One of the best performances in recent CMA Award history – and it didn’t even come from inside Bridgestone Arena.
The 2024 CMA Awards are taking place tomorrow night, so we can all look forward to…well, there’s really not a ton that I’m looking forward to. There are some incredible bluegrass artists like Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes on the lineup…but they’ll be joining Dierks Bentley for a tribute to Tom Petty, so not exactly getting the spotlight to show off their own music like they deserve.
And of course there’s the obligatory (at this point) performance from Post Malone, who will be joined by Chris Stapleton for a duet of their song “California Sober” off Malone’s latest project, F-1 Trillion. But they’ll also each be performing individually as well…and it just seems like giving artists two songs is taking away from time that could be spent showing off other artists.
I mean, how about an appearance from Johnny Blue Skies?
Sturgill Simpson recently released his sixth studio album – sort of – when he dropped Passage Du Desir under his alter-ego, the dread pirate Johnny Blue Skies. And he’s since been on one of the biggest country music tours of the year with his insanely popular Why Not? Tour.
Seems like somebody you’d want to have on the CMA Awards, right? After all, it’s “country music’s biggest night.”
That was a rhetorical question. We all know that Sturgill won’t be invited – just like he wasn’t invited back in 2017, months after winning the Grammy for Best Country Album for A Sailor’s Guide To Earth.
Not only did Sturgill win Best Country Album at the Grammys, but he was also nominated for the night’s top prize, Album of the Year. All that apparently that wasn’t enough to get him an invite to the CMA Awards though, which instead featured performances from P!nk and former One Direction member Niall Horan that year. Just what country fans want to hear.
Well Sturgill may not have been invited, but he decided to show up and perform anyway – outside of Bridgestone Arena during the ceremonies.
“They were all out of seats, I couldn’t get a ticket. So I thought I’d come down here and play some country music since we’re celebrating it tonight in Nashville, Tennessee.”
He put his Grammy in his guitar case, and for nearly an hour Sturgill busked outside of the CMA Awards as shocked onlookers started to realize what they were witnessing.
Sturgill streamed the whole performance live online (and probably got more viewers than the actual awards ceremony) as he treated the crowd to “Turtles All the Way Down” and “Water In A Well,” as well as answered questions from his fans – and even gave a preview of what his acceptance speech would sound like if he ever were to win a CMA Award:
“Nobody needs a machine gun. Coming from a guy who owns quite a few guns. Gay people should have the right to be happy and live their life any way they want to, and get married if they want to, without fearing getting drug down the road on a pickup truck.
Black people are probably tired of getting shot in the streets, and getting enslaved by the industrial prison complex, and hegemony and racism is alive and well in Nashville, Tennessee. Thank you very much.”
He also revealed that he would perform Merle Haggard’s “Are The Good Times Really Over” if he were ever invited to the CMA Awards (which at this point it’s pretty clear, he won’t be).
It was quite the scene, seeing a Grammy-winning country singer busking outside of the CMA Awards while the eventual Entertainer of the Year winner, Garth Brooks, was inside lip-syncing his newest single.
And it highlighted the absurdity of the Nashville popularity contest, where all too often the best country artists aren’t even invited to the show – and are forced to busk on the sidewalk.
