BREAKING: MusicRow Taps Ebie McFarland As Speaker For 2026 Rising Women On The Row

Ebie McFarland, Publicist/Owner of Essential Broadcast Media, will be the featured speaker at MusicRow’s Rising Women on the Row breakfast, presented by City National Bank. The annual event is set for Tuesday, March 3, at 8:30 a.m. at the JW Marriott in Nashville.

Attendees will gain insights from McFarland during an on-stage interview with MusicRow Publisher and Owner Sherod Robertson.

The 13th annual celebration will honor the 2026 class of Rising Women on the Row honorees, which include Courtney Allen, Jackie Augustus, Sara Knabe, Victoria Mason, Sophia Sansone and Elisa Vazzana. Read about the honorees here.

Tickets for Rising Women on the Row are now closed. They will not be sold at the door.

McFarland, whose clients include Nashville’s biggest stars, Country Music Hall of Fame members, Lone Star institutions and outliers across genres, opened Essential Broadcast Media in 2007. Currently Kenny Chesney, George Strait, Eric Church, Morgan Wallen, Darius Rucker, as well as Hootie & the Blowfish and his alt-roots supergroup Howl Owl Howl count on her and her team to create media strategy and steward interaction. Leaning more to the Texas, outlier and red dirt schools of music, she also counts Miranda Lambert, Kaitlin Butts, Koe Wetzel and Whiskey Myers, the Outlaw Music Festival, among her clients, as well as Tape Room Music.

Recent career highlights include her campaign for Chesney’s book tour for Heart Life Music, his No. 1 New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction and Combined Print and E-Book Nonfiction debut, following a massive run as the first solo and country act to have a residency at Sphere. She’s been involved with Lambert’s critically hailed Postcards from Texas and establishment of her Big Loud Texas Label; for Church, she’s straddled the IMAX major theatrical release of and subsequent “Free The Machine Tour” in support of his groundbreaking Evangeline vs The Machine. In addition, she continues expanding the impact of Strait’s stadium sized shows and ongoing records, while also overseeing Morgan Wallen’s “I’m The Problem” tour and album. Beyond the superstars, she is enlivened working with new and established artists looking to maximize their potential, setting strategy to expand horizons for Kaitlin Butts, Ian Munsick, Maddox Batson and more.

A four-time CMA Award winner and a MusicRow Rising Women on the Row honoree, McFarland has been named to the Billboard Power Players, Nashville Business Journal’s Women in Music City and 40 Under 40 lists. She resides in Nashville with her husband, Jon-Paul and their shih tzu, Emmylou.