I’ve lived and worked in Nashville for 13 years. The way things have gone since 2011, with hundreds of thousands of new arrivals, it almost makes me an old-timer. I played Nashville a bunch of times as a touring artist in the 90s, but it never made much sense to me. It wasn’t a particularly good market for alternative rock, no better than Kansas City or Pittsburgh. I remember being here on tour and seeing all the people who worked in the country and Christian music business. They just seemed to be in a different world from us.
Even if the Music Row business seemed alien to me, I’ve loved country music my whole life. My first favorite artists before age 5, Glen Campbell and Johnny Cash, preceded even The Beatles. I made a country album in 1996 and I took the writing and production seriously. I thought someday I might try to be a Nashville songwriter. I moved here in 2011 because I wanted to navigate the country business on my own terms. I moved here once I had my first successful country music client (or so I thought), The Civil Wars. The month after I moved here, November 2011, The Civil Wars were nominated for Country Duo of the Year. I soon learned that the talk around Music Row was that they didn’t deserve the nomination. In 2011 on The Row, country wasn’t a genre or music style - it was a radio format. I had a LOT to learn.
For the six years I practiced law at a Music Row firm, I went to all the CMA Award week events - all FOUR award shows, all the after parties I could wrangle. With a crowded schedule or awards shows throughout the year, CMA Awards Week is THE big week on Music Row. I didn’t have to make many arrangements, my attendance at all these events was mandatory. It all started Sunday night and then you’d sleep it off on Thursday, nobody billed many hours. This was the big opportunity to see and be seen, and to make connections to bring in new business.
I was watching at an agency viewing party when the CMAs had arguably the biggest moment of the 2010s, Chris Stapleton’s 2015 appearance with Justin Timberlake. Some people point to this indisputably brilliant performance as the death knell of the “bro country” era, the ushering in of a new era. I didn’t see it exactly that way at the time. In my view, Stapleton - a brilliant singer, writer, and performer - was an insider, not an outlaw. I’d seen him perform several times as he built a grass roots artist career as a major label recording artist. His buildup took a few key pages from the Sturgill playbook - producer, publicist, visual branding. If he appeared to be an authentic underground breakout like Sturgill or Tyler, in fact he’d been writing hits on Music Row for more than a decade.1
It might be my GenX frame of reference, but I’m sorry I can’t view anything Timberlake does as anti-establishment in any way. Stapleton’s was a brilliant, breakthrough performance by an already established Music Row professional who was poised to become one of the quintessential Music Row figures - and he’s gone on to win Male Vocalist of the Year nine out of ten times in the decade since this moment. He’s an incredible singer who deserves every trophy. That said, Stapleton is an establishment artist, and the CMA is the establishment. This isn’t even debatable.
A couple years after Stapleton’s breakout, Sturgill Simpson created his own defining moment on the CMA Awards…or, rather, adjacent to it. I became Sturgill’s lawyer in 2012, before he had a substantial audience. Naturally, I had all the same old arguments with Music Row executives about whether his music could even be considered “country.”2 After winning the Best Country Album Grammy award earlier in the year, he waged his own protest against the CMA Awards by busking in front of Bridgestone Arena during the 2017 CMA Awards. He’d tipped me off about it on a phone call earlier that day. I watched his Facebook livestream instead of the awards. I wish I’d made the trip into town to be there in person.
The point of Sturgill’s protest has been lost over time. Some people assumed it was sour grapes, some public temper tantrum over not being nominated or invited to the awards. That wasn’t it at all. My recollection is that he was upset about the CMA Awards policy on speaking out about gun control. A month earlier the country music world was devastated by the deadly mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, a festival that featured dozens of top mainstream country acts. 58 country fans died that day, and over 500 suffered injuries. CMA presenters and winners were discouraged - perhaps barred - from mentioning the shooting or talking about gun policy.
With his Grammy award perched in his open case, his handwritten sign read “I don’t take requests but I take questions about anything you want to talk about because Fascism sucks.” It’s becoming the most notable thing about the 2017 show. In 2024 Sturgill is a bigger hard ticket draw than most of that year’s - or even this year’s - winners. He was too cool for the CMAs then, and he’s clearly too cool for it now. Sturgill never had a breakout CMA moment like Stapleton, but I simply can’t imagine him sharing the stage with Timberlake.
I attended this year’s awards after a 7-year break from any CMA week participation. My law client, Alabama roots rock band The Red Clay Strays were up for Vocal Group of the Year, I wouldn’t miss a chance to spend the evening with them and their wonderful real-life and business families. What a year they’ve had, and it certainly felt like they might actually win. They didn’t win. But it was one for the ages.
I caught up with my older brother Jake last weekend. Jake asked me if I’d watched the CMA awards. I told him yes, I attended. He said he found it really stale and uninteresting. He’s a huge music fan, though not typically a mainstream country fan. He doesn’t have much interest in even knowing the artist’s names (he described Luke Combs as “that big, burly dude”). Jake said he’d just been to see a young country singer at a nightclub in San Francisco, Jess Williamson. Had I heard of her? He compared Jess to Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch. Why couldn’t someone like Jess break through and make it on Music Row?
I had indeed heard of Jess. Jess is my friend and client, Jake was preaching to the long-converted. Why indeed couldn’t Jess be a hit country artist on the CMA stage? As for her singing and songwriting talent, no reason. In reality, it goes back to that same attitude about The Civil Wars. Jess made her name as an indie pop artist on the ultra-hip Mexican Summer label before joining forces with Katie Crutchfield aka Waxahatchee to release an album as the country duo Plains. Jess, Plains, and Waxahatchee all have serious indie pop/rock bona fides and have been bearhug embraced by the Americana Music Association and Americanafest. Therefore, any move into mainstream country becomes increasingly unlikely. Too cool.
Due to changes in music consumption habits, the rise of short-form video and on-demand streaming, commercial radio formats mean less than ever. Even if “country” has come to mean more than a radio format, exclusive attitudes and practices persist on The Row. When outsiders crash the gates, they are still often made to feel unwelcome. Artists who have built their audience outside the country market have a harder time being accepted on Music Row compared to acts that come up through the ranks of mainstream country. There are many examples, including legit superstars such as Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers.
What about Red Clay Strays? They lost in their category to a group called Old Dominion. My brother had never heard of Old Dominion. I’ve never actually met an Old Dominion fan in person, but I know they exist. Old Dominion has had a lot of country radio hits, including seven number one country singles. In fact, they’ve won the CMA category Vocal Group seven years running. SEVEN TIMES IN A ROW. Like Stapleton, they are the establishment. They’re also label mates with Red Clay Strays, which made it even LESS likely the Strays would win the category due to the age-old practice of block voting among the membership.
Old Dominion is country music establishment, and so are all of the other nominees in the category. For the past six years, Vocal Group of the Year has had the exact same nominees: Old Dominion, Zac Brown Band, Lady A, Little Big Town, and Midland. This year, Red Clay Strays replaced Midland. Does that mean we finally have another popular group in the country genre? Believe me, there are newer country groups who should be considered based on artistic merit and popularity. How about Turnpike Troubadours? 49 Winchester? Flatland Cavalry? Whiskey Myers? Or, for that matter, what about Waxahatchee? If the voters and the powers that be wanted to shake up the category to acknowledge upstarts, they’d have no trouble finding great prospects with the audience to back them up. Red Clay Strays are far from an establishment act - they don’t even claim to be a country band.
How did I answer Jake’s question? I said I thought it was just fine, better than a decade ago when bro country ruled. But really, was it? I went back and watched some clips from 2014 to see if the show had actually evolved or if it was wishful thinking. There are (slightly) more traditional sounds and songs, (slightly) more people of color, a lot less bro country (from a third to zero). But a lot of the performers were the exact same establishment artists. Dierks Bentley, Luke Bryan, Kacey Musgraves, Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood…all still around and still on the bill a decade later. We’ve had establishment newcomers such as Stapleton, Lainey Wilson, Jellyroll, and Luke Combs enter the chat. We had viral moments of the day in each case (“All About That Bass” vs. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”), we had classic rock tributes, to The Doobie Brothers and Tom Petty respectively. I found performances to enjoy in both shows. Others failed to hold my attention. But really, not much has changed. It’s remarkably similar in every way, from the production numbers right down to the corny humor that’s been part of country since the dawn of the Grand Ole Opry through Hee Haw.
The conclusion, I suppose, is that country music is changing a lot faster and a lot more radically than The CMA Awards would indicate or acknowledge. I know for a fact The Red Clay Strays will be a bigger act next year, but will they get another nomination? They should. I’d love to see them win the category alongside a new crop of country acts packing arenas and sheds with excitable kids finding their way into the Big Tent of country music for the first time. I don’t see them becoming part of the establishment. Just like Sturgill, they’re too cool for that, spread across too many genres and styles. At the after-party I told one of the Strays to make sure he had plenty of shelf space in his new house for future awards. And I didn’t mean just CMAs. They’ve already won an Americana award, they’re nominated for a Billboard rock award. They could easily win a blues or gospel award on music they’ve already released. I’m sure they’ll be able to keep their shelves full.
Important to mention that Stapleton was also a Rounder Records recording artist as the lead vocalist of the bluegrass stalwarts The Steel Drivers.
I played Sturgill’s High Top Mountain demos for a senior colleague who lectured me about wasting my precious professional time on hopeless case artists. And he actually liked the music.
Nice one, John. Good to get an insider’s outsider perspective.