More than a dozen members of the country music touring industry were formally recognized at the SRO Awards, presented by the CMA, on Monday night (Dec. 7).

The trophies were presented at an industry event at Marathon Music Works in Nashville hosted by Jay DeMarcus of Rascal Flatts.

“Our touring industry members are on the frontline, every day taking our music directly to the fans in small clubs, stadiums, and everything in between,” said Sarah Trahern, CMA Chief Executive Officer. “Their hard work and many contributions to the success of the format deserve attention and a standing ovation.”

DeMarcus, Dierks Bentley, Hunter Hayes, and Cole Swindell presented trophies to members of their road families, while Jason Aldean, Kenny Chesney, Little Big Town, Old Dominion, Chase Rice, Blake Shelton, Ricky Skaggs, George Strait, and Steve Wariner recorded personal congratulatory messages to celebrate the winners.

Swindell summed it up when he presented the SRO Award for Manager of the Year to Kerri Edwards: “We all know how hard she works on the team, but it is nice seeing her recognized by the industry.”

Brian O’Connell, who won the SRO Award for Talent Buyer/Promoter of the Year, spoke with passion about how this is the touring industry’s CMA Award: “This is OUR CMA Award for the guys and girls on the road who put it up and take it down.”

The winners in 15 categories were determined by CMA members in the following categories: Advertising/Public Relations/Media; Affiliated; Artist; Entertainment Services; Marketing/Digital; Musician; Personal Manager; Record Label; Talent Agent; Talent Buyer/Promoter; Touring; and Venue. Ballots were tabulated by the professional services firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.

CMA’s SRO Awards 2015 Winners are as follows:

CATEGORY 1 – BUSINESS MANAGER OF THE YEAR
Mary Ann McCready – Flood, Bumstead, McCready & McCarthy, Inc.

CATEGORY 2 – COACH/TRUCK DRIVER OF THE YEAR
Kelley Beck – Blake Shelton

CATEGORY 3 – FOH (FRONT OF HOUSE) ENGINEER OF THE YEAR
James McDermott – Dierks Bentley

CATEGORY 4 – LIGHTING DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR
Philip Ealy – Kenny Chesney

CATEGORY 5 – MANAGER OF THE YEAR
Kerri Edwards – KP Entertainment

CATEGORY 6 – TOUR MANAGER OF THE YEAR
David Farmer – Kenny Chesney

CATEGORY 7 – MONITOR ENGINEER OF THE YEAR
Brad Baisley – Blake Shelton

CATEGORY 8 – PRODUCTION MANAGER OF THE YEAR
Ed Wannebo – Kenny Chesney

CATEGORY 9 – PUBLICIST OF THE YEAR
Ebie McFarland – Essential Broadcast Media, LLC

CATEGORY 10 – TALENT AGENT OF THE YEAR
Darin Murphy – Creative Artists Agency

CATEGORY 11 – TALENT BUYER/PROMOTER OF THE YEAR
Brian O’Connell – Live Nation

CATEGORY 12 – TOUR CATERER OF THE YEAR
Dega Catering

CATEGORY 13 – TOURING MUSICIAN OF THE YEAR
Jenee Fleenor – Blake Shelton

CATEGORY 14 – VENUE OF THE YEAR
Ryman Auditorium – Nashville, Tenn.

CATEGORY 15 – TOUR VIDEO DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR
Jay Cooper – Kenny Chesney

Bill Freimuth, SVP for the Recording Academy’s Awards Department, oversees the Awards department, leading a full-time staff of 16 (plus five temporary staffers in the fall) to manage the Grammy Awards’ submission process, and oversees production of Premiere, the Grammy Awards’ pre-telecast show, where the majority of the awards are announced.

Freimuth spoke to MusicRow about the voting process for the Recording Academy’s 13,000 voting members, the Grammys’ move to Monday night in 2016, Grammy voting misconceptions, and the next steps in the Grammy awards process now that the final nominees have been revealed.

Final-round Grammy ballots will be mailed Dec. 16 and awards will be presented Monday, Feb. 15, live from STAPLES Center in Los Angeles and broadcast on CBS. Click here for more on this year’s Grammy nominees.

On the requirements to become a voting member of the Recording Academy:
Freimuth: You have to be a music maker, and involved creatively in the production of recorded music, so that’s singers, songwriters, instrumentalists, producers, engineers, album notes writers, art directors, video directors, people like that. They are all creative folks. Our voting members are not artist managers, publicists, label executives.

To be a member, it’s really easy to join if you have those credits, and we are always encouraging those who are eligible to join the Academy. Right now, you need credits in one of those creative areas on at least six tracks that are released physically via a CD or at least 12 tracks released digital only.

On this year’s leading nominees, including Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift:
Each of them has released an album this year that, at the risk of sounding cliché, was a game-changer. They pulled out all the stops and made albums that were not just people-pleasers, but have deep, artistic integrity. They did terrific work, and I like to think that these nominations are a reflection of that fantastic work.

On the Grammy Awards’ move to Monday night in 2016:
The major reason is if we were on our normal Sunday, it would fall on Valentine’s Day. I think that is second only to Mother’s Day as far as the busiest night for restaurants so we didn’t want people to have to choose. And it’s also a holiday weekend otherwise, because it’s President’s Day on Monday, so…for those various reasons it made sense to be on a Monday this year.

On deciding which categories will be telecast each year:
It’s decided in collaboration between the production team and our TV committee, primarily elected leaders from the Academy, our trustees, along with a few senior staff members. It’s usually not decided until relatively late in the process, as far as what categories will be on air. We want to make sure we have a good mix, that the categories are relevant to the viewing audience, and of course, we want to make sure that all the nominees are actually attending.

On Recording Academy voting rules:
There is a cap on how many of the 83 categories members can vote in. Everybody can vote in the four categories in the general field and we certainly encourage every voter to make their marks in those categories. Out of the remaining 79 categories, people can vote on up to 20 of those categories. We strongly encourage people to vote only in areas in which they have expertise. No doubt there are a lot of people, for example in Nashville, that know not only country music but also rock, pop, and very likely American roots music, so there are plenty of people who really are qualified to vote in 10, 15, up to 20 additional categories.

On Grammy misconceptions:
I travel to our different Recording Academy chapters to meet with new members, or with potential members, and I will sometimes do these kind of ‘Grammy 101’ talks. I ask how many of them think that the Grammy nominations and winners decisions are made in some smoke-filled room by a bunch of top label execs and managers. I always get several people raising their hands. So we’ve done a lot of work to dispel some of the myths.

We’ve developed our awards process over the last 58 years and we tweak it every year to keep currency and relevance. We have the whole process to screen each recording into its proper genre. Some categories—country included—go through review committees to further ensure the integrity of the category. We work against marketing budgets and popularity to some extent to make sure we are actually honoring simply great recordings.

It’s funny because I meet people and they find out what I do, and they say, “OK, what do you do the rest of the year?” I’m doing this the whole year. We got over 21,000 submissions this year. Our staff needs to look at each one of those submissions at least a couple of times during the process. From July through Thanksgiving, we are just going through every single one of these, to make sure they are actually eligible and in the right category and going through the process in the correct way.

On the next steps for the Recording Academy leading up to the Grammy Awards:
The first couple of things are that we are uploading all the recordings on a site I call our “Listening Room,” a password-protected site where all of our voters can go and listen to all the nominated recordings, and we find that’s actually had a great influence on the way people vote. They may see the list and think they will vote for one track, but then they listen to another song they had not even heard, and it blows them away and it gets their vote. It helps to ensure that the best music is being honored. Of course, we have to make sure we get clearances for all that music so that’s a lot of work as well.

For me, personally, I am a sort of co-producer on the Premiere ceremony, so I’m booking presenters and performers for that event. We are getting more and more big-name artists at that event. Taylor [Swift] is always there and has been since she was a kid, which is amazing.

On nominee seating arrangements during the Grammy Awards ceremony:
It’s more contingent on whether you are a member of the Academy. If you are a member of the Academy who is nominated [for a Grammy Award], you get two gratis seats and the ability to purchase more, though the ones you purchase probably won’t be seated with you, but further back in the house. If you are not a member of the Academy, you get one ticket and the ability to purchase a ticket to sit next to you, and the ability to purchase more tickets further back. In terms of seating, if your category will be televised on air, you will be seated near the front. Also because we certainly want to please our fans and general music consumers, we tend to put some of the more recognizable faces on the front rows, as you can imagine.

Although it’s technically housed in a warehouse in Berry Hill, Skyville Live is pretty much on cloud nine these days. In November, the live-streaming concert series picked up three Midsouth Regional Emmy nominations and confirmed Grammy-nominated artists Chris Stapleton and Little Big Town, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Gregg Allman and blues great Taj Mahal for their next installment, set for Friday (Dec. 11).

Wally Wilson created Skyville Live after setting up some shows at the Basement with new acts he was developing. When those gigs outgrew the small space, he relocated the series to the Skyville property and streamed a 2014 concert by The Mavericks. With a much stronger viewer turnout than he anticipated, he decided to expand on the idea. As the series continued, stars like Gladys Knight and Kris Kristofferson signed on, as did Jason Isbell, Lady Antebellum, Martina McBride and more. Past performances are archived on SkyvilleLive.com. The upcoming concert will be streamed there, as well as Skyville.USAToday.com.

While the music is obviously a key part of the series, so is the storytelling between songs. Taking a cue from their high-profile talent, Wilson and Nic Dugger (who handles the technical components of the show) share their own Skyville Live story with MusicRow.

MusicRow: One of your Emmy nominations for Skyville Live is in the audio category. Do you approach audio on this show differently than you might on a TV show?

Wilson: This is a television show for all intents and purposes. As a matter of fact, as we move through this process, we will be utilizing television as well as the internet space. It’s recorded exactly like every other television show. And I will humbly, or not so humbly, say that we believe our sound is far superior to most things we see on television. We’re head and hands above.

We approach this the way you would making a record. On the day before our show, we record rehearsals in ProTools and we get back out there and suss out what it sounds like, and take great pains with it. Mills Logan [who shares the audio Emmy nomination with Duggar and Wilson] and the crew work their butts off on this, way into the night and the day before, to get this great sound.

It surprises me that most big awards shows don’t do that, or don’t have that kind of sound, because we’re doing exactly what they’re doing. Now, I will say that they have a lot of music and set changes that we don’t necessarily have. We have a stationary band, but in general, our sound is tremendous. I guess I’m the most proud of that, because I’m a music guy.

The HD video makes the show seem very intimate and immediate. What does that bring out in the show?

Dugger: High-definition television production is not anything new. But delivering it at a quality level, via a web stream, is fairly new. There’s been hi-def streaming for years, but varying levels of quality. Something that we want to make sure of is that when people watch this, it’s as if they’re sitting in this space. We want to bring them into our studio, bring them into our basement for this fun session.

So, what that means is, not only do the cameras have to be of excellent quality, but the lighting has to be of excellent quality. The set pieces that Wally has had built have to look authentic. The staging placement and the arrangement of the musicians has to be pleasing to the eye. That way when you’re watching on your portable device, or your laptop, or hopefully your big-screen TV, you feel like you’re in that space. If the video quality doesn’t match the audio quality, we’re missing half of the story. Audio without video is just radio. But video without audio is just surveillance! (laughs) And we don’t want that either.

You’ve had incredible guests on the show. How do you present this concept to artists and managers?

Wilson: The formula that dawned on me after doing that first show is that if we book tremendous iconic talent, other artists will be drawn to that. For example, if we book Gladys Knight, then Martina McBride and Estelle want to play with Gladys and interact with her in a way that’s out of their comfort zone and in a new comfort zone. The same with Kris Kristofferson. Jason Isbell is a tremendous fan of his, and that was such a moving moment on that show – the passing of the torch from Kris to Jason. And Lady Antebellum was in the middle of that show, and then Brandy Clark. I say it’s like the Bill Gaither Homecoming meets Jools Holland. (laughs)

Dugger: The quality is an important part of this as well. Even though I’m thrilled to be on Wally’s team for this, we [Duggar’s company TNDV] do work outside of Skyville and we average 360-some-odd shows a year. Of all the meetings I sit through, I hear, “Cut the budget. How do we do it cheaper? How many corners can we cut?” That is just the trend: “How do we get content for cheap?”

What Wally has brought to the table is budget-conscious. We’re not throwing money around, but at the same time, we want to do it right. When we send a clip to an artist’s manager and say, “This is the level of quality we can present and that you should expect,” that has a much different reaction than “cheap, cheap, cheap, cut, cut, cut.” And the fact that we have a few of these under our belt, it’s very easy to say, “Look what we’ve done in the past. We want you to be a part of this.” When they see it, they know immediately that we’re not joking around.

You have a live audience, rather than a closed set. How does that affect the show?

Wilson: The artists know that at 7 Central, 8 Eastern, this is going out around the world. We literally have people in Japan, the Soviet Union, Lithuania, and Africa watching this show. That adds a piece of drama for the artist. The intangibles of that are very, very valuable.

Dugger: It’s unique. These are touring artists. Some of these artists have been on tour for years and years. They’re performed at awards shows, they’ve performed on television specials, but nothing intimate like this. They’re literally performing in someone’s lap at home who is tuning in because they love that artist and love that music. We can’t say it’s unscripted—we rehearse and we know what we’re going to do. But it’s a very natural and free-flowing event that is not stale or static. It has its own vibe to it, and it’s important that we step back and let it happen. So, if they deviate from the rundown a little bit, that’s OK. If they’re feeling the groove and want to do an extra chorus, go for it. We enjoy that part.

Watch Skyville Live’s YouTube channel here.

Chris Stapleton is confirmed for two concert dates at the Ryman Auditorium next year. He will headline shows there on Feb. 18 and 19.

Tickets are $50, $35, and $30 plus applicable service charges. The on-sale date is Friday (Dec. 11) at 10 a.m.

Stapleton opened a sold-out concert at the Ryman for Jason Isbell on Oct. 26. His next concert date will be Dec. 31 at the Jack Daniel’s Bash on Broadway in downtown Nashville. That’s followed by sold-out shows in Birmingham, Alabama, on Jan. 1; Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Jan. 2; Atlanta on Jan. 7-8; and Knoxville, Tennessee, on Jan. 9.

On Monday morning, Stapleton received four Grammy nominations: Album of the Year, Best Country Album, Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance. In November, he claimed CMA Awards in the album, male vocalist and new artist categories.