All 4 the Hall benefit Tuesday night at Bridgestone Arena.
The all-star country concert, conceived by Vince Gill and Keith Urban, is a benefit for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and featured more than a dozen country singers. The roster ranged from Hall of Famers to recent chart-toppers, all coming together to help preserve country music's history.
"Country music is America's music," Underwood said. "(The Country Music Hall of Fame) is the pride of Nashville, and so many people get to go through and see it and learn about people who came before, people they didn't even know, and feel that much more connected to our music and its artists."
All 4 the Hall kicked off at 7:30 Tuesday night with Urban and Gill dueting on the Everly Brothers' "Wake Up Little Susie," but rehearsals started three days before.
The more than a dozen artists participating in the show started pouring into the rehearsal space Sunday to practice with the band of elite Music City musicians — including Gill and Urban — that would back many of them during the show.
Lee Ann Womack was one of the last to rehearse. She chose to sing her hit "A Little Past Little Rock" and debut a brand-new song called "The Way I'm Livin' " from an album due out this fall. Gill and Urban had never heard the song, and as she faced them during rehearsal and started singing, Urban and several other members of the band broke into wide smiles.
"That was very exciting for me to see how excited all the musicians were about the song," she said. "For me, it kind of does what I've always tried to do, which is to bridge the traditions and earthiness of real country music with the future."
On Tuesday night, Kacey Musgraves watched reverently from the side of the stage, and the audience responded with cheers and a standing ovation after Womack's two-song set.
Keeping the night's theme of Songtellers in mind, most performers elected to cover one of their favorite songs in addition to one of their biggest hits. Musgraves and Underwood both sang Dolly Parton songs. Musgraves chose "Here You Come Again," and Underwood picked "I Will Always Love You."
Both agreed that Parton has been a tremendous influence on their music, and Underwood said that since the night was a "storytellers-type thing," she decided to do a cover song and tell a story about that singer.
"Dolly, I actually got to sing 'I Will Always Love You' with her a few years back," Underwood said before the show. "I thought, 'Why not? I won't do it Dolly justice, but I will do it Carrie style.' "
The performance earned her some of the biggest applause of the night.
David Nail sang his recent No. 1 hit, "Whatever She's Go,t" and created one of the night's most memorable moments when he joined Womack for a duet on Glen Campbell's "Galveston," a cover he features on his new record, "I'm a Fire."
"Playing tonight was every cliche you can think of," Nail said. "It was a dream come true, so surreal to just walk up there and see Vince, who is such a hero of mine, and Keith, who has been so kind. I'm still feeling like a kid at 34 years old living a dream."
While Nail was on stage, Kip Moore was in his dressing room with his band. The musicians were crowded around a beat-up coffee table working up a song he wrote just a few days ago called "My Baby's Gone." They were laid back as they figured out who would play which guitar lick on the song, which Moore said was from "a very dark time in my life."
"I have a difficult time a lot of times doing what I'm expected to do," said Moore, who played none of his hit songs on stage. "This is a songwriter's night and it's different. I'm a songwriter at heart. It's what I do. We're going to be on the edge of our seat. I like that feeling."
Gill, Urban, Musgraves, Brantley Gilbert and Mary Chapin Carpenter — who told the crowd "the only thing I ever wanted to do in my life is write songs" — took turns at the microphone before Moore got his turn to play "My Baby's Gone" and new single "Dirt Road."
He got a standing ovation after the new songs and said: "I felt like everybody was really into what we were doing. It was cool."
The show ended with many of the night's singers returning to the stage to sing "Wagon Wheel" with Darius Rucker.
All of the artists on Tuesday night's bill donated their time to raise money for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. While the final numbers are still being calculated, at the close of the show Urban announced that this year's concert had raised $600,000.
Musgraves said she had such a love for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and traditional country music that there was nowhere she would rather be. She learned about the genre from her grandfather's record collection. "It clued me in to like the Byrds and Glen Campbell and Marty Robbins and Loretta Lynn, and some people don't have that. We need to keep it going for the future."
Reach Cindy Watts at 615-664-2227 and on Twitter @TNMusicNews.
The night's musical lineup
• Keith Urban and Vince Gill: "Wake Up Little Susie"
• Lee Ann Womack: "The Way I'm Livin'" and "A Little Past Little Rock"
• Brett Eldredge: "Beat of the Music" and "Mean to Me"
• Deana Carter: "You & Tequila" and "Strawberry Wine"
• David Nail: "Whatever She's Got" and "Galveston"
• Vince Gill: "What You Give Away" and "Together Again"
• Keith Urban: "Somewhere In My Car"
• Kacey Musgraves: "Merry Go 'Round" and "Here You Come Again"
• Brantley Gilbert: "Bottoms Up"
• Mary Chapin Carpenter: "He Thinks He'll Keep Her" and "Why Shouldn't He"
• Kip Moore: "My Baby's Gone" and "Dirt Road"
• Keith Urban: "Cop Car"
• Ronnie Milsap: "Smoky Mountain Rain" and "Stranger in My House"
• Reba McEntire: "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" and "I'm a Survivor"
• Brantley Gilbert: "Grown Ass Man"
• Carrie Underwood: "I Will Always Love You" and "Last Name"
• Darius Rucker: "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" and "Wagon Wheel"
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