The Weekly sends a country boy to the ACM Awards

Kyle Ellis

Wednesday, April 6, 2011 | 4 p.m.

For me, home is Fort Wayne, Indiana.

If you’ve never been, it’s short on celebrities, glamour and tall buildings, but big on family values, “Hoosier hospitality” and smiling at strangers. It’s the place where my mother taught me to chase my dreams and my father taught me a work ethic. Together they taught me what it means to be a good person.

It’s also the place where an appreciation for those values led me to love country music. While other genres offer songs that define moments, country songs define life. It is the genre, I believe, that best bridges the gap between where you are going and where you have been. It celebrates the simplicity of day-to-day life and makes no apologies for doing so—even at the cost of tired jokes about getting your dog, truck and wife back.

This weekend Vegas went country, and I happily joined the celebration for three nights. It was a little piece of my home, 1,900 miles away. I was like a kid in a candy store, or a cowboy at the Boot Barn—actually, I literally was at the Boot Barn on Saturday to buy the requisite Ariat boots, Wrangler jeans and white button-down.

Saturday

The Jagermeister Country Tour stop featuring Dierks Bentley, Josh Thompson and Miss Willie Brown kicked off my weekend at the Beach at Mandalay Bay. The show was unaffiliated with ACM events, but was a rowdy good time that set a high-energy tone for the rest of the weekend. Miss Willie Brown, a new female duo, rocked the stage hard as the first opening act. Their song, “Sick of Me,” set the tone for the band as refreshingly high-energy, loud and unapologetic. Thompson sang a short, 10-song set that included his hit, “Beer on the Table,” before turning the stage over to Bentley, who met a crowd of more than 3,000. Bentley opened with “Feel That Fire” and closed the set with “Sideways” and “What Was I Thinking,” a fitting end for a crowd that definitely came to party.

Sunday

Unless you’re a celebrity, being on a red carpet is anything but glamorous. It didn’t take me long to learn this Sunday, as the temperature hovered somewhere around the low 80s and I stood in direct sunlight for more than two and a half hours. My plan was to live-tweet as artists arrived. Unfortunately, AT&T’s network was jammed tighter than a pack of tweens at a Taylor Swift concert. Most of my updates wouldn’t transmit. Even more frustrating, many of the high-profile artists I was hoping to photograph didn’t walk the entire red carpet—and I was stationed at the very end.

One bright spot of the experience was chatting with Jason Michael Carroll, the artist behind hits such as “Living Our Love Song” and “Where I’m From.” He had a humbled air around him that I found particularly refreshing. On the red carpet, Carroll, whose new single, “Numbers,” dropped on Monday, met one of his heroes: Donald Rumsfeld, former secretary of defense. Rummy asked the country star about his career successes, and Carroll told the secretary he was grateful for his service to our country. It was a very neat moment to watch—and very country.

Inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Brad Paisley kicked off the 46th annual ACM Awards show with his new single, “Old Alabama,” which features the legendary country group Alabama. The song boasts Paisley’s signature playful tone and samples melodies from many of Alabama’s hits, including their 1982 smash, “Mountain Music.” Blake Shelton, who shared co-hosting duties with Reba McEntire, debuted a brand new single called “Honey Bee,” a summertime song about young love the crowd seemed to love. Both songs had a toe-tapping quality that left me sure I had heard two future number-one hits.

Darius Rucker provided a particularly awe-inspiring moment when he was joined on stage by 25 ACM-Lifting Lives music campers with developmental disabilities. Together they performed a song called “Music From the Heart,” which the campers co-wrote last summer with artists Brett James and Chris Young. Throughout the performance it was clear how much the opportunity meant to the campers and that the music made a very real difference in their lives. At the end, the crowd gave a lengthy standing ovation. The campers ate it up—with two even hamming it up for more applause leading in to the set change. It was a moment that left everyone around me saying, “Now that was cool.”

Monday

ACM billed the evening as Girls’ Night Out, and it was—and not just on stage, either. It seemed like more than half the audience was women—many eager to admit to the show’s emcee they ditched their significant other for a night on the town. Sitting next to me was a couple from—of all places—Fort Wayne, Indiana!

Girl’s Night Out honored eight leading ladies of country music, from Loretta Lynn to Carrie Underwood, but for me three performances stood out. Ronnie Dunn paid tribute to Sugarland frontwoman Jennifer Nettles for being only one of two women in the Academy’s history to ever solo write and perform Song of the Year, in 2007, with “Stay.” Dunn’s performance moved Nettles to tears and earned another of the weekend’s standing ovations.

Miranda Lambert was honored by fiance Blake Shelton for being the only woman to ever win Album of the Year twice. Shelton sang Lambert’s hit “Famous In A Small Town.” Then, in an unexpected twist, she announced she was forming a new band called Pistol Annies, which also features Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley. The trio came out and debuted a song they co-wrote called “Hell on Heels.” It will be interesting to see how much time Lambert dedicates to this project on top of her already successful solo career.

Vince Gill celebrated Underwood for being the only woman to win the Academy’s Entertainer of the Year honor twice. Underwood proved why by teaming up with Gill for a breathtaking rendition of “How Great Thou Art” that had some of the powerful vocals I’ve ever heard. (Underwood’s performance with Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler the previous night also stands out as one of the coolest love collaborations I’ve witnessed.)

Girls Night Out will air on CBS at 8 p.m. April 22. I definitely recommend it, if not for a celebration of some of the most accomplished women in the genre, but also because proceeds from the show directly benefit Lifting Lives.

By the time my Monday night came to a close, my ankles were bloodied and my heels blistered—but my boots were broken in. It hasn’t entirely sunk in that I witnessed live performances by so many talented artists, without having to leave the Strip. Now that it’s all said and done, I can’t help but think Toby Keith said it best in his 1993 hit, “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.”

If only I could sing.