Molly Tuttle, Brandi Carlile, Tyler Childers Lead 25th Annual Americana Honors & Awards Winners

Molly Tuttle , Brandi Carlile and Tyler Childers were among the big winners at Wednesday night’s (Sept.

16) 25th annual Americana Honors & Awards ceremony, held at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium.

Tuttle, who released the pop-inflected album So Long Little Miss Sunshine earlier this year, picked up her first artist of the year win.

“I am shocked, so honored to just see my name up there with musical heroes,” Tuttle said, while praising how Americana music and the AMA “brings us together, all these different styles of music.” The evening opened in a mighty fashion, as Chris Stapleton joined The Heartbreakers to launch the show with renditions of classics like “American Girl,” “You Wreck Me” and “Breakdown.” The Heartbreakers gave their first performance together since 2017, as they and the late Tom Petty were honored during ceremony with the lifetime achievement award.

“It heals and makes you feel good and makes you wanna drive too fast and it makes you wanna play music–that’s what it did for me,” Stapleton said of the group’s music catalog while presenting the lifetime achievement association to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Petty’s daughter Adria Petty accepted the accolade.

“They created defiant, hopeful music,” Petty said of the music the group made, adding of Tom Petty, “He didn’t care that much for the music industry…but he cared about the music community with his whole heart.” The celebration also honored Robert Plant and the late Dolly Parton with the lifetime achievement award.

Buddy Miller feted Plant, who then took the stage and thrilled the crowd with a mini-set including “Angel Dance” and a rendition of the Black American gospel song “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down.” This year’s Americana Honors & Awards also came just weeks after the passing of one of the evening’s honorees, lifetime achievement award honoree Dolly Parton, who died on Aug.

25 at age 80.

Emmylou Harris, who worked with Parton and Linda Ronstadt on 1987’s Trio and 1989’s Trio II , and had a top 5 country hit in 1977 with the Parton-written song “To Daddy,” took the stage to honor her musical colleague.

Harris’ comments were followed by a video acceptance speech that Parton had filmed prior to her passing.

“I’m so honored to receive the lifetime achievement award from the Americana Music Association,” Parton said in the video.

“I mean, roots music, what is now called Americana Music, is what I grew up playing back in the Smoky Mountains.

It’s that same music that drew me back to East Tennessee back in 1997, to write and record my album Hungry Again .