Jon Pardi picked up his first CMA Award for New Artist of the Year, and he wished he had more time to thank EVERYBODY.

“If I did win, my dream was to get like a receipt and drop it and be like, ‘These are all of the people I need to thank right here,’ you know, and it keeps going,’ says Jon. “It’s been an amazing year, and I’ve had people that believed in me since day one and I’m just glad that I had somebody like Capitol Records, country radio. They just stuck behind me and never gave up on me.”

The West Coast native’s determination to keep plugging at his music career led to his success. “When I drove here from California, I said, ‘Man, it’s going to be a crappy ride back. That’s a long ways,’” he says. “But, perseverance and believing in myself and constantly keeping myself around people I believe in and just sticking with it. It’s so amazing to be sitting here finally, and I said this is the year that my family doesn’t have to stop the recording to find me in the audience.”

Jon is climbing the country charts with his latest song, “She Ain’t In It,” the follow-up to three No. 1 hits from his sophomore album, California Sunrise.

Jon is headlining his CMT Lucky Tonight Tour, and the trek is scheduled to make stops in Chicago on Thursday (November 16th), Rosemont, Illinois on Friday (November 17th) and Milwaukee on Saturday (November 18th).