My Music Row Story: CMA’s Sarah Trahern

/by

Sarah Trahern. Photo: Donn Jones

The “My Music Row Story” weekly column features notable members of the Nashville music industry selected by the MusicRow editorial team. These individuals serve in key roles that help advance and promote the success of our industry. This column spotlights the invaluable people that keep the wheels rolling and the music playing.

Sarah Trahern was named CEO of the Country Music Association (CMA) in 2014. With foresight and determination, she has crafted a brand identity for country music and has been at the forefront of some of the industry’s most intentional and strategic initiatives. With a new, robust CMA membership structure in place beginning March 2023, Trahern oversees CMA’s efforts to act as a critical resource for information, a pipeline for individuals across every aspect of the music business and a community partner committed to fostering collaboration and conversation. She also helms the organization’s three acclaimed network television properties, one of the biggest music festivals in the world and serves as President of the CMA Foundation.

Trahern has been instrumental in maintaining and fostering CMA’s relationship with its broadcast partner, ABC, the network home of the CMA Awards, CMA Country Christmas and CMA Fest. Trahern is consistently included on various Billboard lists and has been honored by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville Business Journal, CRB and NMPA.

MusicRow: Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Champaign, Illinois until I was 13. Then we moved to Knoxville. My dad was a university professor, so I grew up around college campuses since I was a little kid.

Sarah Trahern. Photo: Courtesy of Trahern

Were you into music?

Oh yes. My mom was a classical viola player. She played in Champaign and ended up playing with UT’s Opera Program when we moved to Knoxville. My dad grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry under the covers, so I grew up with these very divergent [types of music] but just the love of music throughout.

I actually grew up as part of a public school music education program, playing violin from kindergarten through eighth grade. I learned piano and guitar too. One of the things that was so amazing for me once I came to this job in 2014 is that everything we do with the CMA Foundation for music education is a big part of our job. Having been the beneficiary of a public school music education program myself, it felt like my life had really come full circle to something I believed in as a child and now I get to do as my job.

How did you start your career?

I went to college at Georgetown University and studied American political history. I went to college thinking I would be a lawyer or a journalist, and I followed that path into journalism in D.C. I stayed in D.C. covering Congress and campaigns for C-SPAN until 1995. When I was in high school, I picked up the banjo, so while I was going to college in D.C., I would go to a lot of live music shows, particularly at the Birchmere. My first apartment after college was a mile from the Birchmere, so journalism [was] my career and music was my passion.

Sarah Trahern. Photo: Courtesy of Trahern

How did you get to Nashville?

I was looking for a new job. I had interviewed and was one of three finalists to produce Nightline, but I didn’t get the job. I said to myself, “What do I want my life to look like? Do I wanna stay in D.C.? Do I want to go to New York?” I decided I wanted to be in Nashville, and if it took me three months or three years, that’s what I was going to do. About three months later, in 1995, I ended up getting a job at TNN to oversee music specials.

I had a great life in D.C., but I was going to need to move to grow, and getting to do TV specials about my passion was so unbelievable. I shared this story with Wynonna Judd when we announced her as an inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame last year, but the day I moved, I got in my car and I played a cassette of Wynonna’s with this song, “Is It Over Yet.” I must have worn the tape out by playing that song over and over. I was crying and thinking, “Is it over yet? Am I leaving my D.C. life and making a huge mistake by moving to Nashville?” By the time I got an hour away from D.C., I had cried it all out.

Tell me about your time at TNN.

At TNN, I oversaw all the music specials. I had the TNN Music City News Awards, that later became the CMT Awards. During my time working on that show, we actually moved the awards show from the Opry House to Bridgestone Arena. So when Bridgestone was built, I was the first network executive to do an awards show from there. Many fortuitous opportunities happened during that time. I had a show called Monday Night Concerts—hosted by Ricky Skaggs—that was a precursor to what CMT did with Crossroads, where we might have Wynonna perform with Michael McDonald or Brian Setzer with Marty Stuart. We did that for three seasons over three years.

My very first show at TNN was The Marty Party hosted by Marty Stuart. [On one of the episodes,] the three guests were Alan Jackson, Junior Brown and Johnny Cash. I remember being in the control room at TNN and Johnny came up to the microphone and did his, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.” I remember sitting in the control room and going “Oh my gosh, this is my job! This is what I get paid to do for a living.” What is so great is that, to this day, there’s still moments when we get to experience that.

Pictured (L-R): Robert Deaton, Sarah Trahern and Thomas Rhett at rehearsals for the CMA Summer Jam 2021 at Ascend Amphitheater. Photo: John Shearer

What was your next move?

I [was with] TNN until 2001. They closed the network here and moved to New York, but I made the decision not to go with them to New York and to stay here. I went to get my MBA at Vanderbilt during that time and I had my own production company, so I did some work for Scripps Networks in Knoxville and the First Amendment Center. I did the First Amendment Center’s entertainment talk show for PBS as well as a lot of projects for CMT during that time. I did my own thing for two years, which was fine. It was successful and great, but I’m not a sole practitioner. I’m an organizational person. I missed working with people in a collaborative environment.

I went to work for Scripps in 2003, right after I finished my MBA. Scripps had bought a TV shopping network here called the Shop at Home Network. The network’s goal was to take shows that are on the Food Network and [send viewers to] Shop at Home to buy the pots and pans [that were used in the Food Network show]. I learned very quickly that TV shopping was not my passion.

I was about to leave without a job at the end of 2004. Then Scripps bought Great American Country (GAC). The timing was fortuitous that I happened to be at Scripps, even though I was unhappy, when they bought the country network. That’s where my experience and passion was. So at the beginning of 2005, I moved over to GAC. I was at GAC until I was offered this job at the end of 2013.

Sarah Trahern at the Chevy Riverfront Stage during the 2019 CMA Music Festival. Photo: John Russell

What are some of your proudest accomplishments from your time at GAC?

One of the first things that comes to mind is doing the telethon after the Nashville flood in 2010. We were able to work with all of the networks to basically roadblock across the HGTV, Travel and Food networks and bring in talent from all of those networks. We were able to do the program from the Ryman and we raised somewhere between $2 and $2.5 million for the community foundation to help Nashville rebuild.

We also did a show called Country Music at the White House in 2011. Michelle Obama was doing a series of concerts in Washington with different genres of music and they were going to do country. The guests were going to be Charley Pride, Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss. Michelle Obama was going to bring music students from around the country to D.C., including kids from W.O. Smith Music School here in Nashville. They were going to get to go to the White House, perform and meet the First Lady and then do something with the artists. My boss at the time, Ed Hardy, and I were in a conference room trying to figure out how we could help the W.O. Smith Music School kids get to Washington for this really cool experience. My assistant got me out of the conference room and said, “You’ve got a call from the White House Social Secretary.” They were calling to see if we wanted to send a TV crew for the show. I just riffed and said, “Yeah, we could do that, but is anybody televising the whole thing? We could provide the cameras for everybody, but we could do it live.” They said, “That sounds really good. We should do that.” I walked back to the conference room and I said to Ed, “Forget just getting the kids to Washington. I think I just committed us to a network special.” [Laughs]

Sarah Trahern and Lainey Wilson during rehearsals for the CMA Summer Jam 2021 at Ascend Amphitheater. Photo: John Shearer

Tell me about joining the CMA.

It was around 2011 or 2012 and I was working with an executive coach. She had this exercise with cards that each had skill sets. With the cards, we created a mission statement. I looked at that and said, “I think I should run the CMA or the Country Music Hall of Fame.” At the time, the CMA job was open. I reached out to somebody here, but it just didn’t really feel like the right time for me, so I didn’t go for it, but always had that in my heart.

Ed retired and I ended up running the GAC network for two years, which was a great experience for me from a business standpoint. I really loved that chapter. Then the CMA job became [available] again. It was perfect—it still had a television component, it had a great organizational mission, message and a really good staff. All of those things aligned. I went to the interview. Thankfully they called me and now I’m in my ninth year and [about to take on] my 10th CMA Fest.

How do you explain what you do?

I sit at this point of a spear between a 75-person Board of Directors—folks that are so engaged in the business—and a 61-person staff. [Industry members] don’t get paid to be [on the] Board of Directors and [it takes up] a lot of time. My job is to activate the staff on behalf of the vision of the board, all driven towards our mission. We all are driven by making country music stronger.

Who have been some of your mentors along the way?

My very first boss Brian Lamb, the former CEO & Founder of C-SPAN, was a great leader. He really brought out the best of everybody on his team. I had a great mentor in a woman named Judy Girard, who was actually my boss at Shop at Home. She was one of the first women to run a TV network and worked at Lifetime, Food Network and HGTV. She is a real straight shooter and is still a really good friend of mine.

I had a boss named Jim Clayton, who gave me the best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten. When you brought him a business problem, he’d [ask a series of questions.] Question one is: “Were any small children affected?” Right now, if I’m faced with a business problem, it’s usually about politics or money. Right at this very moment, someone’s kid is having serious medical issues just a mile away at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, so that puts things in perspective. His second question is: “What’s the problem?” Question three is: “What is the solution?” Nine times out of 10, you know what that solution is. Question four is the key one: “Why aren’t you doing what you know is right?” What impediments are you trying to overcome? Is it politics or money? Is it what people are going to think about you? What you’re really solving is not necessarily the problem, but what’s keeping you from doing what you know is right. I think about that a lot.

Luke Combs and Sarah Trahern during sound check for CMA Summer Jam. Photo: Josh Brasted

Next week, CMA Fest will mark its 50th anniversary. What are some of your favorite CMA Fest memories?

There’s so many of them. CMA Fest is so fun because it’s all about music discovery. There are different experiences at different stages.

During my very first Fest in 2014, I was staying at the Hilton downtown. I write letters to all the artists who do the stadium, because they’re giving up a big day to come do our show for free. We also have notes and pictures from the kids that the CMA Foundation benefits and we put those in with my letter to all the stadium headliners. I had these spread out on the table in the hotel room. The hotel had sent up some fruit and wine and the guy delivering it asked where he should put it. I told him to put it on the table.

He looked at some of the letters and said, “What do you know about this Disney Musicals in Schools at TPAC?” I said, “I’m with the CMA and we support Disney Musicals in Schools through our CMA Foundation. Half of the proceeds from this festival we’re having right now go to benefit music education. [How] do you know about it?” He said, “My son played Simba in the eighth grade last year and it changed his life.”

I will always think about that down to the very last CMA Fest I do. This city comes together, the industry and the artists show up and our staff works their tails off for months on end to get there. Then there’s all these downstream beneficiaries that are not just the fans. The fans are certainly a big part of why we do what we do, but [it’s also about the kids] who have guitars, trombones and vocal classes that may never end up in our business, but they have the gift of self-expression through music.

What are you excited about for this year’s CMA Fest?

One of the surprises is we’ve been working on a documentary about the 50th anniversary of CMA Fest that will air on Hulu in July. Anybody who has come to Nashville and been a part of Fest has their own stories about it. People on our staff were there when Garth Brooks did his 23-hour autograph signing. I did my TNN job interview during Fan Fair, [which is what CMA Fest used to be called], in 1995. People have their moments at CMA Fest and it becomes their history. There’s 50,000 people at the stadium, so they have 50,000 different experiences every single year. We have roughly 60 people on our staff and we have 3,000 people working on our behalf to pull off the festival. Everyone has their own experiences at CMA Fest. I’m proud that we get to be a part of everybody’s experience.

LB Cantrell
Latest posts by LB Cantrell (see all)