Keith Urban was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame on Wednesday (October 11th), along with Kix Brooks, David Lee Murphy, Casey Beathard and Rafe Van Hoy. The iconic Dolly Parton officially inducted him, while his “brother from another planet,” Eric Church performed Keith’s hit, “Who Wouldn’t Wanna Be Me,” with his own twist to the song.
Thank you to @NaSHOFoffical for inviting me into the family. It was the songwriting community that I was first welcomed into when I arrived in Nashville.
They told me I could choose someone to induct me in and I never imagined she’d say yes. Thank you @DollyParton for saying… pic.twitter.com/VYBSoIvT9c
— Keith Urban (@KeithUrban) October 14, 2023
Keith very nearly missed the call inviting him to become a member of the Hall of Fame. ““Mark from the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame called me. I was in the studio,” he recalls.”I didn’t recognize the number, so I ignored it. He called again, and I think I ignored it a second time. (laughs) And then my manager called me and said, ‘Somebody’s trying to get a hold of you. Can you just answer that number? Answer it a third time?’ And he told me that I’d been invited to join the family, as it were.”
During the aforementioned call, Keith had a surreal moment of reflection of when he first came to Nashville to pursue his dreams. “I love that – A – I was in the studio making music, writing, creating,” he says. “It’s the perfect place to be to get that kind of call, but also I was at Backstage Studios and I was at the back door of it which overlooks, from that back door, you can just see the edges of what used to be Shoney’s on Demonbreun, and that’s where I stayed on my very, very first trip here to Nashville was in a tiny little room downstairs on the outside of it. And I was looking over it thinking how long it had been from there to standing in this stop getting this call, and yet also the proximity was sort of metaphorically not that far either, like time has just evaporated. It was no time at all, so it was quite surreal.”
Keith’s Las Vegas residency returns to the Bakkt Theater at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas on November 1st and runs through November 18th.
Audio / Keith Urban talks about getting the call from the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame to invite him to be inducted into the famed institution.
DownloadKeith Urban (Songwriters Hall of Fame call) OC: …quite surreal. 1:07
“Mark from the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame called me. I was in the studio. I didn’t recognize the number, so I ignored it. He called again, and I think I ignored it a second time. (laughs) And then my manager called me and said, ‘Somebody’s trying to get a hold of you. Can you just answer that number? Answer it a third time?’ And he told me that I’d been invited to join the family, as it were. I love that – A – I was in the studio making music, writing, creating. It’s the perfect place to be to get that kind of call, but also I was at Backstage Studios and I was at the back door of it which overlooks, from that back door, you can just see the edges of what used to be Shoney’s on Demonbreun, and that’s where I stayed on my very, very first trip here to Nashville was in a tiny little room downstairs on the outside of it. And I was looking over it thinking how long it had been from there to standing in this stop getting this call, and yet also the proximity was sort of metaphorically not that far either, like time has just evaporated. It was no time at all, so it was quite surreal.”
