Sierra Ferrell wins Album, Artist of the Year at 2024's Americana Honors & Awards

Via her Artist of the Year victory at 2024's Americana Honors & Awards held at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, West Virginia-born street busker-turned arena, theater and stadium-ready touring performer Sierra Ferrell is no longer an emerging star.

Fifteen years and four albums into a career growing in renown, her superstar-defining moment occurred at the Ryman Auditorium Wednesday evening as she won both Artist and Album of the Year (for 2024's "Trail of Flowers").

Ferrell was awarded the honor of being Americana's Emerging Artist of the Year three years ago.

Three years later, like her headlining set at the venue six months ago, her artistry was celebrated for evolving into a peerless definition of how rustic and folksy Americana is leading a fan-friendly music industry surge defined by a unique synergy of art, commerce and creative freedom.

Instead of a particularly profound statement, Ferrell, in an almost expected manner, thanked God and a dozen of her friends upon winning Artist and Album of the Year.

Brandy Clark's 'Dear Insecurity' becomes an award-winning, career-redefining anthem

At 2023's Americana Honors & Awards ceremony, Brandy Clark performed her Brandi Carlile duet "Dear Insecurity," which won for Song of the Year on Wednesday evening. It was described as a "show-stopping moment" highlighting what Carlile told The Tennessean was the Americana community's "guiding and foundational collaborative spirit."

That belief has now yielded a pinnacle honor.

Notably, the song's success follows Bonnie Raitt's "Just Like That" in achieving Americana and Grammy victories in the same year-long cycle. Raitt won for "Song of the Year" at 2023's Grammys and Americana Honors & Awards, while Clark's victory followed a win at February's Grammys for Best Americana Performance.

"Having a personal record I made be so well received makes me feel like I'm finally arriving at the party. Discovering what drives your self-doubt and double-down in diving into that is hard, but it's worth it," Clark offered to The Tennessean.

Jobi Riccio, Noah Kahan, Charles Wesley Godwin, Wyatt Flores, Kaitlin Butts surge past their 'emergence'

2024's Americana Music Honors & Awards highlighted that the genre's award-nominated emerging stars — namely that category's winners, Alabama's Red Clay Strays — are now entrenching, then peaking at an incredible pace.

Among the other nominees who performed on Wednesday's program, like 2023's John Prine Songwriter Fellowship winner, Jobi Riccio, only debuted at the Ryman Auditorium 22 weeks ago. Thus, the standing ovation she received for performing "For Me It's You" was business as usual — it certainly wasn't the first time that had happened in the venue.

Notably also, critically acclaimed performers and emerging artist nominees Charles Wesley Godwin and Wyatt Flores debuts at the Mother Church were on the same December evening 40 weeks ago. Kaitlin Butts? With 18 months separating her from her Ryman debut, she's somehow emerging and growing within a sudden, charging class of streaming-to-touring favorites.

Couple those emerging artists with now well-established Americana-to-mainstream pop star — and artist of the year nominee — Noah Kahan, who appeared and performed "Dial Drunk" during the Ryman festivities.

"Once you have the opportunity to put someone whose music you're blown away by onstage at a big venue, you do it," Godwin offered to The Tennessean regarding the pace of Americana's surge and its cause.

"The songs are why we're all here. We want to work hard, be happy and be proud of what we've accomplished at the end of the day."

Lifetime Achievement Award honorees shine

Dave Alvin, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Rev. Gary Davis, Shelby Lynne, Don Was and Dwight Yoakam all received warm, prolonged standing ovations for their Lifetime Achievement Award honors during the evening.

Notably, early in the evening, upon being feted for their honor after being together in various iterations for eight decades, The Blind Boys of Alabama delivered an ecstatic, jubilee version of their "Echoes of the South" album track "Work Until My Days Are Done." The entertaining spectacle showcased the Gospel Hall of Famers as still capable of catching the spirit while roaming the pews of country music's Mother Church for applause.

Notable, too, was the interplay between three-time Grammy-winning bluesman Fantastic Negrito and Americana Honors & Awards house band the McCrary Sisters on a sanctified take on Rev. Gary Davis' take on Texas gospel blues guitarist Blind Willie Johnson's "Samson and Delilah."

Their performance's direct, urgent magic essentially unified a century's worth of foundational music history in three minutes.

Yoakam, when receiving his award, mentioned Flying Burrito Brothers members Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons — among many — when highlighting the "enormous and profound impact of the (foundational genres) of popular music."

"Americana keeps me in touch with that," stated Yoakam humbly.

The icon then performed a rocking, grooving take on his 1993 track "Fast As You."

Americana's 'harmonious, soulful' future

Yes, streaming and touring's recent explosion guide so much of Americana's day-to-day future. However, on Wednesday evening, the working-class cool — and a passionate, iconoclastic love of music broad enough to welcome a show with three times as many performances as award presentations — that has defined Americana for three decades revealed itself as timelessly integral.

The event's finale was a surprise, well-delivered performance by "Cosmic Cowboy"-era Los Angeles-to-Nashville favorites Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell of the former's 50-year-old duet with Gram Parsons on "Grievous Angel."

As well, three other significant points of the evening highlighted the previously mentioned timeless ideal:

Before introducing a performance by 2024's best Americana duo or group, Larkin Poe, legendary performer, producer and songwriter T Bone Burnett, offered, "If you want to know what's good about the United States, listen to our music. People with different dreams and experiences listen to each other and make harmony."

Also, producer and 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award honoree Don Was noted that his greatest creative strength was creating music that allowed listeners to "groove in the face of adversity and make sense out of the chaos of life."

However, when asked by The Tennessean about what precipitated their desire to dive harder, louder and stronger into their soul roots than ever before in performing "Mr. Fun," their unreleased revelation of a soul anthem," multiple-time Americana award winners The War and Treaty's Michael Trotter offered a statement as much defined by hard work as it is by being cooly and proudly comfortable in their skin:

"Artists have to stop asking for permission to be who they authentically are," he said. "We deserve to live and sing the truths in our souls."

2024 Americana Honors & Awards Winners

• Album of the Year

  • "Trail of Flowers," Sierra Ferrell; Produced by Eddie Spear and Gary Paczosa

• Artist of the Year

  • Sierra Ferrell

• Song of the Year

  • "Dear Insecurity," Brandy Clark (feat. Brandi Carlile); Written by Brandy Clark and Michael Pollack

• Duo/Group of the Year

  • Larkin Poe

• Emerging Act of the Year

  • The Red Clay Strays

• Instrumentalist of the Year

  • Grace Bowers

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Sierra Ferrell wins Album, Artist of the Year at 2024's Americana Honors & Awards