The Highwomen
Thanks to this infernal pandemic, the annual Americana Honors and Awards ceremony was postponed indefinitely back in September. The word came just a few days before the beginning of Thriving Roots, the panel-focused three-day online conference held in lieu of the weeklong in-person AmericanaFest. The Americana Music Association announced that this year's ceremony is officially canceled, and revealed the winners of the awards via social media.
Of the six categories voted on by the association’s members, country supergroup The Highwomen — Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris and Amanda Shires — took home three. Their Dave Cobb-produced debut album The Highwomen was voted Album of the Year, the group itself was crowned Group of the Year, and the song “Crowded Table” (co-written by Lori McKenna, Carlile and Hemby) took home Song of the Year. The group brings together some of the finest singers and writers across roots disciplines, and the quartet puts in extraordinary effort to make the country music industry more inclusive.
The late, great John Prine was recognized with a posthumous Artist of the Year win, his fourth such honor from the organization. It’s hard to fault the voters for taking an opportunity to celebrate Prine’s profound influence — something the Country Music Association should have done and did not.
Expert bluegrass fiddler Brittany Haas got the nod for Instrumentalist of the Year. Austin, Texas’ soul-kissed duo Black Pumas, the only group among the winners not made up entirely of white people, won Emerging Act of the Year.
It’s a hell of a slate, to be sure. The only disappointment is that The Highwomen’s sweep and Prine’s award mean that Brittany Howard, who was nominated for both Album of the Year and Artist of the Year, gets overlooked. Yola, who missed out on Emerging Act of the Year in 2019, was also up for Artist of the Year this time. You could draw parallels to the 2018 Honors and Awards, in which Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit captured half the field on the strength of The Nashville Sound.
The genre was established to promote artists who aren’t easy to categorize. And the association has put good-faith effort into raising awareness of the need for true equity for the Black and brown artists whose music is at the root of all American music — that was the focus of a panel preceding Thriving Roots and another during the conference. Yet one group, composed entirely of white people, got the lion’s share of the recognition this time, possibly driven by implicit biases in the voting body. That’s an issue the association will have to address in order to carry out its mission.
