Words and Photos – LE / PC – @insideedgephotography
LIFE MUSIC MEDIA is on the ground in Nashville, Tennessee for the 2024 CMA Fest week – bringing some highlights from the core festival events, and a taste of the myriad of other gigs, performances and experiences that see the Country Music world take over the city for a full week.
LMM were granted Media Access to the daytime events, basically everything except the main Stadium shows for the Festival proper, and our roving reporter has tried to attend as many things as is humanly possible given the variety of locations and the sheer number of performances that happen at any given time of the day or night.
Tuesday night features the special event at The Ryman, in support of the Second Harvest Food Bank, a Benefit established with the support of Craig Wiseman of Big Loud Records. The purpose of the organisation was to provide a central distribution center for companies, groups, and individuals who wished to help provide food to people facing hunger in Middle Tennessee, and the Rynam, events have raised over $1 million for the charity to date.
Hosted and curated by Ernest, who was in Australia for CMC Rocks in 2023, he brought along a few friends who performed a songwriters round as the first half of the evening.
Hardy, Chase Rice, Darius Rucker, Jamey Johnson and Mitchell Tenpenny was quite a line-up, and they spent their time sharing songs and stories, with individual spots to demonstrate the very basic components of how much of the country music genre is created and sustained.
Each artist played 3 songs each.
Hardy was smiling during Darius singing “Sara” a song he wrote about his 5th grade girlfriend which had me wondering why… Hardy explained before his turn, his mother is in the audience tonight, her name is Sara!
Chase Rice forgot the words to his song, I Hate Cowboys, stopped completely, turned and asked Hardy for help, Hardy couldn’t remember…. Chase said but you wrote it!!
Jamey Johnson is a treasure, and clearly the other guys thought much the same as they watched him perform.
The second half of the show was for Ernest and his band to deliver their own set, and while we did not get a bunch of hoped for cameos from the guests, we got an excellent set from Ernest and his highly capable band including This Fire, Wild Wild West and Done In A Bar, as well as Feet Wanna Run and the song written for Jellyroll in Son Of A Sinner, before the massive hit that was a duet with Morgan Wallen, Flower Shops, in which Ernest handed out a bunch of roses to various ladies in the front row.
His guitar/steel player Chandler had many fans in the audience. They were joined for a couple of songs by Lukas Nelson from The Promise of The Real, who is a superb performer.
The last song of the night was I Went to College, I went to Jail and Ernest intimated that Jelly Roll might possibly have meant to be there on the night but he wasn’t sure if he was around!
It was a wonderful night with an auction also hosted and raised money for a great cause.
Words and Photos – LE / PC – @insideedgephotography
Useful Links :
CMA Festival
https://cmafest.com
Ernest
https://ernestofficial.com
STARS FOR SECOND HARVEST – Charity Night
ERNEST
With special guest, Lukas Nelson
HARDY
DARIUS RUCKER
CHASE RICE
JAMEY JOHNSON
MITCHELL TENPENNY
