Universal Universal Music Group Nashville Pressroom

“Hi! This is Alan Jackson. I hope y’all have a very happy Thanksgiving out there.”

“Hey Guys, I’m Billy Currington. Have a great Thanksgiving.”

“Hey! This is TJ, and this is John, and we’re wishing you a very Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Hey! What’s up, guys? I’m Canaan Smith, wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Hey! This is Clare Dunn, wishing you a very Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Hey y’all! What’s up? This is Darius Rucker, wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Hey! This is David Nail, wishing you a very Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Hey! It’s Dierks Bentley! Happy Thanksgiving!”

“It’s Easton Corbin here, and I want to wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Hey folks! It’s Eric Church, wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Hey! This is Eric Paslay, wishing you a very Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Hey guys! Gary Allan here. I just want to wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving, and have a Happy Holidays and make sure you’re safe out there. Drive safe. Party your butts off, but do it safe.”

“Hi! This is George Strait, wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Hey! It’s Jon Pardi, wishing you a very Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Hey! It’s Kacey Musgraves, wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Happy Thanksgiving everybody. It’s Keith Urban here. I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all of you listening for your incredible love and support that I’ve received over the last year, and to wish you and all of your family all the very best for this holiday.”

“Hey what’s up guys, this is Kip Moore wishing you a very happy Thanksgiving.”

“Hey everybody! We are Lady Antebellum, wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Hey! This is Lauren Alaina, wishing you a very Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Hey, we’re Little Big Town. Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Hey! It’s Luke Bryan, wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Hey! It’s Mickey Guyton here, and I want to wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Hey everybody! This is Sam Hunt, wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving.”

“We are The Band Perry, wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving.”

Luke Bryan (Move) OC: …off on it. :38
“‘Move’ is all the fun you could want to have in a song in my opinion. It’s what I envision, big ole country dance clubs across the country playing that and it filling up and everybody having a great time. And when you talk about there’s a little inside story about a girl that moves to the south and she’s kind of shy and then she gets in with these kind of rebel crowd girls and they teach her how to let her hair down and all that, it’s pretty fun. A lot of imagery in that. Kind of a cool picture painted in that, and [I’m] really proud that I got to write that song with Michael Carter and Jay Clementi. We worked out butt off on it.”

Eric Church (CMA Album of the Year) OC: …tried to do. :43
“What’s great about it is, it kind of validates, I always believe that if you put everything into making the best record you can make, regardless of how you release it and regardless of the press and they hype, the music wins. For me, that was the biggest thing about tonight is music wins. It doesn’t matter, you don’t need a 12-week ad cycle on a bunch of networks to [release] an album. I think the way we did this was we let the music lead and we started with the fans. I didn’t think we’d be here a year later winning Album of the Year, but we made the best album we could and we just let the music be the music. I think for our entire career that’s what we’ve always tried to do.”

[NOTE: Eric says “sh&#” in the soundbite.You WILL need to bleep it.]
Eric Church (CMA Album Award means so much) OC: …this helped. [laughs] 1:09
“Being a fan of country music, I revere country music and the history of it, and part of the reason why this award means so much to me is I’m a student of it. I’m a student of country music and especially the album of the Year Award, so the opening alone was mindblowing. I was backstage and I’m sitting there with Olivia Newton-John, and it was all I could do to not go into [sings] ‘Summer Lovin’,’ shit, I was trying to da, da, da, da, da, I mean, it was more than I could handle. Just across the board, being with Dolly Parton; I had a great conversation with Vince Gill about cheeseburgers [laughs]. I mean, for me to be a fan of country music and to have a night like tonight and we all come tonight and honor what it is. I’m most proud that we did that, that we didn’t just come out here and play our single, that we honored where we came from. I think it’s important for where we’re going. I think it was the best awards show I’ve been a part of, and this helped. [laughs]”

Eric Church (performing Kill a Word on CMAs) OC: …stage with her. :43
“Well, unfortunately it’s relevant. I wish it wasn’t. I think in the world we live in, it’s, the whole world has lost its mind. I’ve performed a lot on awards shows. I’ve played a lot of songs, but I don’t know that I’ve ever had a performance that felt more important and timely than this one, and unfortunately, that’s true. With Rhiannon, I was a big fan of the Carolina Chocolate Drops first of all, and for her to be able to stand up there and be able to put emotion on it is the big thing. She feels it. It’s coming from here (heart) and not here (head), and I think to be able to share the stage with her, I was honored to share the stage with her.”

Chris Stapleton (Fire Away CMA video) OC: …the video. 1:03
“The label kept asking me if I was going to do a video for the record, and they kept asking what I wanted to do. We were in this meeting hall at the label, and I said, ‘Here’s what I want to do. Here’s the idea,’ and I got dead silence out of it, and they thought I was a crazy man for a minute. Then they went back and thought about it and everybody got on board with it and we found Tim who was a remarkable director to direct, and I had this crazy idea to get Ben Foster in the video and I didn’t know him at all [laughs] at the time, and he was kind enough to do it. He brought in the actual reason for doing it, which was to raise the awareness. I had the idea for a storyline, and then everything happened very organically with that video and he brought Margarita in to play the female role in that video. It became something hopefully that has value beyond just being a video for the sake of doing a video. That’s what I liked about the video.”

Chris Stapleton (Dwight & heroes) OC: …reality. :39
“I looked at Dwight before walking onstage tonight, and he and I have gotten to know each other a little bit. We wrote a song a couple weeks ago and really hit it off. But I looked at him when we were walked onstage tonight, and I try my best not to be a fan and freak people out, but I looked at Dwight and I said, ‘Man, I just want you to know you’re a hero, and I really appreciate you doing this.’ It got me, to get to do that. What a remarkable thing. It’s an alternate reality. My buddy J.T. Cure, the bass player in the band, we step off the bus sometimes, and we’re looking around at what we’re doing, and we just start laughing, because it really feels like an alternate reality.”

George Strait (CMA AJ performance) OC: …came out of it. :32
“Well Alan has been one of my favorite people that I’ve met in the business since I’ve been in it.  I’ve met a lot of great people and Alan and I have become friends.  We just have.  I love his writing, his singing and we cut some things together before.  And so when all of this came about I called him and we talked about it and had our little heart to heart about everything.  And so this is kind of what came out of it.”

Dierks Bentley (Elle King) OC: …new place. :36
“Well, I love Elle King’s voice. I mean she has such a unique voice, and you never know if her voice is going to blend with your voice. I didn’t found out until I went down to the studio in Austin, and right away it was just a really natural sounding blend. Her voice just lifted up this song. The lyrics of this song are pretty strong and her voice on this particular song really takes the song to a whole other level. I really wanted to find a way for her not to just be background vocals. I wanted to find a way to really get her included in the song, so I gave her the second verse and made the song more of a conversation as opposed to just background vocals. And it really, it just took the song to a whole new place.”

Elle King (Different for Girls) OC: …song with him. 1:08
“The song itself, it’s an interesting take on a breakup or relationship song. I don’t know if this is why Dierks wanted me to sing on it, you know, besides just my voice, I think I take a really interesting writing approach with my songs about breakups, and I write often from the male perspective. And this song is really thinking about how different men and women are through a breakup, and so I was really excited to be a part of someone else’s song that’s kind of jumping outside the norm of a breakup song or a relationship song. I think it’s got a sweetness to it. The lyrics of this song are really smart, so I thought that it was kind of just a good fit, and I really do want to break out in the country world, because I love country music, not just because I play the banjo. I love country music, and I really love that he’s bringing like a lot of attitude, and I think comedy, to modern country. So, I was really excited to sing this song with him.”

Chris Stapleton (Fire Away video) OC: …grew from there. :25
“The song is kinda about loving somebody unconditionally through not so easy times. The concept of the video kind of came to me as that would be the hardest possible space in which to love somebody. I’ve been a huge fan of Ben’s [Foster] for a long time and so we tried to track him down and he was kind enough to take the phone call. And then it kind of grew from there.”

Chris Stapleton (Fire Away video) 2 OC: …in the world. :29
“I wanted to get real actors and not spend a lot of time making it a promo video for me, and that was how I wanted to make a video, because I felt like that it was more artful and meaningful on the backend. That was the thing – it was just a notion, and then it became real and useful and something that can hopefully make the world a better place through putting the notion out in the world.”