5 red-carpet stories from the CMT Music Awards
Country stars hit the carpet Wednesday night before the CMT Music Awards. Here are some of the best stories we heard.
Kellie Pickler: Ready to shoot
This week, Kellie Pickler started shooting her new reality series, I Love Kellie Pickler, set to premiere this fall on CMT. "The first thing we shot this week was just preparing for all the festivities going on this week," says the former Dancing With the Stars champ, who's getting ready for this weekend's CMA Music Festival, along with pretty much every other country singer in town. "We're getting ready to introduce all the characters that are going to be part of the show that we call our Nashville family. Nashville's such an eclectic city; there's people form all over the world. Not just the US, but all over the world. They come here, chasing dreams. So we've got characters from all over the place that are going to be part of the show. We just want y'all to meet our Nashville family.
Chris Young: Ready to roll
Chris Young knows how to make an entrance. He arrived at the CMT Awards red carpet in his white Dodge Challenger, which features prominently in his
for I'm Comin' Over. "I thought, 'Do I need to get a car service? Man, I'll just drive my car from the video over. It's the CMT Awards; it's all about videos anyway,'" he says. The fans gathered outside knew it was him coming, he says, as did one police officer. "The cop that was letting us in goes, 'You've got about 150 feet — hammer it one time; I've got your back," Young says. As for the video, "my favorite quote anybody has sent me so far is, 'I just watched your video, and I need a cigarette.' That's what we were going for."
Chris Carmack: Ready to jump
The one time Nashville star Chris Carmack went skydiving, jumping out of the plane was the easiest part. "I have since been told there's a whole different type of experience in skydiving, where you board a flyable plane," says Carmack, who plays Will Lexington on the show. Carmack says he went in a plane so rickety one of the windows popped out during the ascent, striking him in the face. "There was only room for the pilot, the tandem jumper and me. The plane was so small, they had to open the door before I could position myself to get strapped into tandem. I acutally had to roll over onto my hands and knees with the door open and no parachute attached. Once I jumped out of the plane, I felt safer than I had all day."
Kelsea Ballerini: Ready to make pancakes
During last year's CMA Music Festival, Kelsea Ballerini hosted a fan-club party, and 75 people showed up. This year, though, she also has a top-five hit with Love Me Like You Mean It, along with the public support of Taylor Swift. So she figured she could have her party at the same place, since it held 100. Wrong-o. "We got, like, 700 RSVPs," Ballerini says. So they moved it to a Nashville club called 3rd & Lindsley for a Friday-morning breakfast get-together. "We're cooking pancakes and playing songs."
Chris Janson: Ready to sing
Chris Janson, who's currently climbing the country charts with Buy Me a Boat, made his first awards-show performance Wednesday at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena. He might seem like a newcomer to most people, but he came to Nashville a decade ago, playing for tips at a nearby bar and sleeping in his car. "Literally, a block and a half around the corner, behind a place called Seanachie's on 3rd Avenue," he says. "I was doing my deal and trying to make it, playing Tootsie's every day of the week. Started from the bottom, now we're here, in the words of Drake."