NYCountry Swag Attends The 53rd CMA Awards in Nashville

In support of the 53rd Annual CMA Awards, Stephanie and Christina flew down to Nashville to attend and cover the show and all of the week’s festivities live from Nashville. Check out snaps and highlights from the trip on Instagram here. As always, we flew down on Southwest Airlines, making it easy to bring all of our luggage down since they offer two free checked bags. After a smooth flight, we headed directly to grab lunch with our friends at UMG and see their spacious beautiful new office on 2nd ave.

After lunch, we went to our apartment at the brand new Niido Powered by Air BNB. Their prime location (steps away from Bridgestone Arena where the awards were set to take place) was key for us New Yorkers, making their way to meetings and events the entire week.

After a delicious dinner at Bartaco in 12South, we headed back to our place where Kelsey from GoldenGlamm met us and her mobile spray tan kit, to help us get that perfect award show glow. The next morning we headed to Jon Alan Salons in The Gulch for incredible blowouts. Right from there we headed to The CMA Theater at The Country Music Hall of Fame for the CMT Next Women of Country event highlighting a bunch of new, fabulous women in the country genre. For more about that event click here. 

Before heading out for the night, we made sure to hydrate thanks to Liquid IV and slap on our Rally Patches to help us through the next two nights of being out late in Music City. Next up, we headed to the Cumulus Campus to sit with our friend, Nash Nights Live and With Elaina host Elaina D. Smith to be featured on an episode of her podcast, Breaking Thru with Elaina. For more about our honest and open conversation on the podcast, click here to listen.

After a quick stop at LA Jackson, the rooftop bar located in the Thompson Hotel to catch up with our friends at Monument Records, we went to the Broken Bow Records/BMG Pre-Party at Cambria which featured performances from so many of their insanely talented artists like King Calaway, Lindsay Ell, Jimmie Allen, LOCASH, Jason Aldean and many more.

Closing out the night, we went to celebrate our Woman of the Month, Nicolle Galyon after she took home the BMI Songwriter of the Year award. This lowkey house party was catered by Sonic, had milkshakes ready for the attendees when they walked in the door and even had a ‘check your shoes’ station where you could swap out those uncomfortable heels for the coziest, Barefoot Dreams socks.  After dancing to Spice Girls and taking way too many photo booth pictures, we headed back to our place to get a good night’s sleep before the big show day.

Wednesday morning we headed to The Sutler to catch three of Warner Music Nashville’s brightest rising talents, Ingrid Andress, Trea Landon, and Gabby Barrett. The three performed ‘in the round’ style, taking turns talking about the songs that they had written before performing them acoustically.

Then it was back to our place to get ready for the night ahead. Thanks to Rent the Runway, Stephanie and I literally were sparkling, rocking gorgeous dresses that we had rented from the convenience of our homes back in New York.  We walked down the block and grabbed our media passes from Will Call, realizing that we had AMAZING seats. A huge thank you to everyone at the Country Music Association for making our very first award show, truly memorable. The ushers escorted us to THE FIRST ROW of the bowl, the first row up from the floor. Our excitement was at an all-time high.

The award show did not disappoint. As a women-run business, being able to attend the night where the award show was dedicated to honoring the women of the genre was inspiring. As soon as the opening number, a tribute to females of the past and present started, we knew we were in for an epic night. From seeing some of our favorite artists win awards, (Old Dominion for Vocal Group of the Year) and (Maren Morris for Album of the Year) to watching outstanding performances, we were in country music heaven. Check out a full recap of the spectacular show here.

Immediately following the broadcast, we headed to the Sony After Party, where we got to catch up with a ton of our friends in the industry as well as Sony Music Nashville’s greatest artists. They even had Dry Bar and Sephora stations so award goers could freshen up their looks. We ended our award show week at Big Machine Labels after-party.

After a quick stop to change, we headed to the airport for an early morning Southwest flight, which proved to be a great decision, we each had an entire row to ourselves.

Thank you to each of the teams that invited us and welcomed us with open arms this past week, making Nashville feel even more like our second home and allowing us to experience a one of a kind CMA Awards week.