State Champ Radio Ryman Auditorium
Post Malone made a surprise appearance at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium Wednesday (April 3) night. He helped close out the annual Bobby Bones‘ Million Dollar Show, spearheaded by radio and television personality Bobby Bones (of iHeartRadio’s The Bobby Bones Show) and his band, The Raging Idiots. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, […]
Billy Strings wants a second chance.
Last year, the 31-year-old Strings played two headlining shows at Nashville’s 18,500-capacity Bridgestone Arena, and followed with a show at country music’s “Mother Church,” the Ryman Auditorium. Tonight (Feb. 23), he returns to Music City for a repeat trio — two headlining stints at Bridgestone (Feb. 23-24), followed by a sold-out headlining set at the Ryman (Feb. 25).
“Bridgestone last year was sort of like a fickle mistress or something,” Strings tells Billboard. “I don’t think we blew Bridgestone up. The show was good, but as soon as I played the gig, I was instantly like, ‘We need to come back and try again.’ I just want to blow the roof off of Bridgestone. I’ve done a year of playing arenas now and Bridgestone is really important, because I live here [in Nashville]. That’s where I see all the bands that I like, that’s where I go see $UICIDEBOY$, it’s my hometown arena. So I put a lot of pressure on myself about Bridgestone.”
Strings, who won a Grammy for best bluegrass album for his 2021 album Home and reigns as both the current entertainer of the year at the International Bluegrass Music Awards (IBMA) and artist of the year at the Americana Music Awards, advanced to playing arenas over the past year. His current trek includes multiple nights at arenas in Atlanta (State Farm Arena), New Orleans (UNO Lakefront Arena) and Pittsburgh (Petersen Events Center).
Trending on Billboard
According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Strings — who since 2017 has been one of the key leaders in the ongoing progression of bluegrass, with his expansive guitar playing and quick-fire improvisational style — grossed $10.8 million and sold 174,000 tickets across 28 reported concerts in 2023, with many of those being arena shows. Those figures average out to $386,000 and 6,200 tickets per show.
The notion of a bluegrass picker ascending to performing multiple nights at arenas places this guitar master on a level of some bold name country and rock acts who regularly pull such double-headers. But a glimpse into Strings’s genre-eschewing shows offers a reasoning behind his appeal as an artist, one who has grown beyond a strictly bluegrass audience. A freewheeling, genre-melting show where Strings is just as likely to deliver a bluegrass standard as throw out a transcendent, high-octane, metal-infused guitar riff — and often in the same song. That’s by design, says the Michigan-raised Strings.
“Growing up, I listened to heavy metal, I listened to bluegrass, jazz, rock and rap,” he explains. “I’m not trying to be bluegrass. I’m not trying to be this or that, I’m just playing. I grew up playing bluegrass, so that’s kind of the medium I paint with — but I just play music, and whatever comes out is what happens. I don’t know what the hell kind of music it is.”
He’s also collaborated with everyone from mainstream country artists Dierks Bentley and Luke Combs to R&B artist RMR and rock band Fences. Combine that with the freewheeling, jamband feel his shows put forth, and it’s understandable that a Strings show draws a wide spectrum of concertgoers, from bluegrass aficionados to Deadheads, teens and older hippies.
“It might be young folks that are just getting into bluegrass and people who are into psychedelia, it’s all over the board,” Strings says. “You look out and see a guy headbanging wearing a Slayer shirt at a bluegrass concert. That’s freakin’ cool.”
The buildup to playing arenas has been steady, and conscientiously through out.
“We’ve always tried to be careful,” Strings says. “We toured in a van for as long as we could before moving to a bus, just stuff like that. I think we could probably play two or three nights at some of these places — but we choose to do only two, just to make sure they are full.”
Though Strings playing the 2,362-capacity Ryman is an underplay at this point, he says performing at the 132-year-old historic venue is always special. “Last time, we did all bluegrass songs, wore suits and played a bluegrass concert, which was so fun,” Strings recalls. “This year, I don’t know what we’ll do. Maybe an MTV Unplugged vibe, something stripped down. That’s what’s so cool about Nashville — like last year, we went from Bridgestone to the Ryman and then to Roberts [Western World on Lower Broadway]. So it goes from the biggest stuff ever to the funnest stuff ever.”
He also notes that, as with nearly any solid Nashville show, fans can expect some surprises. “We’ve got some friends coming down,” Strings teases.
Longtime Strings fans and music aficionados might also notice some fresh nuances to his guitar playing–the results of this naturally-talented, playing by ear guitarist taking his first-ever guitar lessons.
“Last April, I started getting sick of myself and felt like I was on a plateau,” Strings says. “I’ve never taken lessons, I don’t know anything about music theory, and I’m in these sessions with Bela Fleck and people who are very well-versed in harmony and theory — and I’m just sitting here, some old country bumpkin, playing by ear, which is great. But now I have a guitar teacher and he’s got me learning jazz and classical and Charlie Parker tunes, stuff I never really play as a bluegrass musician, and it’s opening up my brain to different harmonic avenues. I can feel my fingers starting to reach for notes that weren’t there before. I never had a deliberate practice routine, ever, but I was building a career. Now that I have a career, it’s like, ‘There’s so many people that have practiced more than me and I’ve just been out here ripping gigs.’ So I’m having fun kind of starting over from the beginning.”
It is likely that somewhere in his three-night span of shows, Strings’ setlist will include his Grammy-nominated Willie Nelson collaboration, “California Sober,” which Strings released in honor of Nelson’s 90th birthday last year, and which marked Strings’ first release since partnering with Reprise Records, following a long association with Rounder. Strings says the collaboration was set in motion after Strings performed as part of Nelson’s Outlaw tour nearly two years ago.
“I got to hang out with him on that tour, and I was so inspired just by being around him,” he says. Later, Strings wrote the song and realized, “This is such a Willie song that I can’t record it without him.” He sent the song to Nelson, who agreed to record it. Strings went down to Luck while Nelson recorded his vocal.
“Just sitting there in the studio and making the song was amazing,” says Strings, noting that they followed the session with a game of poker at Nelson’s house. “He took a thousand bucks from me, real quick … I had no idea what I was doing, and he had no problem with that. His wife was like, ‘Man, this is gross. This poor kid doesn’t even know how to play poker.’ And Willie’s like, ‘Well, he shouldn’t have sat down.’ I would’ve spent another thousand just to sit there at that table.”
While Strings’ current tour runs through May, followed by some summer festivals, Strings has also been in the studio recording and says a new album is likely on the way this year.
“We got a record coming out probably in the fall,” he says. And it sounds like those sessions –- just like his live shows — are centered on chasing the muse and challenging himself musically.
“I’ve been working on it a little bit between touring. I’m recording at home for the first time ever. Me and the band, sometimes we’ll work for 12 hours, sometimes we’ll work for three. Not having a time limit, no restraints, has been awesome, just for the vibe.”
In February 1989, the New Jersey-born, Texas-raised guitar picker, singer and harmonica ace Clint Black released his debut single, “A Better Man.” By mid-June, the song had become his first No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, ushering in the release of his debut album Killin’ Time.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Black’s debut single established him as part of what would be called country music’s heralded “Class of ’89,” a group of artists who each had their first major hits that year–the cowboy-hatted triumvirate of Black, Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson, but also Travis Tritt and Mary Chapin Carpenter. This group led the way in an era that would usher country music into an unprecedented era of sales and influence.
In addition to “A Better Man,” Killin’ Time spurred Hot Country Songs chart leaders “Nobody’s Home” and “Walkin’ Away” and the title track, as well as a top 5 hit “Nothing’s News.” The album ultimately attained triple platinum status, while Black earned Billboard’s country song of the year in both 1989 (with “A Better Man”) and 1990 (“Nobody’s Home”). “A Better Man” garnered a Grammy nomination for best country song and Killin’ Time, for best country vocal performance, male.
In 2024, Black’s Killin’ Time – The 35th Anniversary World Tour will honor the album’s more than three decades of influence in shaping country music’s sonic landscape. Initiating with two already sold-out shows at Nashville’s vaunted Ryman Auditorium on Feb. 16 and 17 (and having just added a third and final night at the Ryman on Feb. 18) Black’s tour will feature the Grammy winner playing his debut album live from start to finish, heightened by some of his more than a dozen Hot Country Songs No. 1s, such as “When My Ship Comes In,” “A Good Run of Bad Luck,” and “Nothin’ But the Taillights.”
“We’ve played some songs that we haven’t played in 35 years during some shows recently,” Billboard tells Billboard. “We’ll play some songs at soundcheck and put in stuff like ‘Winding Down’ and ‘Straight From the Factory.’ Two of the guys in my band played on that album, so it’s fun to go back and remember it. Sometimes we had to think, ‘Who played that part?’ and things drift over time, they migrate. We’ve pulled some back to their origins. I think I’m singing these songs better now than I did, but pretty much it’s going to be like the record.”
Earlier this year, Black was honored with the Academy of Country Music Awards’ ACM Poet’s Award, an accolade that recognizes a songwriter or artist-writer’s significant writing contributions to country music. Even on his debut album, Black was already constructing his case as an artist whose vocal and instrumental capabilities were paralleled by his songwriting caliber. Black has written or co-written nearly all of his hit songs, with several of them, including his Grammy-nominated collaboration with Wynonna, “A Bad Goodbye,” and his duet with his wife Lisa Hartman Black, “When I Said I Do,” being solo writes.
“I set out to do that,” Black says. “I grew up reading liner notes and I wanted to know who was writing something I loved. I wasn’t trying to make any kind of statement, but I thought I could do it. And I saw an interview with Reba where she said she listened to about a thousand songs every time she wanted to make an album of 10 songs. That was terrifying to me. I thought, ‘Man, that’s a hard job. I’d rather do this other hard job and not have to go looking for songs.’ And I knew if I was successful in writing my own songs, I was going to need a lot of songs, if I was putting out an album every 18 months or so. I started writing a lot of songs, so that every time I had to make an album, I had at least 30 songs written that I wanted to record.”
One such solo write on the record, “Nothing’s News,” was born of that desire to prove his talent as a song crafter to his father. Black recalls his father “believed in me as a singer, but as a songwriter? Not so much. He told me I hadn’t done enough living to write real country songs, really, so I ran home and wrote ‘Nothing’s News’ to prove him wrong.”
Beginning with the songs that proliferate Killin’ Time, Black also forged what would become a decades-long association with fellow musician-writer Hayden Nicholas, whose contributions to Black’s music have been essential, from guitar work to co-writing hits including “No Time to Kill,” “Like the Rain,” “When My Ship Comes In” and “Summer’s Comin’.” Killin’ Time’s title track was born of a discussion with Nicholas.
“We were on our way to a gig and talking about how long it was taking the first single to come out,” he recalls. “He said, ‘The big wheel’s turning slowly,’ and I said, ‘Well I hope it starts turning soon, because this killing time is killing me.’ And we looked at each other and knew we had a song.”
Black recalls recording Killin’ Time in Houston, though he and Nicholas later traveled to Nashville to record overdubs—a trip that led to one of Black’s fondest “Nashville stories” from that early era.
“I was in Nashville for an extended time for the first time ever, and one of my producers, James Stroud, had loaned me his car. It was a Porsche,” Black recalls. “One day, he told me, ‘If you get me a gold record for this album, I’ll give you that car.’ He ended up having to sell the Porsche and then he bought himself a newer Porsche after that. The album was double platinum by then, and word got out that he had promised me a Porsche. So he did, in front of ASCAP, we have a photo of him handing me the keys and standing in front of that car. We would go on to give that car back and forth over the years — he has it now,” Black recalls.
Like many artists who launched in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, Black has felt the impact of the resurgent popularity of ‘90s country sounds. He points to the genre-spanning web of influences among the era’s artists, producers and label execs as a key factor.
“I think that the fidelity of music in Nashville all really rose to state of the art,” Black says. “You had all these budding engineers and rising producers and artists who loved all the country stuff, but were also influenced by the great classic rock, blues and jazz. For me, it was Bob Seger, and all that great James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett music. You had all these people coming up in country music that had this huge wealth of great standards to rise to. As the lyricists and melodies came into their own, and the A&R and the record companies, all of it combined. It was a perfect storm on every front in country music that made it as good or better than anything else out there.”
In tandem with the tour, Black will release a vinyl reissue of Killin’ Time in partnership with Sony Music and Vinyl Me Please. The special reissue will be on 180g Brown Galaxy vinyl with new lacquers cut by AIR Mastering’s Barry Grint and will ship in May 2024.
See below for the initial slate of tour dates for the tour.
Feb. 16, 2024 – Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium
Feb. 17, 2024 – Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium
Feb. 18, 2024 – Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium
Feb. 23, 2024 – Durant, OK – Choctaw Casino
Feb. 24, 2024 – San Antonio, TX – San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo
Feb. 29, 2024 – Roanoke, VA – Berglund Performing Arts Center
March 1, 2024 – Roanoke Rapids, NC – Weldon Mills Theater
March 2, 2024 – Cherokee, NC – Harrah’s Cherokee Event Center
March 23, 2024 – Lancaster, PA – American Music Theatre
March 24, 2024 – Nashville, IN – Brown County Performing Arts Center
April 6, 2024 – Carlton, MN – Black Bear Casino Resort
April 21, 2024 – Georgetown, TX – Two Step Inn Fest
April 26, 2024 – Chandler, AZ – Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino
April 28, 2024 – Indio, CA – Stagecoach
June 13, 2024 – Abbotsford, BC – Abbotsford Arena
June 14, 2024 – Penticton, BC – South Okanagan Arena
June 15, 2024 – Prince George, BC – CN Arena
June 16, 2024 – Dawson Creek, BC – Ovintiv Arena
June 19, 2024 – Lethbridge, AB – ENMAX Arena
June 21, 2024 – Edmonton, AB – Winspear Centre
June 22, 2024 – Strathmore, AB – Strathmore Stampede
June 25, 2024 – Saskatoon, SK – SaskTel Arena
June 27, 2024 – Moose Jaw, SK – Moose Jaw Arena
July 11, 2024 – New Salem, ND – ND Country Fe
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).
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
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.
Ryman Auditorium in Nashville unveiled the latest addition to its Icon Walk on Thursday (April 13) – a bronze statue honoring Charley Pride. Pride’s statue joins likenesses of Loretta Lynn, Bill Monroe and Little Jimmy Dickens.
All four artists are in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Monroe, often called the father of bluegrass music, has also been voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. In 1971, Pride became the first Black artist to win the CMA Award for entertainer of the year. The following year, Lynn became the first woman to win that top award.
The Icon Walk was created as a way to honor those who have made significant contributions to the historic venue and to Nashville.
Rozene Pride, the singer’s widow (they were married for more than 60 years), and their son Dion Pride attended the unveiling.
“He has often been called the Jackie Robinson of country music,” Rozene shared. “The only difference was Jackie Robinson was picked for the role. Pride picked country music because he loved it and that was his life.”
“He loved his fans – in fact, his fans drove him,” Dion added. “All of you drove him. You are the reason why he was the success he was. Everything he did was for you.”
“Charley Pride broke barriers and defied stereotypes, becoming one of the most successful and beloved country music artists of all time,” said Ryman Hospitality Properties executive chairman Colin Reed.
Visitors can find Pride’s statue at the northwest corner of the building next to the likenesses of Lynn and Monroe. Dickens’ statue stands atop the Ryman’s main steps, greeting ticket holders and tour-takers as they arrive. Artist Ben Watts, who created the three previous statues, also did the honors on Pride’s statue.
A general view of the bronze, life-sized Charley Pride statue at Ryman Auditorium on April 12, 2023 in Nashville.
Jason Davis/GI
Pride amassed 29 No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart (now called Hot Country Songs), from “All I Have to Offer You (Is Me)” in August 1969 to “Night Games” in September 1983. His longest-running No. 1 (five weeks) was 1971’s “Kiss an Angel Good Morning,” a crossover hit that helped Pride land back-to-back CMA Awards for male vocalist of the year in 1971 and 1972. Pride is also a three-time Grammy winner and a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.
Pride is credited with helping break color barriers by becoming country music’s first Black superstar. His influence was seen in the ACM Awards nominations, announced today, in which Kane Brown is nominated for entertainer of the year and male artist of the year, and the Americana duo The War & Treaty is nominated for duo of the year.
A member of the Grand Ole Opry, Pride received the CMA’s Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award in November 2020.
Barely a month later, on Dec. 12, 2020, Pride died at the age of 86 from complications due to COVID-19. In 2021, CMT celebrated his life and impact with CMT Giants: Charley Pride.
-
Pages
