Nearly everyone in the country music industry still identifies the event as "Fan Fair." But as the city's largest annual musical gathering begins its fifth year as the CMA Music Festival, the hard-to-shake name is about the only connection left between the old, down-home affair and the new, glitzy extravaganza.
Fan Fair, which topped out at 24,000 attendees, was as rural as all get-out, a strange little event tucked away at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds along a run-down, out-of-the-way strip of Nolensville Road where most of the city could easily ignore it. The event epitomized country music back when Loretta Lynn sang about her family and her struggles, then signed autographs and hugged necks until every fan walked away with a piece of her. The crowd left yearning to spend time swapping yarns with her on her bus.
If Fan Fair was as polite as Charley Pride meeting an Alabama radio programmer in 1968, the CMA fest, which last year drew an estimated 132,000 people, is as citified as can be—a massive, traffic-snarling monster that eats downtown for five days. It's as living-out-loud as a Royal Crown-stoked Big & Rich rolling with Kid Rock in a Nashville strip club, and it represents country music's evolution into Kenny Chesney singing about his dreams and his leisure pursuits after shaking hands with a room full of carefully selected fans in a backstage meet-and-greet. The crowd leaves yearning to share a shot of tequila with him on his private plane.
The CMA Music Festival is something else, too: it's hugely successful, and it's exactly what Fan Fair needed to become. The economic benefits to the city are enormous, with an estimated $17 million added to the city's tourist trade in 2004. It's the biggest week of the year for Lower Broad nightclubs and many other downtown venues and retail stores, and the massive crowds no doubt lead to return business.
Plus, last year's primetime network TV special was the best tourist advertisement the city has ever had—more than any Monday Night Football telecast or awards program. The broadcast integrated downtown nightlife and city landmarks into the special with an emphasis on showing visitors having a blast. It wasn't Dennis Miller making a yee-haw comment while the screen showed a neon sign in the shape of a cowboy boot. It was groups of young adults dancing and singing and living it up; it was busloads of fans walking through the Country Music Hall of Fame or standing in Riverfront Park with the Cumberland River reflecting the skyline glittering in the background.
Moving the music downtown also saved a unique American event. Whether it was old-fashioned Fan Fair or the spiffed-up CMA festival, no genre of music showcases its artists and celebrates its fans in such an open-armed, mutual embrace. It's just that the relationship between the fans and the artists has changed over the years, and the festival reflects the new dynamic.
At the turn of the century, Fan Fair was in trouble. By 1999, tickets to the June event, which for years had sold out within weeks of becoming available in February, were still on sale when the gates opened. Many longtime attendees grumbled that the biggest stars rarely performed anymore, and even fewer major names showed up at the autograph booths. For the most part, Fan Fair had become a promotional event for record labels to try out up-and-coming acts on the hardcore faithful.
The festival began in 1972 as an outgrowth of the annual Country DJ Convention (which continues today as the Country Radio Seminar). Feeling that the convention focused on business without providing anything for the fans, Loretta Lynn started staging an annual concert and invited the general public instead of performing only for radio insiders. As her show grew in popularity, Lynn added new artists each year, and those she invited all signed autographs and hosted fan-club parties of their own.
Spearheaded by WSM president and CMA board member Irving Waugh, the industry took a cue from Lynn and decided to sponsor an annual music convention for the fans. The event premiered in April 1972, attracting 5,000 people to the Municipal Auditorium, and crowds escalated each year. By 1982, the CMA and the Grand Ole Opry, the event's co-sponsors, moved it to the state fairgrounds.
As the '80s country youth movement turned into its '90s boom, Fan Fair reaped the rewards. For several years, it sold out far in advance, making those who attended each year feel as if they were invited to a special, intimate event. Most of the major stars spent at least a few hours signing autographs in the large, metal exhibit halls. Live music, all of it featuring major-label performers, started at 10 a.m. and continued nonstop until 11 at night. Many fans brought RVs and made friends who they saw again each year.
"There was nothing else like the old Fan Fair, and there never will be anything else like it again," says Hazel Smith, the matriarch of country music journalism, who has been attending Fan Fair for three decades. "There were thousands of people who came every year, and they knew each other by their first names. They camped out together. And, Lord, they loved the music, they loved the artists and they loved each other. But those days are over. Our music has outgrown it. There's so many more fans now, and the event had to change to accommodate them."
Smith can tick off landmark events, like rock producer Mutt Lange attending Fan Fair with rocker Bryan Adams just to meet Shania Twain, with whom Lange had become acquainted by telephone but had yet to greet in person. Within months, the couple were married, and Lange helped Twain become country music's best-selling female act of all time. Beyond that, there was the 1995 onstage reunion of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, performing together for the first time in 15 years, and Garth Brooks signing autographs for 23 hours straight without taking as much as a bathroom break.
Then there were the fans, who in those days were a distinctly colorful lot. Young Music Row hotshots might bemoan their undying persistence or joke about the polyester invasion, but the fans didn't care. They came to throw themselves at the feet of the gods and immerse themselves in the music; they long ago stopped worrying about anyone who looked down their noses at them or their obsessions. Besides, they were amongst friends and fellow believers.
Hazel Smith recalls two stories that capture the uniqueness of the old Fan Fair. One year a fan was in such a rush to get in line at the gate so that she could be among the first to reach the autograph tables, she left her car unlocked, keys in the ignition and engine running. The woman collected scores of autographs, saw dozens of stars perform and lasted until late afternoon before going to her car for a break. It was then she realized what she had done in her haste. Her car sat there untouched outside the gate, still running, but nearly out of gas.
"You think that would've happened at any kind of rock concert?" Smith laughs. "The Fan Fair crowd didn't bother the car at all."
Smith also remembers escorting a first-time visitor through the crowd one sunny afternoon. Coming down the hill from the exhibit halls to the stage, which was set up in front of the grandstands of the Nashville Motor Speedway, Smith saw her guest gawk at someone coming up the other way.
"Oh, those are our Siamese twins," Smith explained while barely batting an eye at the pair, the shorter of whom was pushed along in a grocery cart by the taller one. "They're from Pennsylvania. The funny thing is, only one of them likes country music."
As the man stared, Smith said, "Honey, you're likely to see most anything at Fan Fair!"
Oddly enough, it was Brooks' Herculean autograph-signing session, and the boom that he and Twain detonated, that hastened Fan Fair's demise. Country music no longer earned its bread-and-butter at county fairs with tinny sound systems set up on flatbed trucks. The era of arena shows, videos and million-dollar stage productions had come to country music.
In the past, top stars like Barbara Mandrell, Ricky Skaggs and Kathy Mattea could spend all day greeting fans, and it would be exhausting but fulfilling. But in the post-Garth era, it would have taken them 24 hours to accommodate all of the fans who had lined up to see them.
"It just got where it wasn't feasible anymore," says Marty Stuart, who experienced the '90s boom firsthand. "I loved Fan Fair as much as anybody ever has, but it got to where the signing sessions went from a few hours to half a day, and you'd still have people yelling for autographs and photos when you had to leave. It outgrew what had made it special."
These days, Stuart hosts an annual late night, multi-artist show at the Ryman Auditorium so he can play and talk to fans each year. "There's still some fans who are upset because they miss the old arrangement," he says. "But I have a meet-and-greet session with my fan club, and I have the show, and I ask for their understanding. I do the best I can to entertain them and give them a memorable experience, but it got to where things had become too big to meet every one of them one-on-one. It got that way for all the artists."
In its final years, the old event had lost its luster. Fan Fair no longer sold out. The CMA called a special strategy session to discuss what to do. The board of directors figured it had two options: move and expand it, or kill it. They decided to explore the first option before making a final decision.
The first idea that gained traction was to move Fan Fair to the then-new Nashville Superspeedway in Lebanon. "The attraction was that it would be a good place for RVs and for camping," says Ed Benson, executive director of the CMA. "A lot of country music festivals are designed for campers, so that seemed to be a possibility."
But Mayor Bill Purcell caught wind of the possible move and vigorously opposed taking the festival out of Davidson County. Tony Conway, president of Buddy Lee Attractions, the Nashville talent agency, headed the festival committee.
"We had meetings with the mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, the Nashville Convention and Visitor's Bureau, and they were insistent on us considering moving the event downtown," Conway says. "The various departments of the city were unbelievable in their support, and they came to the table with a really attractive plan that would make all of downtown part of the festival's campus."
When the CMA announced the change of name and venue after Fan Fair 2000, there was an immediate uproar. Critics noted that the word "fan" had been dropped out of the name, having been replaced by the CMA logo. Accusations centered on how the festival was now about business and artist promotion, not about connecting the artists and the fans.
"Anytime you make a big change, you're going to face a public relations issue," Conway says. "But, to be honest, I think after last year, that kind of stuff is gone. People had said it wasn't going to be the same. Well, it's not the same. It's better. And I think most everyone has come along to agree with that by now."
Downtown merchants and nightclubs certainly do. The honky-tonks overflow from Wednesday through Sunday night, with sidewalks packed like Times Square on New Year's Eve. The clubs stay full all day long, with most of them starting music after breakfast and staying open until the 3 a.m. closing time. Lower Broad acts like Jen Jones & The Camaros and John England & The Western Swingers play to wildly receptive audiences packed with both new fans and downtown regulars.
The CMA's current plan targets Middle Tennessee residents as well as tourists. With a network TV special providing national advertising, the CMA wants Nashvillians to know all the ways the event can be experienced. Of the five downtown stages, three are free and don't require event tickets, including stages at the Hall of Fame park between the Hilton Hotel and the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Fun Zone at the foot of Broadway and the Sports Zone in the Coliseum parking lot.
Tickets for Riverfront Park, with live music coming from a floating stage from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., cost $14 a day. Coliseum shows, with eight or more country stars performing nightly, cost $30 a night. At this point, field seating is sold out for all nightly shows, as is the Gold Circle seating in the stands. Every Coliseum show could sell out by show time this year.
Part of the appeal, says Conway, is that artists now perform a long set instead of just doing a few songs apiece, as they did at the old Fan Fair. The stage, sound and video is state-of-the-art, which is what the top acts are used to, rather than the lower standard production of the old event.
While hundreds of artists still sign autographs in the Nashville Convention Center during the festival, few of them are superstars. "We've worked to refocus the expectations of the fans coming in," Benson says. "A lot of fans buying tickets now have no idea that autograph sessions are a part of it. They're coming for a music festival. I wouldn't say we're deliberately trying to downplay the autograph booths in the exhibit hall, but there is more of an emphasis now on the music and the outdoor areas."
As the CMA looks to the future, they are making plans to expand further, eventually incorporating the new symphony hall and baseball stadium into the proceedings while continuing to present music inside the Gaylord Entertainment Center and the Municipal Auditorium. This year, the cable station CMT will tape a concert special at the arena while cowboy singer Michael Martin Murphey hosts a Wild West extravaganza at the auditorium—two events that couldn't have taken place at the old Fan Fair.
"I will always hold a special place in my heart for the old Fan Fair and the fairgrounds," says Smith. "But the new festival isn't only better for the artists and for the business, it's better for the fans. Where else are you going to see that many stars in one night for that price? It would cost them hundreds of dollars to see all these stars in their hometown. I was one of the people who hated to see it change. But now I love it."
