once sang, there’s no place but Texas — and some of country music’s hallmark awards shows seem to agree. In the past two years, two big-budget ceremonies have been staged not in Nashville, but in the Lone Star State. On Sunday, the, airing on CBS, made their return to Austin for a second consecutive year and leaned hard into all the trappings of Texas.opened the show with an everything-is-bigger performance of a song called “That’s Texas.
Perhaps the move to Texas and the celebration of all its imagery is a way of acknowledging the state’s status as the current hotbed of country music. Few scenes in Nashville and beyond are as vibrant and exciting as the red-hot Red Dirt movement presently transforming once-regional names likeBut as it turns out, transporting a longtime Nashville production to Texas can only do so much.