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The Lone Stars will perform at two Nashville-based country awards shows.
After testing the waters of the Brazos in 2023, CMT and the Academy of Country Music plan to bring their annual awards show back to Texas this year. The CMT Music Awards will be broadcast on CBS from Austin's Moody Center on April 7th. Meanwhile, ACM will announce the finalists for each award on April 9, and the trophy ceremony will be streamed on Amazon Prime on May 16 from the Ford Center at The Star in Frisco.
Texas hasn't traditionally been a big awards market, and for a rural industry primarily centered around Nashville, that means a few extra nights away from home for shows and lead-in activities. Instead, awards producers showcase the genre's talent, from regular melee events to multi-artist events, in one of the country's major markets, where the fan base is insatiable, like Nashville and Los Angeles. Masu.
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ACM CEO Damon Whiteside said of last year's show, which featured co-hosts Garth Brooks and Dolly Parton, “It was packed to the ceiling, the fans were crazy, they were dancing the whole time.'' ” he recalls. “There were probably more cowboy boots and cowboy hats than I've ever seen in a venue, but it was fun too. All I can say is that the energy and passion in the venue was a little off the charts. That’s all.”
ACM and CMT arrived in Texas via different routes. ACM took the risk in 2015 to hold the awards ceremony at his AT&T Stadium in Arlington, marking the first time a major awards ceremony was broadcast from the stadium. Texas has been on the table since the moment Whiteside arrived at ACM in 2020 after working at the Country Music Association.
The Dallas Cowboys were “so excited to think our show was coming back,” he says.
However, CMT somewhat unexpectedly relocated to Texas. The awards ceremony had been held on the eve of Nashville's CMA Fest in June since 2002, but when the ACM Awards' contract with CBS expired, the network rescheduled its subsidiary CMT's ceremony as a spring event. This caused a conflict with the venue. Producers needed access to Bridgestone Arena for at least 10 days, but the NHL's Nashville Predators were given priority. Austin had been courting CMT for years, and the groundwork paid off.
“Austin is the live music capital of the world, so that definitely plays into it,” said Margaret Comeau, executive producer at CMT. “If he was going to go somewhere other than Music City, he wanted to go somewhere like Nashville or somewhere that cared about music as much as CMT did.”
Texas is fertile ground for country music. Both shows indicate that current Texas-bred hitmakers Cody Johnson and Parker McCollum will likely appear on the show. The two artists are scheduled to perform at the CMT Awards, which will also feature local son Lukas Nelson and former Houston Astros pitcher Roger Clemens. McCollum will also host a golf tournament for the ACM, with results determined after nominees are announced. Last year, ACM hired Frisco-based Cory Kent for this week's ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Johnson and McCollum are alumni of the red clay music scene in Texas, which has its own thriving concert scene and has seen the careers of Aaron Watson, Casey Donahue, Wade Bowen, the Randy Rogers Band, Bligh Bagwell, and more. provided. Similarly, this subgenre has its own awards show. The Texas Regional Radio Report (T3R) Awards are named after the publication that produces them. That chart will be published weekly on Billboard Country Update (see page 4).
Mainstream Country Community 'Still' [doesn’t] Please be very aware of this,” says T3R Event Coordinator Tami Milspaugh. She also markets to red clay programmers through her Fort Worth-based company, Texas Record Chick Promotions. “In Nashville, they're starting to do that more and more because they're obviously cherry-picking the talent from here.”
The 14th annual T3R Awards, which will be held on March 25, has been held at a smaller venue: the 700-seat Arlington Music Hall and event complex Texas Live! — but this show, like Texas music, is in expansion mode. The latest ceremony will be filmed for the first time and could be shown on cable stations or streaming platforms such as Netflix.
“We're going to have a show here in the next few weeks and pitch it to different networks,” Milspaugh said. “And just show off what we’ve been doing.”
It seems like Texas Musicians is hoping to win more trophy awards. Both ACM and CMT received incentives from the state for holding events in the city.
Other events are also planned for Austin. The city is in the midst of a total solar eclipse on April 8th. According to KVUE-TV Austin, more than 1 million tourists are expected to descend on the Texas capital to view the total solar eclipse.
“Many people are worried that their flight will be cancelled, so they're trying to leave early,” Comeau said. “I'm not one of them. Some of us might just stand at the arrival gate at the airport and watch it, then go inside to board my plane.”
Meanwhile, ACM is connected to an ongoing attraction in Texas. The Star is a 91-acre campus that is home to the Cowboys' NFL team's business center. Built-in amenities such as shops, restaurants, hotels, and golf courses provide a comfortable getaway for industry participants heading home after the Nashville awards ceremony.
“Everywhere you go, there's industry and you're bumping into people,” Whiteside says of Frisco's layout. “Omni-He often meets for drinks at the hotel bar, where our executives stay and is attached to the venue.”
ACM was originally based in Los Angeles, but spent nearly 20 years in Las Vegas, forming a similar temporary community on the Strip. CMT and/or ACM may be at the beginning of another 20 years of out-of-town operations in the Lone Star State. However, no one yet knows whether these movements will be permanent.
“We're very excited about the future of the Texas market,” Whiteside said. “But we have not made a final decision yet.”