Isbell, Prine Win Big at Americana Awards

by Julian Spivey
The 17th annual Americana Honors and Awards ceremony brought the year’s best night of live music to the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on Wednesday, Sept. 12 featuring the year’s best in the catch-all traditional music genre that is Americana.
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The night’s biggest winner was Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, which won three of the four awards the group was up for, including Album of the Year for 2017’s excellent The Nashville Sound, Song of the Year for the beautiful love song “If We Were Vampires” and Duo/Band of the Year with the fantastic 400 Unit getting some much deserved love.

For the second year in a row the Artist of the Year award went to the legendary John Prine, who’s considered by many to be a father figure within the genre. Unlike last year’s honor this one didn’t seem to have much of a lifetime achievement feel to it with Prine releasing his first album of original material in quite some time, but I still felt like Isbell & the 400 Unit would’ve been the rightful winners. Though as I’ve said before there really aren’t any bad winners when it comes to the Americana Awards.

Isbell & the 400 Unit and Prine had two of the best performances of the evening with the 400 Unit shining brightly on “White Man’s World” off The Nashville Sound, one of the few understated political moments in a less political ceremony than last year. Prine’s performance of the stunning “Summer’s End” was wonderful to see. The track off his album The Tree of Forgiveness, which will be eligible for Americana Awards nominations next year, is one of the most beautifully written tracks of the year and Prine’s career, which is really saying something.

The most political moment of the night came during Rosanne Cash’s acceptance of the Lifetime Achievement Award for the Spirit of Americana Free Speech in Music honor, which was to be expected. Cash gave a beautiful speech about some of the issues in this country – the unfair treatment of women, the way technology companies screw musicians out of pay and assault weapons killing seemingly dozens of school children yearly. Cash’s speech was a highlight of the night for me personally, and I believe she should seriously consider a run for office with her beliefs.

Cash then performed “Everyone but Me,” which will appear on an upcoming album to be released later this year.

The evening began with a great tribute performance of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” by Nathaniel Rateliff, Lukas Nelson and Fantastic Negrito to celebrate the 50th anniversary of CCR’s debut.

Tyler Childers took home the honor for Emerging Artist of the Year hot off his album Purgatory from last year. He performed “Nose on the Grindstone” acoustic and alone shortly before winning the award and it showed what country music can be when stripped down and honest.

Other terrific performances from the evening included “The Joke,” which was nominated for Song of the Year, by Brandi Carlile – who went 0-for-3 in her three categories. It would’ve been really nice to see Carlile take home some hardware, but there are so few categories and so many great nominees. Two of the biggest breathtaking vocals performances of the night were from Emerging Artist of the Year nominees with Anderson East showing off his skills on “King for a Day” and Courtney Marie Andrews with the lovely “May Your Kindness Remain.”

The other nominees for Best Group/Band all had fantastic performances with Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats soulful “Hey Mama,” Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real’s excellent crooning on “Forget About Georgia” and I’m With Her (the super trio of Sarah Jarosz, Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan) performing harmonies on “Overland.”

One of my favorite performances of the night was the lone performance that didn’t seem to have anything whatsoever to do with the awards or honors with Texas troubadour Robert Earl Keen performing my personal favorite song of his “Feelin’ Good Again.”

One of the great things about this night every year is it doesn’t just honor the year’s best in the genre, but also legends. Blues legend Buddy Guy was honored by the Americana Association for Lifetime Achievement for an Instrumentalist and gave a rip-roaring performance of his “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues.” New Orleans soul queen Irma Thomas was honored with the Lifetime Achievement for Performance. She performed “Time Is on My Side,” which she released in 1964 one month before The Rolling Stones had a pop hit with it. k.d. lang was honored with the Trailblazer Award for her career in a multitude of genres, including country music while paving the way for other LGBTQ artists. She performed “Trail of Broken Hearts,” from her 1989 album Absolute Torch and Twang.

The great night of Americana music finished its ceremony with a tribute to the recently passed Aretha Franklin with Thomas, Carlile, Andrews, the McCrary Sisters and The War and Treaty taking turns on “Chain of Fools,” Franklin’s hit from 1967.  

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