Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit at the Ryman, 10/9/2017
At the Ryman Auditorium Wednesday night, the Americana Music Association held its 19th annual Honors and Awards Ceremony. Both titans of and up-and-comers in the extraordinarily fluid genre were recognized for outstanding work between March 31, 2017, and April 1, 2018. All the same, there were a couple of head-scratching losses.
In the six categories voted on by AMA members, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit earned three awards on four nominations. They scored Album of the Year for their stellar Dave Cobb-produced LP The Nashville Sound, which was nominated for the CMA’s Album of the Year award and won the Grammy for Best Americana Album; the ensemble was Group of the Year; and the poignant “If We Were Vampires” took home Song of the Year, adding to the Grammy it won for Best American Roots Song.
John Prine released The Tree of Forgiveness, his first studio album of new original songs since 2005, on April 13, shortly after the nomination period ended. But his consistent presence as a guiding force among genre-bending singer-songwriters (and probably also the great tracks released in the months prior to the album) contributed to him earning his third Artist of the Year award, following wins in 2005 and 2017.
Tyler Childers is a rising young talent whose work you’d probably call country music (so would he — read more in an interview in the Sept. 6 issue of the Scene). While Music Row doesn’t seem to be taking much notice, fans and critics certainly are, and he was crowned Emerging Artist of the Year. Molly Tuttle made history in 2017 as the first woman to be nominated for and win the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitarist of the Year award, and she took home Americana’s Instrumentalist of the Year on Wednesday.
There were salutes to individuals who helped shape the genre long before anyone was calling it “Americana.” Chicago blues icon Buddy Guy and New Orleans soul legend Irma Thomas received Lifetime Achievement Awards for Instrumentalist and Performance, respectively. Rosanne Cash, who last year spoke out on social media about white supremacy and wrote a New York Times op-ed about gun control, received the “Spirit of Americana” Free Speech Award. The Americana Trailblazer Award went to k.d. lang, a country ace who was open about being gay when that was a radical move, and the Jack Emerson Lifetime Achievement Award for Executive went to Olivia Records founders Cris Williamson and Judy Dlugacz.
Both Margo Price and Brandi Carlile were nominated in the same three categories — Artist of the Year, Song of the Year and Album of the Year — in the wake of highly acclaimed albums, but somehow neither took home a single trophy. Both have earned favorable press and appreciation from fans, peers and legends, as well as high-profile appearances on television and extensive tours. It’s not like they’re relative unknowns.
That’s not to say that Isbell and his band, who won all three of the categories Price and Carlile lost, were slacking off. But Americana’s image — that is, as a genre that helps level the playing field for artists who aren’t easy to pigeonhole — doesn’t exactly align with a sweep of the awards by a single artist. As Americana players continue to enjoy increasing and well-deserved commercial success, that’s a tension the association will have to contend with: What happens when a space made to recognize the folks who weren’t likely to become stars begins to amass star power?
