What Texas Artists Had to Say on the CMT Music Awards Red Carpet
Jackie Venson, Midland, and more talk country music's Austin migration
By Maggie Q. Thompson, Fri., April 7, 2023
About a centennial after it was called country & western, and post-2010s bro country, the industry arrived in Austin Sunday night, seeming ready to lean back into the "western" palette of the genre. On the occasion of the CMT Music Awards touching down at the local Moody Center after decades in Nashville, the Chronicle caught up with Texans on the red (OK, aqua) carpet. (Read our review of the awards show here, or find a photo gallery of performances here.) Across the board, they felt that the CMT's relocation to Austin plays into a greater shift in what listeners want out of their country music. Here's what the Lone Star talent had to say.
Jackie Venson
"It's funny because Austin has always been really irreverent to this kind of behavior," Austin singer-songwriter and guitar wiz Jackie Venson said, standing among spray-tanned and hairdoed reporters, publicists, and musicians. "Austin's always made fun of it. ... We don't care about your Grammy, we have the Austin Music Awards. We don't care about your Carnegie Hall, we have Paramount Theatre. ... So, it's funny. But also it's cool because it's a big platform and you can't deny that."
Later that night, Venson got a taste of that big platform firsthand, playing "You Oughta Know" onstage with Alanis Morissette and a group of women country singers. The Austinite said she was shocked by the opportunity. Does Venson believe the country music industry is shopping Austin as a spot for expansion? "It totally is.
"We have a very adverse to mainstream being-told-what-to-do culture here," she added skeptically. "We're hippies. We park on the grass. We don't like HOAs and we're mad at the police. We legalized weed. So you cannot be bringing any of that weird stuff that sometimes comes with country music culture – you can't be bringing that shit up in here. We aren't gonna tolerate it for even a second."
But she's hopeful Nashville and Austin can help each other. "The mainstream industry sometimes paints itself into a corner with all these rules like, you have to be young, pretty, thin, all that weird stuff. Maybe that can be healed by our energy of, like, 'Nope, my armpits are hairy and I swim in the creek and I bring my dog everywhere.' But we kinda need them, too, to get out of our bubble. It is a bigger world than Austin, Texas."
Midland
The men of Midland, Dripping Springs-based country supernova behind new classic "Drinkin' Problem," took shots of their own brand of tequila on the aqua carpet before heading out on tour for six months (with an April 15 date in Georgetown, FYI). On CMT's local move, lead singer Mark Wystrach told the Chronicle: "I don't know that they're trying to shop [Austin] or what they're doing, but I think they're recognizing that Austin is a legitimate capital of live music." Bassist Cameron Duddy chimed in, "Pop music isn't only in New York or L.A. Country music isn't only in Nashville."
Jenna Paulette
Rising-star singer-songwriter Jenna Paulette said she wants to "keep one foot on the ranch and one foot in the country music industry." After eight years in Nashville, Paulette said she'd finally built the connections and career needed to tour nationally, while now being based in her home state of Texas. She pointed to Cody Johnson and the Paramount series Yellowstone as drivers of an industry movement toward Texas. "There's an interesting thing happening right now in country music. There's a throwback thing happening. People are okay with tradition and there's also this interest in Western and the cowboy. That's always been my favorite but it's also always been who I am."
Drake Milligan
North Texas-raised Drake Milligan found his way to Nashville as a high school senior cast as Elvis Presley in the CMT series Sun Records. He's been in Tennessee for the past five years now and clearly riffs off Nineties honky-tonk hits on his 2022 album Dallas/Fort Worth, particularly George Strait. Handily, it's co-produced by Strait's longtime producer, Tony Brown. "I grew up on my dad's records," he said. "We all grew up loving Brooks & Dunn and George Strait and Alan Jackson, all that great music in the Nineties. All of a sudden what's old is new again. People love stories and great records. They love steel guitar and fiddle. It's an exciting time to be a part of country music."
Amanda Kate Ferris
Another Nineties-embracing DFW darling, Amanda Kate Ferris is making big moves in 2023. Her March EP Pedal Steel breaks out the gate with a song penned by the Love Junkies – the powerhouse trio of Nashville songwriters (Hillary Lindsey, Liz Rose, and Lori McKenna) behind countless country chart-toppers that have a habit of not fizzling out. "The fact that [the industry] is embracing more of that traditional sound is huge. That's what I grew up listening to," said Ferris. "The fact that they're having [the CMTs] in Austin says something too, that the industry is leaning in that direction. It's taken some time. We've got our boy Cody Johnson who is really leading that. He's done some incredible things for the industry. I'm excited that people want to hear it."
Corey Kent
Frisco, Texas-based Corey Kent says artists like Parker McCollum, Zach Bryan, and his recent tourmate Cody Johnson have demonstrated that a contemporary Texas sound can sell thousands of tickets and generate massive fan bases. "I love Austin, Texas. I love the music scene here. They don't care what's cool anywhere else, if they think it's cool, then it's cool," said Kent. "The most valuable thing that Texas and Oklahoma and the Red Dirt scene brings to the table [is] authenticity. This is who we are, you get what you see. I'm not going to try to fit into a system or a formula. I do think this is a sign of things to come."
