STEVE EARLE, ASHLEY MCBRYDE, CHRIS STAPLETON, AND MORE TO CELEBRATE SONGWRITERS AT UPCOMING 9TH ANNUAL NASHVILLE SONGWRITER AWARDS
Tickets on sale beginning Friday, July 17 at 10:00 a.m. CT
City National Bank to present the awards September 22 at Ryman Auditorium
July 15, 2026 (Nashville, Tenn.) – Tickets for the 9th annual Nashville Songwriter Awards go on sale this Friday, July 17 at 10:00 a.m. Central! The Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) alongside presenting partner City National Bank are excited to reveal the first set of performers confirmed to participate in the evening’s celebrations, a night honoring songs and those who wrote them! Steve Earle, Ashley McBryde and Chris Stapleton will each participate with special performances on September 22 at Ryman Auditorium to honor award recipients, and over a dozen songwriters will also spend their evening performing, taking home honors, and celebrating their peers. Additional announced performers include Dan Alley, Ryan Beaver, Jacob Davis, Ray Fulcher, Ben Johnson, Chris LaCorte, Chase McGill, Neil Medley, Josh Miller, Blake Pendergrass, Hunter Phelps, Bobby Pinson, Jeremy Stover, Lydia Vaughan, and Jordan Walker. More performers to be announced!
Performances throughout the night will center around industry honorees, songs celebrated by peers as ones they “wish they had written,” and those who have achieved top marks in chart performance throughout the past year. Previously revealed honorees are Vince Gill (Kris Kristofferson Lifetime Achievement Award), Paul Williams (NSAI President’s Keystone Award), Blake Pendergrass (Songwriter of the Year), and Riley Green (Songwriter-Artist of the Year). The ‘Song of the Year’, ’10 Songs I Wish I’d Written’ awards, and the ‘Legendary Song’ award honors will be concealed until night-of, revealed through stories and performances from the stage.
Tickets for the September 22 ceremony will be available for purchase at www.ryman.com beginning Friday, July 17 at 10:00 a.m. CT.
The event is produced each year by the Nashville Songwriters Association International, the world’s largest not-for-profit songwriters trade organization dedicated to protecting the rights of and serving aspiring and professional songwriters in all genres of music. Follow @nsaiofficial / #songwriterawards on socials to stay up-to-date on all announcements and news.
A special thank you to our event sponsors: City National Bank, General Motors, Loeb & Loeb, Recording Industry Association of America, Custom House at Guitar Center, Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp, Jack Daniel's, Recording Academy Songwriters & Composers Wing, SoundExchange, Tennessee Association of Broadcasters, The Mechanical Licensing Collective.
For more information, please visit nashvillesongwriters.com.
ABOUT STEVE EARLE
Steve Earle is one of the most acclaimed singer-songwriters of his generation. A protege of legendary songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, he quickly became a master storyteller in his own right, with his songs being recorded by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, The Pretenders, and countless others. 1986 saw the release of his record, Guitar Town, which shot to number one on the country charts and is now regarded as a classic of the Americana genre. Most recently, Earle’s 1988 hit Copperhead Road was made an official state song of Tennessee in 2023.
Subsequent releases like The Revolution Starts...Now (2004), Washington Square Serenade (2007), and TOWNES (2009) received consecutive GRAMMY® Awards. Jerry Jeff, released in 2022, consisted of Earle’s versions of songs written by Jerry Jeff Walker, one of his mentors.
Earle has published both a novel I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011) and Dog House Roses, a collection of short stories (Houghton Mifflin 2003). Earle produced albums for other artists such as Joan Baez (Day After Tomorrow) and Lucinda Williams (Car Wheels on A Gravel Road).
As an actor, Earle has appeared in several films and had recurring roles in the HBO series The Wire and Tremé. In 2009, Earle appeared in the off-Broadway play Samara, for which he also wrote a score that The New York Times described as “exquisitely subliminal.” Earle wrote music for and appeared in Coal Country, for which he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. Earle is the host of the weekly show Hard Core Troubadour on Sirius Radio’s Outlaw Country channel.
In 2020, Earle was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. And in 2023, Steve was honored by the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music. Steve’s latest album, “Alone Again (Live)”, released on July 12th, 2024. Most recently, Steve was honored with an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry and was officially inducted on September 17th, 2025.
ABOUT ASHLEY MCBRYDE
“One of Nashville’s most reliable and sophisticated songwriters” (Los Angeles Times), GRAMMY, ACM, and CMA award-winning Grand Ole Opry member Ashley McBryde deals in songs that deliver hard truths with a soulful ferocity. On her new album, Wild, McBryde threads a captivating narrative over 11 tracks, culminating in the moment just before she quit drinking. The Arkansas-bred artist uncovers the deepest layers of her lived experience through it all: the grit and grind of growing up in the Ozarks, the enduring shadow of her fundamentalist upbringing, the fallout of drinking too much, and hard-won reckoning that led her to sobriety. When matched with her thrilling collision of timeless country and blistering rock & roll, the result is equal parts daring autobiography and courageous reclamation of her most untamed nature.
Earning elite accolades across her acclaimed catalog, like 2020’s Never Will, one of the only LPs ever to garner Country Album of the Year nominations from the ACM, CMA, and GRAMMYs all in the same awards season, McBryde is “an artist with many things to say and a big enough voice to slice through the noise” (Rolling Stone). The CMA International Artist Achievement award winner and recipient of an honorary doctorate in music from Arkansas State University is “the genre’s smartest lyricist” (SPIN) and “one of Nashville's brightest innovators” (NPR). Dr. McBryde innovated again last August, creating a haven on Nashville’s Lower Broadway with her non-alcoholic forward concept bar, Redemption Bar, at home on the fifth floor of Eric Church’s Chief’s.
As she moves into her next chapter with an unprecedented clarity, McBryde hopes that listeners might reconnect with their own boldest essence. “When people hear this record, I hope it wakes up the part of them that I’m singing about in Wild—the part that still believes in those unrealized dreams and untaken risks,” says McBryde. “I believe that wild little kid is still alive inside of all of us, and that’s the version of everyone that I want to sing to.”
ABOUT CHRIS STAPLETON
Kentucky-born Chris Stapleton is an 11x Grammy, 19x CMA and 21x ACM Award-winner and one of the country’s most respected and beloved musicians.
In the midst of yet another triumphant year, Stapleton recently won the ACM Award for Male Artist of the Year as well as Best Country Solo Performance at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards for his song “It Takes A Woman.” These accomplishments celebrate Stapleton’s album, Higher, which includes break-out songs “White Horse” and “Think I’m In Love With You.” Produced by Dave Cobb, Morgane Stapleton and Chris Stapleton, the record landed on several “Best of” lists including Billboard, Esquire, Los Angeles Times, Vulture and Rolling Stone, who praises, “dazzling…the best evidence yet for the way one man’s voice has become synonymous with the very idea of a musical genre.” Additionally, The New Yorker declares, “Stapleton is the rare country star with both traditional bona fides and broad commercial appeal. He has an outlaw soul and a pop star’s capacity for inescapable hooks,” while GQ proclaims, “In an age rife with division, he’s maybe the only thing Americans all agree on.”
Known for his electric live performances, Stapleton will continue his extensive “All-American Road Show” through this summer including two shows at NYC’s Madison Square Garden. Additionally, Stapleton has recently collaborated with Post Malone (“California Sober”), Dua Lipa (“Think I’m In Love With You (Live from the 59th ACM Awards)”), Slash (“Oh Well”) and George Strait (“Honky Tonk Hall of Fame”), released a version of Tom Petty’s “I Should Have Known It” for the new Tom Petty tribute album and returned to NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” for the third time as musical guest. He also performed the National Anthem at 2023’s Super Bowl LVII and has worked in recent years with Adele, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran, Justin Timberlake, P!nk, Sheryl Crow, Santana and many more.
Stapleton and his wife, Morgane, are founders of the Outlaw State of Kind charitable fund, which supports a variety of causes that are close to their hearts.
About City National
City National Bank is dedicated to helping clients thrive and communities prosper. Founded in 1954, City National is the largest bank headquartered in Los Angeles with $98 billion in assets as of April 30, 2026.
A subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), City National delivers personalized service and specialized expertise in wealth management and private banking, entertainment and sports banking, commercial banking, and consumer banking, with branches and banking offices in major markets across the Western, Mid-Atlantic and Southeast U.S. City National and its investment affiliates manage or administer $112 billion in client investment assets. In 2025 alone, the company made charitable contributions of nearly $11 million to nonprofits that support the communities it serves.
City National Bank. Member FDIC. City National Bank does business in the state of Florida as CN Bank. For more information, visit cnb.com.
About Nashville Songwriters Association International
The Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) is the world’s largest not-for-profit songwriters trade association. Established in 1967, the membership of more than 5,000 active and professional members spans the United States and foreign countries. NSAI, with nearly 100 chapters, is dedicated to protecting the rights of and serving aspiring and professional songwriters in all genres of music. NSAI has been responsible for many advocacy advances for songwriters including its work on the Music Modernization Act and creation of the MLC, creating the first group copyright infringement insurance for songwriters, passing the landmark Songwriter Capital Gains Tax Equity Act and owns The Bluebird Cafe.
