be a possibility, as could holding Red Bull Jukebox concerts in other U.S. cities.
“You could do a Red Bull Jukebox event in a place like Miami that would be the polar opposite of the one we’re doing in Nashville. You could have one in Texas or New York and they would all feel completely different,” he says, adding, “I can see it repeating again [in Nashville] if it goes as well as we are expecting it to. And there’s room to grow with a lot of potential in Nashville for doing bigger, even completely different shows here.”
When Warner Records signed Zach Bryan in 2021, it didn’t initially seem a particularly momentous move. But the Oklahoma rock/country singer has since become one of the biggest stars — country or otherwise — to emerge in recent years, selling out arenas and scoring No. 1 albums on both the Billboard 200 and Top Country Albums charts. And in hindsight, his signing signaled a watershed moment.
Bryan wasn’t the first country-leaning act signed by a major coastal label, but his massive success has proven that an act no longer necessarily needs the usual Nashville methods, including country radio, to break through. “The marketplace has provided an avenue for these artists who are working outside the traditional system of the Nashville-driven machine,” says Tom Corson, Warner Records’ co-chair and COO.
Three years later, the reverberations continue as Nashville labels face increasing competition from their coastal counterparts while country streaming numbers continue to soar. With the trend showing no sign of abating, Nashville record companies are also dealing with how Los Angeles and New York-based labels are driving up signing costs.
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The result is the breakdown of previously recognized genre lines and a plethora of opportunities for new acts. It has also left Nashville labels re-examining how business has been done for dozens of years and re-thinking some established practices.
As one Nashville label executive tells Billboard, “I can’t figure out if this is an existential crisis or not.”
THE BEFORE TIMES
Prior to the pandemic, Nashville labels generally had a lane to themselves when it came to signing country artists, with their relationships at country radio giving them almost exclusive access within the genre. But once COVID hit and touring slammed to a halt, labels became laser-focused on data and analytics as the only available metrics to gauge an act’s success. “There was no such thing as seeing artists play live, having them come into the office,” says Ben Kline, who last week stepped down as co-chair/co-president of Warner Music Nashville after a decade with the company. “All the indicators were on hold except for one: the digital numbers that people saw.”
And the numbers were good: The country audience was surging due to the mainstream success of acts like Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs. New York and Los Angeles labels began signing country-leaning acts with strong streaming numbers and high TikTok engagement rate, including Warren Zeiders (Warner Records), Koe Wetzel (Columbia), BRELAND (Atlantic), and, more recently, Dasha (Warner Records) and Wyatt Flores (Island).
“It’s the Russian oligarchs coming in and buying half of London,” says one Nashville executive.
“Any time something explodes, everyone’s going to say, “Let’s go invest,’” says another Nashville executive. “It’s like there’s oil down there — let’s start drilling.”
It was more than numbers; it was also that acts like Bryan are “moving culture,” says Warner Records co-chairman/ CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck, who adds there was also a healthy dose of common sense involved. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that country has been a genre that’s been on its way to having a moment for a couple of years now.”
As country soared — consumption rose 20% in 2023 over 2022 in the U.S. and is up another 5.9% this year, according to Luminate — hip-hop’s share of the market began to wane and coastal labels needed new music that could replace that revenue, making expanding into country all the more appealing. “It makes sense if you are running a record label; you’re constantly looking at how to grow your business and market share particularly for [publicly traded] Universal and Warner Music Group,” says a Nashville executive.
This isn’t the first time country music has exploded: In 1980, the movie Urban Cowboy caused a major craze and when “hat acts” like Garth Brooks, Clint Black and Alan Jackson arrived in late ‘80s and early ‘90s, country soared in popularity. But this time is different because there are fewer gatekeepers.
“In those days, there would be curiosity from the coastal labels, but it was such a tight community and country radio played such a gatekeeper role, the barriers to entry were higher,” says Jon Loba, BMG president of frontline recordings for North America, who continues to oversee the Nashville division. “Now, when to an extent you can go around those, it makes it easier for the coasts to run in.”
However, Ian Cripps, senior vp of A&R at Atlantic, home to country artists including BRELAND, Sam Barber and Mason Ramsey, as well as the successful country-dominated Twisters soundtrack, says the coastal labels’ creep into country isn’t that calculated. “I don’t think there was a conscious decision made that we need to target more signings in the country space,” he says. “It’s just there’s a lot of great artists in country music right now, a lot of great storytellers and our job is to find the best songs, best artists.”
TIES THAT BIND
The deals come in many forms and are driven by different goals. Country’s global outreach is growing and some artists sign with a coastal label because they feel the label has a greater international footprint than a country one. Luminate surveyed a 12-week period covering June through early September for the past four years and found that on-demand audio streaming of country music outside the U.S. has been steadily rising each year, from 22.5% in 2020 to 30.4% in 2024. (The 2024 numbers include Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion.)
After Megan Moroney released viral hit “Tennessee Orange” independently in 2022, pop and country labels began sniffing around. The international streaming numbers on the song made Moroney’s co-manager Juli Griffith decide that the rising star should partner with both a country and a pop label, selecting Sony Nashville and Columbia Records.
“I love our Nashville label, but I felt like we needed a bigger reach, and I still do,” Griffith says. “We work with both sides daily.” Columbia handles streaming for Moroney, including country playlisting with DSPs, and the international push, while Sony Nashville oversees country radio promotion and several other functions.
Griffith says it’s “not easy” to make sure nothing falls between the cracks and advises that any artist signed to two labels “has friends inside those teams [who will] warn you of any pitfall before it happens.”
“No doubt there were bumps in the road bringing these two companies together, but in the end, we figured it out and we’re having really good success with it,” says Sony Music Nashville chairman/CEO Randy Goodman.
Similarly, Bailey Zimmerman signed to Warner Music Nashville, but because of Elektra’s experience in the digital space and internationally, the sister labels partnered to develop the budding superstar.
Warner Music Nashville and Warner Records also linked to sign country sibling act The Castellows together. Since then, Warner Music Nashville, which previously reported to outgoing Warner Music Group CEO of recorded music Max Lousada, has shifted under Warner Records, and now reports through Corson and Bay-Schuck. On Sept. 24, Warner Music Nashville announced that Kline would be leaving with Elektra’s Gregg Nadel coming in as co-chair/co president alongside Cris Lacy.
One of the savviest labels in partnering with Nashville imprints is New York-based Republic Records (and its Mercury imprint). Republic paired with Big Loud four years ago to distribute Morgan Wallen, Lily Rose and Dylan Gossett, and earlier this year, Mercury/Republic expanded the deal to distribute all of Big Loud’s roster. Additionally, Miranda Lambert switched from Sony Music Nashville to Republic, with country radio promotion and marketing efforts handled by Big Loud. Republic has also partnered with BMG Nashville for Jelly Roll’s next album, out Oct. 11.
Other times, coastal labels sign the act solely, then hire a Nashville counterpart to approach country radio. Columbia signed Wetzel in 2020, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that it partnered with RECORDS Nashville to take him to country radio for the first time with this summer’s “High Road.”
Bay-Schuck suggests that often Nashville labels weren’t initially chasing some artists the coastal labels have signed because they didn’t fit into the traditional mainstream country mold, though Nashville labels are now opening up their rosters to a broader range of acts. “Warren [Zeiders] was an artist that we signed directly [in part] because the way he was moving felt like a pop or rap artist — his activity online, the frequency with which he posted, the frequency with which he was teasing music — that was behavior not really seen at that point by traditional country artists,” he says.
Zeiders, whose “Pretty Little Poison” topped Billboard’s Country Airplay chart earlier this year, says he deliberately didn’t sign with a Nashville label in 2022. “I want[ed] to be bigger than just what country music is,” he says.
Still, he says signing outside of an established country label “put a certain target on my back in the early process because there was so much, ‘Why didn’t you sign in Nashville? What’s wrong with Nashville?’ That kind of conversation. Now it’s become so much more of a normal process.” He also praises how Warner Records and Warner Music Nashville have worked together, especially with the Nashville label working his music to country radio. He now feels he is “just as much of a priority in Nashville as other Nashville-signed Warner artists.”
SHOW ME THE MONEY
Coastal labels are driving up the cost of label deals, often offering more than $1 million to sign an act, while Nashville labels still tend to offer south of that with a few exceptions, sources say.
When coastal labels see “any traction by any artists on TikTok or Instagram or anything, they’re throwing out ridiculous numbers to them,” says one manager who has acts signed to both coastal and Nashville labels.
“It’s convenient [for an artist] to say, ‘Oh I really like their digital team’; the reality is, if a check is five times bigger, the other stuff tends not to matter as much,” says a Nashville executive. “The prices have gone up without question. It makes the margin for error even more thin. The coastal labels have certainly changed the economics.”
Nashville A&R budgets are smaller than coastal label budgets, “and that is one reason [Nashville labels] are scared,” says a coastal executive. “Those coastal labels that are now buying their way into this genre are overpaying for deals. Country artists’ deals are now becoming as pricey as pop artists and rappers and that is making it difficult for Nashville labels.”
A Nashville label exec says given the success country acts are having, country labels are increasingly able to convince their bosses to occasionally match a coastal label offer. “At the end of the day, my boss is going to say you’ve got a certain amount of money in your net talent budget. Do you want to spend it all on this one act?” (As perhaps a taste of the coastal labels’ medicine, most of the country labels have started rock imprints, though none have yet yielded the kind of success the coastal labels have experienced with their country acts).
Now, coastal labels are putting boots on the ground in Nashville.
In June, Warner hired Kelly Bolton as vp of A&R as its first full time hire in Nashville. Bolton, who was senior vp of A&R for Tape Room Music, won’t be the last, predicts Bay-Schuck, who opened Interscope’s Nashville office in 2014 when he was president of A&R there. Additionally, Republic has reportedly hired former Warner Music Nashville and Spotify executive Mary Catherine Kinney, with potential other hires in the rumor mill. Capitol is also working with Shaina Botwin as a consultant in Nashville.
CHANGING TIMES
With no real competition for years other than among themselves, Nashville labels had perhaps grown set in their ways and a little slow to embrace change, while outsiders viewed the Music City labels as provincial.
“We’ve always had to fight to get people’s attention,” Goodman says. “Maybe it’s our cross to bear, but I think people have certain perceptions of Nashville labels holding on to certain ways of marketing or developing projects that are not even considered significant in other genres, so maybe part of it is we allowed this to happen because we weren’t being as progressive or aggressive as we needed to be.”
“Whether it was in the transition to CDs, the transition to iTunes, the transition to streaming or otherwise, we tend to be a couple years behind,” Kline says. “In the space of data and digital, we had a little bit of catching up to do and the increased competition forced that timeline to get sped up even more so. The smart labels in town have invested in those very areas. I don’t think anyone in Nashville is naive to what differentiation the coastal labels sell versus what we sell. It’s incumbent upon us each to determine how we counter that.”
To put it bluntly, “You’ve had it your way for a long time and now people are trying to eat your lunch, so go to a different place for lunch,” Corson says of Nashville labels. “There’s so much good music out there. Figure it out. Get your hustle on. We’ve all had to do it. If you stand still, you’re behind.” He adds that Nashville labels have stepped up their game. “Just because we had a head start in what we needed to do from an A&R perspective with data, social media and virality, the bicoastal labels were ahead of a lot of practices in Nashville, and they’re caught up now,” he says.
Throughout the growth spurt, the Nashville music business remains a tight-knit, insular community that prides itself on operating by its own rules, where a publisher puts a song on hold for an artist sometimes for months just with a handshake, songwriters are put on pedestals and labels spend years developing acts. (Nashville’s called a “10-year town” for the time it takes from arrival to breakthrough for an artist.) For decades, those tenets drew artists and songwriters to Nashville looking for a sense of community.
“My biggest fear is losing that,” Loba says. “We are a lifestyle, culture and community. It’s the fear of many of us that we end up in a pop-type disposable cycle, because ultimately that’s not good for anyone.”
Though some Nashville executives cynically believe that the coastal labels will lose interest in signing country artists when the current country bubble bursts, both Bay-Schuck and Goodman say that ultimately the coastal labels’ involvement is a healthy thing for however long it lasts.
“I think rather than anybody feeling threatened about somebody encroaching on their territory, this is an opportunity to make a really special genre and amazingly special crop of artists be appreciated and consumed in a way that they never have before,” Bay-Schuck says. “I don’t know what the negative is about country music becoming more ubiquitous than it ever has before.”
“The bottom line is it’s about this music that we make here and, thank God, the world is now paying attention to it,” Goodman says. “What [Nashville] should be doing is saying, ‘This is an amazing, historical, beautiful moment. How do we embrace it as best we can?’”
Additional reporting by Jessica Nicholson.
Conventional wisdom says getting down on a dance floor can be a healing experience. In this case, that’s literally true.
In the spring of 2011, Teddy Raskin was a sophomore at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Student life was treating him and his friends well until a close buddy of his, Luke (who requested his last name not be used to protect his privacy), broke his neck in a boating accident after jumping off and hitting a sandbar, fracturing two vertebrae.
The friend group was devastated by the accident. The good news was that with rehabilitation, Luke could relearn how to walk. The problem was that the machine he needed to do it cost $90,000 and wasn’t covered by insurance. But Raskin saw a way to make it happen: a splashy dance set on the campus lawn.
“Instead of just asking people for money for this machine,” says Raskin. “I thought we could put on a concert to raise the money and do it in the spirit emblematic of Luke, ourselves and the University and turn tragedy into a celebration of life.”
Raskin had already been hosting events around town and had always wanted to put on a dance show in Nashville, a city not necessarily known as an electronic music hotbed, especially in 2012.
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So he started hustling, asking fraternities at the school to each pitch in between $500 and $1,000 for the event and also agree to not throw their own party on a fall Friday night set aside for the show. While Raskin says Vanderbilt was “a bit terrified” about letting a bunch of fraternity brothers throw a dance show on the Alumni Lawn, the chancellor and other officials ultimately agreed to let it happen, even making it possible to purchase tickets through student ID cards.
Meanwhile, through friends of friends, Raskin made connections at the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, which focuses on curing spinal cord injuries.
They just needed a DJ. Raskin’s sister worked in the mail room at WME, and a good friend worked at NUE agency. With their help, he reached out to agents. “I was asking for Afrojack for like, $10,000 and Swedish House Mafia for $20,000,” he says. “These agents were like, ‘Did you leave a zero off the offer letter?’”
Ultimately, the house duo White Panda signed on to play. On Oct. 18, 2012, more than 1,500 students gathered on the Alumni Lawn to see them play, with the show making $96,000 through ticket sales and donations. Within the year, Luke was walking again.
With this, Lights on the Lawn was born. Taking place each year since that 2012 debut, the show is now a staple of the Vanderbilt events calendar. Over the years, it’s hosted marquee dance acts including The Chainsmokers, Diplo, Afrojack, Oliver Heldens, Two Friends, Loud Luxury and Louis the Child, simultaneously expanding to become a training program that teaches student organizers from Vanderbilt the ins and outs of the live events industry.
This year’s Lights on the Lawn happens tomorrow (Sept. 27) with headliner Gryffin, who was originally one half of White Panda and has since gone on to have a massive solo career. The lead up to the show now includes Lecture on the Lawn, which this year featured execs including Kris Lamb of Big Machine, Az Cohen of 300 Entertainment and Alessi Nehr Alessi Nair, the general manager of Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheatre speaking to students about getting into the business.
More than 500 students have gone through the program, with many of them getting jobs at Live Nation, Wasserman, WME, CAA and Spotify, along with banking firms like McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.
“Vanderbilt’s a very competitive university,” says Raskin. “If someone’s passionate about music, this gives them a path to [learn about] producing, promoting, marketing, putting on an educational series, then going to get a job at one of these places.”
With the original need that inspired Lights on the Lawn solved with the first show, in 2013 the event started sending 100% of its profits to East Nashville’s Mary Parrish Center, which provides domestic abuse survivors short- and long-term housing. The organization was chosen in the wake of a case that rocked the Vanderbilt campus in 2013, when four football players were accused of raping a student, which ultimately resulted in each of them being sentenced to prison time.
Donations over the first three years made it possible for the Mary Parrish team to purchase the building they’d been renting. “This was in 2015, right before things started getting insane as far as the cost of housing in Nashville,” says the Mary Parrish Center’s executive director Mary Katherine Rand. “It was such a gift that we were able to purchase it at that time.” The organization, which was founded in 2002, has been able to completely renovate the facility with subsequent donations from Lights on the Lawn. Other donation money has paid salaries for the facility’s resident therapists, with Vanderbilt students also volunteering at the facility. Rand says that annually, Lights on the Lawn is one of the biggest donors to Mary Parrish.
Over its first 11 years, the event has raised roughly $850,000. And this year, even those who aren’t attending can make donations through the Event’s GoFundMe.
After graduating from Vanderbilt in 2014, Raskin himself went on to work in the resale department at Ticketmaster for three years, starting in 2017. That year, he thought to ask the company to sponsor Lights on the Lawn, and it was suggested to him that he email Michael Rapino directly to ask for the money. He did.
“I didn’t expect a response,” says Raskin. Within 48 hours, however, Rapino wrote back. Raskin can still recite the email word for word.
“Dear Teddy on behalf of myself and the entire Live Nation family, we’re so proud of you,” the note went. “However, we are in the business of getting partnership checks, not writing them.”
“My heart went through the floor. I thought I was going to get fired,” Raskin recalls. But Rapino’s email continued.
“He said, ‘This show is so amazing. We are so happy to support. [COO Mark Campana] will reach out to you, and we will be writing a check for $50,000.”
The email came through when Raskin was with his parents on the way to a Lady Gaga concert at Wrigley Field. “I started crying in the cab,” Raskin says. The $50,000 sponsorship from Live Nation helped propel Lights on the Lawn to its best year ever, yielding $171,000 in proceeds and driving 2.1 million digital impressions and nearly 4,000 tickets sold.
In terms of music, agencies and DJs have also generally been generous, with artists typically playing for discounted or highly competitive rates. “No one’s out there trying to win over their top offer with us,” says Raskin. “If you’re coming to play Lights on the Lawn you know three things: One, it’s going to be a well-produced, well-attended show. Two, it’s an unbelievably impactful show. And three, you’re not going to get your Lollapalooza booking fee.”
Raskin, who now lives in New York City and is the CEO at KOACORE, the supply chain company he founded during the pandemic, says he’d love to expand Lights on the Lawn to other college campuses, a move he foresees being beneficial for nationwide charities and student bodies at large.
“You have all these educational experiences, you have this blowout concert, you raise a bunch of money, you have a sick time, and you get to learn,” says Raskin. “That’s what our deal is.”
Jelly Roll and Kane Brown are set to lead Nashville in ringing in 2025, when they headline the concert special New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash, which will return to Music City’s Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The concert will air […]
Years after Dave Petrelli worked in the Nashville music business, he experienced a moment in the city’s Shelby Park that eclipsed any expectations he had had for his career.
A former peermusic creative assistant and Nashville Songwriters Association International director of events, Petrelli purposely segued into music education, and one step in the journey included teaching general education to fourth graders. Drawing on his innate skills, he frequently rewrote existing songs to teach students, and when a full solar eclipse occurred in the city in 2017, Petrelli prepared his classes by reworking the Bonnie Tyler/Celine Dion hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart” as “Total Eclipse of the Sun.”
When the big day arrived, Petrelli and his wife, songwriter Victoria Banks (“Come On Over,” “Saints & Angels”), joined thousands in the park to watch the afternoon sky turn dark. Around a dozen kids saw “Mr. Petrelli” and ran to him to sing “Total Eclipse of the Sun.”
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“I didn’t even expect this to be a moment,” he says now, “and it was a moment.”
Petrelli is one of 30 instructors from eight states who will have another personal moment tonight (Sept. 17) when the Country Music Association recognizes them as CMA Music Teachers of Excellence at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. CMA has turned music education into a mission, funneling revenue from the annual CMA Fest into programs that are vital to the development of future generations.
The program is so appreciated that the teacher awards will be attended by as many artists as instructors, including Walker Hayes, Jordan Davis, Riley Green, Terri Clark and Gretchen Wilson.
The teaching jobs may not be as glamorous as the touring gigs those artists pursue, but they’re “way more important,” CMA senior vp of industry relations Tiffany Kerns says. “We have the best gigs in the world, don’t get me wrong. But by far, what they do is way more impressive. And I mean, talk about having deep impact in communities.”
That impact is far-reaching. Music develops collaboration skills, learning to play an instrument builds discipline, and studying music rewires the brain, strengthening the connectivity between different cortexes and providing more paths for thoughts to follow. Schools with music education, according to Kerns, have lower rates of absenteeism. And since music teachers typically spend more one-on-one time with individual students as they learn their instruments, they are often the instructors whom students feel most comfortable with in revealing hunger or mental health issues.
In Petrelli’s case, students likely relate to him in part because he’s one of them in spirit. Growing up in Connecticut, his mother — who taught Spanish — died when he was 10, and he had to take care of himself sooner than his peers.
“I grew up too fast, and because of that, there’s still a lot of kid in me,” he says.
Petrelli leaned toward music early, and after graduating from Boston College, he taught the subject at a private Catholic elementary school for a year. He subsequently earned a songwriting degree at the Berklee College of Music, then moved to Nashville and worked his way into the music community. Once they got married, he and Banks decided at least one of them should have a job with greater security, and he shifted into education.
The “Total Eclipse of the Sun” moment grew out of his approach, which mixes music with other parts of the school’s curriculum. A few years ago, when Lockeland Elementary was operating under the schoolwide theme “Lockeland is out of this world,” he would have classes explore the details in songs with galactic lyrics — such as David Bowie‘s “Space Oddity,” Europe‘s”The Final Countdown” or Elton John‘s “Rocket Man” — to better understand space and enhance the school experience.
“What I have found is that that gets the kids really, really, really interested in what they’re going to learn today,” Petrelli says. “My lesson springboards off that.”
Other courses, such as math or science, have more cut-and-dried material — two plus two will always equal four — and Kerns suggests that those classes feel more “black and white” to students.
“When you walk into that music room, I really believe that Dave’s students immediately feel and see color,” she says. “There is something that is so vibrant about his personality and the way that he teaches, and that’s a gift.”
The CMA doesn’t restrict its Teachers of Excellence awards to instructors who use country music in their classes. Pop, jazz, R&B and mariachi have all been used extensively by various honorees, though Petrelli does, in fact, incorporate country in his work, with songs by Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings and Shania Twain among the material he has used.
“The storytelling aspect is huge,” he says.
While teaching music may not be as glamorous as the careers of the artists that Petrelli’s classes draw from, it still scratches his own artistic itch.
“I teach six classes a day, and it’s six one-hour performances,” he says. “It is a song-and-dance show for one hour, six times in a row. I’ve worked physically demanding jobs, mentally demanding jobs. I have never been as exhausted at the end of a day as when I come home from a particularly hard day of teaching.”
It’s usually a thankless job, though the Teachers of Excellence event extends a bit of appreciation. And the students do provide feedback, whether they know it or not, at moments like the 2017 eclipse. At times like that, Petrelli is reminded that the job really is an opportunity to inspire the next generation, even if it looks a little different than what he originally envisioned.
“I always dreamed of girls screaming my name,” Petrelli says. “I didn’t think they’d be 9 years old and waving in their car, [yelling], ‘Mr. Petrelli!’”
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The results of the Greater Nashville 2024 Music Census were disclosed today during a press conference in downtown Nashville with many creatives and industry members voicing concerns surrounding the cost of living, low pay rates, opportunities for younger artists, and gender and racial disparities.
The census was produced by Sound Music Cities and surveyed the Greater Nashville region, which includes the 14 counties in and around Nashville. The census, held from March 1 – April 1, drew 4,256 respondents, with music creatives making up 61% of respondents, industry members making up 31% and venue/presenters making up 7% of respondents. In terms of musical genres, 28% of respondents work in country music, with other genres including American Roots (16%), rock (12%), pop (8%) and alternative (5%). Respondents from other genres including gospel/contemporary Christian, rap and R&B were less than 5% per genre. Industry category respondents primarily work as agents/business services (20%), marketing (14%), production support (13%) and music publishing (10%).
Respondents in the creative category noted that their primary concerns are “cost of living” (48%), followed by “pay rates not increasing” (38%) and “lack of music work” (26%). Creative respondents also noted that they spend an average of $13,559 annually on music-related expenses for a total of $58 million, with 52% of that money being spent locally.
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The majority of respondents noted that they have never received financial assistance (76%) and are most eager for tax incentives/relief. The census also noted that Davidson County respondents also struggle more with rent or mortgage (30%) versus respondents from other counties (20%). Davidson County respondents are also less likely to own their own home (59%) than respondents from other counties (75%). Additionally, 83% of respondents indicated they were concerned with low pay, while 65% found lack of benefits such as health insurance and retirement a challenge.
The census noted a need for greater representation of Black, African-American, Hispanic and other minority groups in local and independent music scenes. The census’s results showed that Nashville’s music ecosystem is made of primarily white/European persons (85%), which is higher than this segment in Nashville Metropolitan Statistical Area’s general population (71%). Black, African and African-American representation is at 6%, lower than the Nashville MSA general population (14%). Hispanic representation in the Nashville music ecosystem is at 4%.
Men made up 61% of the Nashville music ecosystem across all census respondents, while women made up 37%. One percent of respondents preferred not to reveal their gender, while another one percent use a different term than male or female. Among industry members, women led at 55% of respondents, with men at 44%. The creative sector revealed the most stark disparity, with men at 71% and women at 26%.
The average household income for respondents is $93,000 annually, while respondents note that income direct from music-related work is, on average, $52,000 per year, per respondent.
Local performances and touring are the major sources of income for creative professionals at 27% and 20%, respectively. Recordings and studio work also offer supplemental income, with 27% of respondents earning some income from recordings and 25% from studio work. A little over a third of respondents noted they earn very little income from songwriting, while 23% reported that they earn some income from songwriting.
The nearly 300 venue/presenters respondents offered an average of 172 events per year, collectively offering over 26,000 annually. Most are live music venues (31%) or independent promoters (15%). Aid for independent venues was also identified as a key need, including increasing the number of local independent venues that book artists and providing financial/policy support for independent venues to purchase real estate (68% of live music venues rent their spaces) and avoid displacement due to rising property values, such as models used in Toronto and Sacramento.
In terms of efforts that would help creatives continue to stay in the Nashville area, 41% say that tax incentives/relief would be helpful, followed by 37% of respondents saying creative/music-friendly policies such as parking and loading zone policies would be helpful.
Also, work is needed to increase the pipeline for new talent and diverse genres. Increasing opportunities for talent ages 18-24, developing mentorship programs and platforms for younger artists, and increasing performance spaces/opportunities for various musical genres, as well as addressing gender imbalances within the independent music ecosystem, especially for creatives, and enhancing representation of Black, African-American, Hispanic and other minority groups in local and independent music scenes were all cited as much-needed solutions to attract new talent.
Among the other music-friendly cities in the Sound Music Cities cohort are Dallas, Chicago, Minneapolis, New Orleans and Chattanooga, Tenn.
For the full census results, visit greaternashvillemusiccensus.org.
The Tennessee Titans don’t appear on the NFL’s Sunday Night Football schedule for the entire 2024 season, though Nashville will still be well represented on the NBC telecast.
Not only is Middle Tennessee resident Carrie Underwood the voice and onscreen talent for the theme song, but the music for that high-profile opening — which has its season debut on Sept. 8 — is produced by Nashville’s Chris DeStefano (Chase Rice, Chris Young) using Music City musicians at the Soultrain Sound Studios (formerly Scruggs Sound) in the Berry Hill neighborhood.
It makes sense that the piece gets cut in Nashville — “Underwood, obviously, is one of the biggest determining factors,” SNF creative director Tripp Dixon says — though the recording’s origination in Music City is not particularly well known.
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NBC has, in fact, produced the theme in Nashville for well over a decade. It was already being cut at Starstruck on Music Row when Dixon began working on the theme in 2012, the last year that Faith Hill sang the iconic piece.
And DeStefano has become a key contributor as “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night,” adapted from Joan Jett‘s “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” undergoes an annual evolution within a narrow stylistic window. Its role is to energize home viewers for the last football game of the weekend; thus, a panoply of options is unavailable for the production. It’s a safe bet, for example, that SNF will never open with a slow jam.
“We really want to push that energy without going too far over the top,” DeStefano says.
“But,” he adds, “sometimes we need to go over the top.”
DeStefano landed the job initially because of his success as a songwriter. He’s penned several Underwood hits, including “Good Girl,” “Something in the Water” and “Somethin’ Bad,” a Miranda Lambert duet that emerged as the SNF theme for two years, beginning in 2016, after it was rewritten as “Oh, Sunday Night.” DeStefano was tapped to co-produce with Mark Bright (Underwood, Rascal Flatts), who had already been on the job for several years.
For one year, in 2018, NBC used “Game On” for the open before returning to “Waiting All Day.” Along the way, DeStefano became the sole producer, in part because of his multitude of skills. Co-writers have, for years, marveled at his ability to play multiple instruments and swiftly maneuver plug-in technology to create demos on the fly during sessions. As a one-man shop, he’s able to assist the NBC team in finding a new musical framework each year, develop the demo on his own, then oversee the production when the network executives descend on Nashville for the recordings each summer. It’s a foundational role in the ultimate SNF product.
“A lot of this process does start with the music,” Dixon says. ” ‘Waiting All Day’ has kind of been the bedrock of this piece since the beginning, but I think each one of these successive new arrangements has, in turn, influenced what we do visually. It starts with that musical discussion.”
Those first discussions, DeStefano says, took place last December, when the playoffs were still in flux and Nashvillians were grousing about the Titans’ decline. By January, he was already creating a core demo for the 2024 theme, playing — or programming — all the instruments and recording vocals that would later provide a guide for Underwood, who jointly approves the final creative direction of the package with NBC Sports.
This year, his production experience came into play as he suggested restructuring the theme. It has traditionally started with two verses after a short intro, but DeStefano suggested leading with the chorus, allowing some new dynamic changes. That move alters the peak energy points in the 90-second production, changing the placement of some of the strongest action onscreen.
In the end, artists who’ve played on numerous country hits — such as drummers Nir Z and Miles McPherson, guitarist Rob McNelley and bassist Tim Marks — have been tapped to turn DeStefano’s demos into the master SNF recording. DeStefano still plays a part or two, particularly any tweaks that are necessary in postproduction.
The actual recording session requires plenty of preparation. Underwood invariably gets the basic vocal performance — the “generic,” as the team calls it internally — in a short number of takes. But the generic is only a fail-safe. Sections of the theme are rewritten to reflect the teams or players who will take the field each week, and NBC preps a volume of potential options to cover every scenario. They might, for example, throw in a reference to quarterback Dak Prescott for a Dallas Cowboys game, but they also record one or more backup options in case he’s injured when game day arrives.
Complicating the process, the NFL uses flex scheduling beginning in October, meaning the Sunday-night game could change in 14 of the season’s 18 weeks. They compile options to cover every scenario, and Underwood sings through them all in one massive session.
“I actually couldn’t even tell you how many iterations of the matchups there are,” DeStefano says. “There’s a lot. It’s like three typed pages, so there’s quite a bit, but it goes so fast, just because we get into the zone. Carrie’s in the zone, and everybody’s locked in. We just crush it.”
As a result, they avoid any need for a midseason overdub — even if the game gets changed during a flex week and features two teams whose biggest stars are out for the season.
In every one of those versions, it’s the Nashville music team’s job to get the viewers excited.
“It’s got to still make people turn their heads,” DeStefano says. “If they’re at a bar and it’s loud, there’s still got to be that element of ‘Oh, wait. What’s happening? I got to watch this.’”
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Dierks Bentley held court at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, calling the 20,000-seat venue “the biggest honky tonk on Lower Broadway.” He should know—he’s played many of Nashville’s tiny clubs early in his career, perhaps most notably the iconic bluegrass room The Station Inn, cultivating his mix of country, rock and bluegrass-tinged music, before breaking through with his 2003 debut single “What Was I Thinkin’.”
His comparison with Lower Broadway’s ever-growing slate of honky-tonks (including his own Whiskey Row, which opened in 2018) was apt, as the evening was filled with many of the hallmarks of any number of club-sized venues dotting downtown Nashville, including guest artists dropping by, ‘90s cover songs aplenty and even some karaoke moments.
Two decades into his career, Bentley has earned 18 Billboard Country Airplay No. 1s and 15 Grammy nominations. Veering along country music’s sonic sweep of sounds, encompassing rock, ‘90s and 2000s country and rock, and bluegrass, Bentley offered hits including “I Hold On,” “A Lot of Leavin’ Left to Do,” “5150,” “What Was I Thinkin’,” “Black,” and “Livin’.”
“My hope for the show is that you find a moment where you feel like you’re living,” Bentley told the crowd.
He’s also forged a concert style that blends hits, a genuine onstage ebullience that easily outpaces many of today’s newcomers, and intentional audience engagement (such as bringing one fan onstage for a beer-chugging challenge and offering another fan a karaoke moment). Bentley’s crack band, including Charlie Worsham, Ben Helson, Tim Sergent, Steve Misamore, and Cassady Feasby, provide a perfect foil for Bentley, not only musically, but they easily match his often goofball humor, such as their humorous, hockey-themed band intro video and when Bentley repeatedly jumped in front of bandmate Worsham during Worsham’s take on Garth Brooks’ “Callin’ Baton Rouge.”
The wide range of music in Bentley’s show–gobs of ’90s country covers, Bentley’s own two decades of 2000s hits and music from many of today’s buzziest newcomers–chronicled the evolution of country music’s soundscape.
Opening for Bentley was Bluegrass/Americana newcomer Bella White, who offered up songs from her album Among Other Things, including songs about fizzled relationships (“Break My Heart”) and dirtbag men (“Marilyn”), as well as a sterling version of Lucinda Williams’ “Concrete and Barbed Wire.,” which drew devoted applause from the concert’s early arrivals.
Meanwhile, fellow opener Chase Rice offered up a set filled with personal meaning for the singer-songwriter. The acoustic guitar he played was one his father had given him when Rice first started learning music. Noting that his father died two years after he was given the guitar, he honored his father’s memory by performing one of the first songs he played for his dad, John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Rice was first known as a songwriter, contributing to the Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise,” before he notched his own pop-country hits including “Ready Set Roll” and “Eyes on You.” He included all of those in his Bridgestone set, but best highlighting his talents were his newer songs, such as “Haw River,” that will be on his new album Goin’ Down Singin’ (out Sept. 20), showcasing his more roots-leaning, rawer sound and matured songwriting.
In his own set, Bentley welcomed The Red Clay Strays lead singer Brandon Coleman, as well as country singer-songwriter Zach Top.
Here, we look at 5 top moments:
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