Allison Russell, Brandi Carlile and Billy Strings were among the winners Wednesday night at the Americana Honors & Awards ceremony in Nashville, where the love was spread around among the genre’s current leading lights.
Six different performers prevailed in the six voted categories, with newcomer Sierra Ferrell, instrumentalist Larissa Maestro and the husband-wife duo the War and Treaty also coming up winners.
“It’s so surreal. I honestly couldn’t believe it when they said my name,” Russell said after the show, coming off the triumph of winning album of the year for her first solo album, “Outside Child,” released in summer 2021 when she was all but unknown. “I was like, that can’t be right.” Of the 3400 Americana Music Association members who voted on the award, she said, “I felt like they took the journey” of listening through a deeply autobiographical album that explores the artist’s emergence out of a traumatic youth.
The competition can be more inter-familial at the Americana Awards than at other shows, and the three leading nominees — Carlile, Russell and Yola, who had three nominations each — have been particularly tight-knit in supporting and guesting with one another. Carlile was even instrumental in helping get Russell her record deal with Fantasy Records.
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In the end, Russell and Carlile split two of the awards they were up for. Russell, a first-time nominee, was honored for album of the year for her debut release as a solo artist, “Outside Child,” which landed atop many critics’ top 10 lists (including Variety‘s) at the end of 2021.
Carlile, who had previously won five Americana Awards, picked up her sixth Wednesday night for song of the year, for “Right on Time.” (The singer-songwriter shared the song award with three co-writers, band members Phil and Tim Hanseroth and producer Dave Cobb.)
Those two were both nominated for artist of the year as well. But that went to Billy Strings, a neo-bluegrass touring monster earning his very first Americana Award. He’d been nominated for it last year, but lost then to Carlile, who had won in that category two of the previous three years. (Strings was on tour and absent from the ceremony, with his award being accepted on his behalf by presenter Jerry Douglas.)
The War and Treaty got their second award from the Americana Music Association, coming up as winners for duo/group of the year after previously having claimed the emerging artist trophy three years ago. Their performance of “That’s How Love Is Made” earned a standing ovation earlier in the evening.
The association’s lifetime achievement honors went to the Fairfield Four, the Indigo Girls, Chris Isaak, the late country star Don Williams and legendary Stax executive Al Bell, all previously announced. To their ranks was added a surprise lifetime award for Buddy Miller, who was leading the house band for the show, as he has most of the ceremony’s 21 years. Robert Plant, who has had Miller as his and Alison Krauss’ band leader in the past, presented Miller’s award.
Tribute was paid to Luke Bell, a cult favorite among traditional country music lovers who died by suicide in August. JP Harris said he’d been called to come in from the road just days earlier to salute Bell in song, and sang “The Bullfighter,” prefacing it with a message about the need for more attention to mental health needs and the message: “Luke never got a chance to sing this song himself from this stage like he should’ve, so I’m going to do my damnedest in your stead, little brother.”
A departed singer who did get his due in his lifetime, Don Williams, was paid homage by Lukas Nelson, who covered “Lord, I Hope This Day is Good.”
A majority of the evening’s nominees performed at some point during the three-hour-plus show, including a joint performance of “You’re Not Alone,” Russell’s new single, with Carlile, who is also featured on the record. Carlile sang her own “You and Me on the Rock” with the duo Lucius, who contributed harmonies on the “In These Silent Days” album version. Other nominees to perform included Adia Victoria, James McMurtry, Neal Francis and Morgan Wade along with winners Ferrell and the War and Treaty and honorees the Indigo Girls, Fairfield Five and Isaak, the latter preceded by his award’s presenter, Lyle Lovett.
Speaking about the embrace of her “Outside Child” album after the show, Russell said, “We were just talking about this with Brandi — she was talking about her album ‘The Story’ and how it’s had this many-years-long arc of kind of discovery and rediscovery and people finding the songs at different times. And I feel like, in a way that’s what’s happened with ‘Outside Child’ over the last 16 months or more, since it came out May 21, 2021… though we had a whisper campaign before that.”
Russell spoke glowingly of what it “meant to be nominated alongside Yola, Brandi, Adia and of course Robert Plant and Allison Krauss… but specifically Yola and Brandi, because they’re like chosen family. It’s like Alice Walker said, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. For so many years, there was this false scarcity construct put on Black women — Black people in general — and queer people, where there’s only room for one of you, if at all. And all of us just decided to stop drinking that Koolaid, if we ever did, and uplifting each other. And I feel like all of this goodness that’s coming about is from this beautiful sort of rainbow creative coalition and communion where we’re rejecting those false competition and scarcity constructs and saying we are stronger and happier and better and more abundant and protected together, you know? And this award feels like it’s about them.
“Of course I’m incredibly honored in a very personal way. Unfortunately, also, it’s not personal in that so many people have had parallel experiences to mine,” she said, talking about the childhood sexual abuse and trauma she dealt with in her album — “far, far, far too many. But in general, just the trauma that we’ve all gone through in the last couple of years, I feel like I don’t know that this record would’ve been heard in the same way, if at all, at any other time in our history.”
The full list of winners, both in the voted and honorary categories:
Album of the Year: “Outside Child,” Allison Russell; produced by Dan Knobler
Artist of the Year: Billy Strings
Song of the Year: “Right On Time,” Brandi Carlile; written by Brandi Carlile, Dave Cobb, Phil Hanseroth and Tim Hanseroth
Duo/Group of the Year: The War and Treaty
Emerging Act of the Year: Sierra Ferrell
Instrumentalist of the Year: Larissa Maestro
Legacy of Americana Award, presented in partnership with the National Museum of African American Music: Fairfield Four
President’s Award: Don Williams (posthumous)
Lifetime Achievement Award for Performance: Chris Isaak
Lifetime Achievement Award for Executive: Al Bell
Spirit of Americana Award: Indigo Girls