Arts & Music

Best Local Songwriter: Amy Rigby A New Yorker who relocated to Nashville several years ago, Rigby makes terrific, all-too-overlooked roots-pop records that nail the likes of class, men and “middlescence” with wit, grace and self-deprecating charm. At her quotidian best, though, she sings the song of herself, conveying the blues, as lived by urbanites and suburbanites, like a citified niece of Loretta Lynn. Country radio, are you listening?

—Bill Friskics-Warren

Best Music Row Songwriter: Darrell Scott Scott never set out to contribute several of the best country songs of the new century. He just wanted to write the best songs and make the best records that he could. But those independent recordings tended to get passed around by country artists who actually love music as much as they love their fame. As a result, stellar Scott tunes such as “Long Time Gone,” “Great Day to Be Alive,” “Family Tree” and “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” ended up on Music Row records and, to the music’s credit, on the radio. Like others before him—Matraca Berg, Jim Lauderdale, Kim Richey, Buddy and Julie Miller—Scott scored hits without paying attention to what Music Row scuttlebutt said was the hot new trend. Wouldn’t that be a novel direction for Nashville’s professional song squad: ignoring what’s successful for others and writing what’s in their hearts.

—Michael McCall

Best Country Songwriter Who Should Be a Star: Jeffrey Steele Steele is the perfect example of how country music allows its writers to get better as they mature and gain experience without allowing recording artists a second chance to demonstrate they can improve with age. Steele first hit Nashville as lead singer of Boy Howdy, an entertaining but forgettable California country band. He has since developed into one of the town’s most incisive and successful songwriters. His recent hits include such gems as Trace Adkins’ “I’m Trying,” Tim McGraw’s “The Cowboy in Me,” Joe Nichols’ “That Would Be Her” and Montgomery Gentry’s “My Town,” “Speed” and “Hell Yeah.” But those who’ve seen Steele perform in recent years and those who’ve heard his 2001 album Somethin’ in the Water on Sony Records know that he’s capable of rousing up as big a reaction as any of the stars who record his material. It’s too bad country fans outside of Nashville don’t get the chance to experience the charismatic performer responsible for some of their favorite songs.

—Michael McCall

Best Veteran Country Artist: Rodney Crowell As spiritual and wholly adult as Crowell seems in middle age, he’s not interested in aging gracefully. Instead, he’s still fighting to better himself and to maintain the fire and passion of his youth. As shown on the searing and searching songs of his recent album Fate’s Right Hand, he’s in touch with his maturity—but only in the way that it can be used to achieve a kind of wisdom that moves beyond vanity and ego, toward the more important qualities of living a full life. He’s still learning how to fly, as he writes in a memorable song, and his words encourage the rest of us to get off the ground too.

—Michael McCall

Best Country Legend: Dolly Parton Parton could easily coast through her career on the power of her personality. And more than most, she’s earned that right. But despite appearances, she’s always been an artist first and a celebrity second—never more so than in the last several years. Besides making music that ranks with the best of her career, Dolly is now the subject of one of the best tribute albums ever made in Nashville. The new Just Because I’m a Woman comes out Oct. 14 and emphasizes her songwriting, which has always been the most integral of her many talents. Fortunately, the inspired collection of artists who record her songs don’t follow her lead, instead interpreting her material in ways that reveal how sturdy and meaningful her writing has been.

—Michael McCall

Best Country Artist/Band: Brooks & Dunn Proof that even boot-scootin’ good ol’ boys can overcome: B&D’s white-hot Red Dirt Road is, hands down, one of the best country albums to come from Music Row in years. It’s also a great rock record and has all the rootsy “authenticity” that card-carrying alt-countryites crave: punch, crunch, attitude, transcendence, musical allusions to Skynyrd, Springsteen, Stax, the Stones and the Shelter People. If grunge-twang standard-bearers Uncle Tupelo had made an album as meaty, beaty, big and bouncy as Red Dirt Road (and as filled with grace, none of it cheap), alt-country might indeed have become the next big thing.

—Bill Friskics-Warren

Best Career Move: Allison Moorer Only the most rigid fans believe that quality of music can be defined by the differences between large, major record labels and small, independent companies. Good music can and does emerge from both worlds. But it’s important for artists to live in an environment that nurtures what’s best about them. And by now it’s apparent that Allison Moorer’s overwhelming talents as a songwriter and a lyrical interpreter have not been as widely recognized in the mainstream country world as they should have been. Well, it’s the system’s loss, not hers. Having left Music Row to align herself with the respected North Carolina-based independent label Sugar Hill Records, Moorer will continue to grow, both artistically and commercially. Music Row does need to figure out why it has lost some of its most distinctive talents to the indie world over the last two or three decades, but for Moorer, the future is hers.