The Academy of Country Music announced today (Sept. 10) that the 54th Academy of Country Music Awards will broadcast live from MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Sunday, April 7, 2019 at 8 p.m. ET/delayed PT on CBS. The 54TH ACM Awards, honoring and showcasing the biggest names and emerging talent in country music, will feature exciting performances, unprecedented collaborations, surprising moments and more to be announced in the coming months.

The Academy is also announcing the return of marquee ACM Party for a Cause events, including ACM Stories, Songs & Stars, ACM Topgolf Tee-Off and the ACM Awards Official After Party, taking place on April 5, April 6 and April 7, respectively.

Logan Ledger

T Bone Burnett‘s Electro Magnetic Recordings has announced its artist Logan Ledger has signed to Rounder Records.

Ledger is in the studio with T. Bone Burnett, who is producing his debut album, slated for release in 2019. He will preview material from the project on Friday, Sept. 14 at the Mercy Lounge during AmericanaFest in Nashville.

“The Rounder team and I are thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Logan, a young singer and writer who easily qualifies as Nashville’s best kept secret,” said Rounder Records President John Strohm. “Rounder has a long history of successful projects with T Bone, and we are humbled to be a part of what we believe will prove to be one of the finest productions of his remarkable career.”

T Bone Burnett added, “A couple of years ago, my great friend Dennis Crouch sent me a recording of a song called ‘Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me’ by a young singer and writer named Logan Ledger. He had, and has, a voice filled with history. I could hear echoes of one great singer after another in his tone. He sang without artifice. As we have been working together over the last couple of years, I have begun to discover the wide territory he is able to cover, and I look forward to exploring these new worlds of music with him.”

Ledger said, “Ever since I was a kid listening to Doc Watson and Norman Blake records in my childhood home and dreaming about a life in music, Rounder has been an important presence in my life. It’s an honor to be working with a record label that not only proudly represents decades of our musical tradition, but also believes that history continues to inform our future sonic landscape.

“It has been a real privilege to work with T Bone on this record. We share a musical vision for the twenty-first century born from the deep well of American music. It has also been a joy to play alongside my gurus (both musical and otherwise) Dennis Crouch, Russ Pahl, and Jay Bellerose.”

Californian native, Ledger came to music fairly early: he began singing as a young child and started playing old-time and bluegrass music on guitar at age 12. Enamored of early roots music recordings of Appalachian ballads and string bands from the 1930s, he soon discovered the music of Hank Williams and George Jones—he describes it as “a bomb going off in my mind”—and devoted himself wholeheartedly to learning all he could about country music.

After college, he briefly returned to the Bay Area where he played with a bluegrass band, but quickly realized the need to move to Nashville. In Music City he threw himself into writing and performing.

Abby Anderson

I’m driving fast and I’m not holding back, newcomer Abby Anderson sings on “This Feeling,” a track from I’m Good, her debut EP for Black River Entertainment, which releases today (Friday, Sept. 7).

While those lyrics are an apt description of the young girl Anderson sings about, who is grappling with both the euphoria and eagerness that surround an early romance, they also suit the artist herself.

Last weekend, the 21-year-old Anderson appeared as part of Dierks Bentley’s Seven Peaks Festival in Colorado, and will make her Grand Ole Opry debut this weekend. She will join Brett Eldredge’s The Long Way Tour, which launches Sept. 13.

Sitting in the Black River recording complex, just days before her album release, this transparent and vivacious Texan is more than ready to bare her soul—and soulful sound—to the masses on her project.

“When I was thinking about the songs to include, I honestly wanted songs that made me smile, made me happy,” she tells MusicRow. “I love music that makes my heart happy. All I want is to give a lot of joy in this world.”

The EP is filled with dance-worthy, empowering tracks like “Dance Away My Broken Heart” and the swaggering kiss-off “Naked Truth.”

But the gorgeous “Make Him Wait,” the EP’s sole ballad, proves Anderson can step outside the realm of flirty fun and fully engage a listener even in the quieter moments. The track, penned with Tom Douglas and Josh Kerr, is the centerpiece of the EP, filled with wisdom handed down from Anderson’s parents.

“Writing with Tom and Josh is like college,” Anderson says. “I’m not going to college—I didn’t even apply to college—but writing with them and so many other talented writers, I feel like I’m in school every single day to learn how to get better at my craft. We wrote this song in about 45-minutes. It’s everything my parents taught me about boys and dating.

“Being raised in a house full of girls, I think it was very important to my parents to teach us where our worth comes from. You don’t have to find your worth only in a relationship or a guy. A guy doesn’t have to get his value from dating, either. They just helped us to understand that we are worth something. And it’s ok to trust your worth with someone [who is] worth your trust.”

Anderson comes from a family of seven children (six girls and a boy), and all of them inherited their parents’ musical talents.

“I’m a little biased, but my dad’s tenor voice is beautiful,” she says, before relating how her mother once made the trip to Nashville to pursue a country music career of her own, before meeting Anderson’s father and moving to Texas.

All of the Anderson children were given piano lessons from an early age.

“I hated them, absolutely hated them,” Anderson recalls of her lessons, laughing. “But then, my mom showed me YouTube videos of Elvis Presley and Ray Charles, and I was hooked. And growing up in Texas, country [music] was always being played in the car. Vince Gill is big for me, The Judds, K.T. Oslin, Linda Ronstadt, all those soulful voices.”

Another of those indelible influences was music of the late Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, who died Aug. 16. “I cried that day, that was a hard one,” Anderson recalls. “But that woman, her music, she’s going to live forever.”

She graduated high school early and moved to Nashville in 2015. Shortly after, Anderson connected with Liz Morin and Ronna Reeves, who passed her music along to Black River Entertainment’s VP, A&R Doug Johnson.

“I met with him and he asked me to come back the next week and the whole label was downstairs. I played a few songs and they asked me a lot of questions and a week later I had a deal.”

With that signing, she joined Black River, home to breakthrough artist Kelsea Ballerini.

“Kelsea’s amazing. She’s leading the pack for women in country. I was fortunate to open for her about two years ago, even before I signed with Black River. She invited me on her bus and we chatted. She advised me to write with your friends and to surround yourself with good people. I’ve definitely done that.”