Country stars shine, Rob Potts honoured at CMC Awards

Last night saw a celebration of both new and established country acts, with Foxtel’s Country Music Channel (CMC) presenting their annual awards on the Gold Coast.

Hosted by The McClymonts (who truly injected some lighthearted fun into the ceremony, particularly when it came to international acts in the house), top award winners on the night were Adam Brand and Keith Urban, each scoring two gongs.

Brand picked up Australian Video of the Year, as well as the coveted CMC Australian Artist of the Year – an award he has won three times previously. Urban dominated both International categories, CMC International Artist of the Year and CMC International Video of the Year (which he shared with Carrie Underwood for ‘The Fighter’).

Other winners on the night included The McClymonts (Group/Duo of the Year), Lee Kernaghan (Highest Selling Australian Album of the Year), Travis Collins (Male Artist of the Year) and Christie Lamb (Female Artist of the Year).

Renowned for being the only viewer-voted country music awards, this year the CMC Awards saw more participation recorded across the eight categories than ever before – well over half a million votes.

CMC Group program manager Tim Daley puts this kind of engagement down to a sentiment that was echoed throughout the night – the enthusiasm of country music fans.

“I think the awards are just growing year on year, and probably a few artists that fans are really passionate about this year really drove the voting,” he told TMN.

Daley added that the genre has never been stronger in Australia, and is boosted by upcoming acts.

“We’ve got a lot of people down at that lower end of country music, and what this night is all about is trying to funnel these artists into the top echelons of country music, so more Australians can make a living just doing that exclusively.”

One of those acts was Tailgate Drive, who was awarded the inaugural New Artist of the Year, a category named as a tribute to the late Rob Potts.

While the duo, consisting of Troy Kemp and Damien Baguley, joked about being the “oldest new talent ever” while accepting the award, they were humble about their nomination.

“It was a bit of an experiment outside of Troy Kemp and Viper Creek Band, but we’ve gotten a lot of love for it,” they told TMN on the red carpet before the ceremony.

“When we play around the local Newcastle area where we live, we get two or three hundred people turn up every night to watch us play, and it spins us out. If people dig it, we’ll keep giving it to them.”

Country music icon Lee Kernaghan, who presented the award to Tailgate Drive, is hopeful about the shift that he’s witnessing in the genre.

“I absolutely love young country, and there’s so much of it coming through at the moment. I’ve been listening to the new Missy Lancaster album, the Melanie Dyer album, the new Wolfe Brothers album is going to be an absolute classic… [it’s] sensational stuff.”

“I kind of look up to them, and it’s great to be getting on air on The Range, because we get to play all of this new country music and put it out through 71 stations around Australia. So it’s a great way to be breaking these new artists as well.”

“I think radio is really embracing country music at the moment, because music is just so good. When you start listening to all of the stuff that’s coming out of Australia and America, it’s just really good music and you can understand why so many people are getting into it.”

Tom Busby from Busby Marou added: “I think the genre of country music in general is changing in Australia. It’s a beautiful thing – some people used to be scared about it years ago, and the young people in particular would be a bit worried that they couldn’t say the word ‘country’ for fear of not being played on the radio.

“These days I think it’s pretty important that the young people are following each other and doing what they want, saying ‘here’s a good country song.’”

There’ll be an encore broadcast of the CMC Awards on FOX8 this Sunday March 18 at 4pm AEDT and on CMC throughout the week from Monday March 19 at 7pm.