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Backstage Country

Keith Urban Was Nervous For Opry Tribute

Keith Urban was one of the many superstars who performed on the Opry 100 TV special on NBC last week (3/19). Keith performed a tribute to fellow Opry member Crystal…

Keith Urban wears a black suit performing on the Opry.
Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Keith Urban was one of the many superstars who performed on the Opry 100 TV special on NBC last week (3/19). Keith performed a tribute to fellow Opry member Crystal Gayle.

After the performance, we talked with Urban, and he told us, he was a bit nervous about his performance. He said, "It's surreal and very intimidating playing 'Don't It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue' in front of Crystal Gayle on the front row (laughs). I was trying not to look at her, but it was impossible."

Keith added of the Grand Ole Opry, where he became a member himself in 2012, "The Opry is surreal anyway because there are so many… all these artists I grew up playing their music, and then they are there. I remember the first time I met Ricky Skaggs it was like meeting Santa Claus, I couldn't believe it. It wasn't a guy who looked like Ricky Skaggs, it was really Ricky Skaggs; he was just hanging side-stage."

He concluded, "It's a huge honor to be invited into that family."

Urban was in Dallas and Oklahoma City recently for the second and third stops as part of Taylor Sheridan and Blake Shelton’s new show, The Road. Premiering this Fall on CBS and Paramount+, The Road has been described as a headliner’s journey to discover the next big artist.

The contestants will compete to join Keith at subsequent tapings to secure a spot in the next town. Other stops for the show include Tulsa, Little Rock, Memphis, and Nashville.

Urban only had a few goals when he first started his music career many years ago. They weren’t particularly specific, except to move to Nashville and get his original songs on the radio.

He told us of his early goals in a recent interview, "They were very vague. I didn’t have a lot of specificity. All I wanted to do was live in America — in Nashville — make records, see if I could get some of those songs on the radio, see if I could get some songs that people know, and then those people maybe want to come and see those songs live and then I could tour with my own music as a live performer."

Nancy Brooks has been working in the country music industry for almost 30 years. She has interviewed pretty much any country star you can think of. In the late 1990s, she started working with Dolly Parton. And yes, Nancy reports that Parton is as sweet as you would think. She loves her life in country music and has been backstage at every CMA Awards show since the late 1990s. Many of her stories are from her one-on-one interviews. She was there at the beginning of the incredible careers of many music superstars today, including Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, and Blake Shelton, and has interviewed them multiple times throughout the years.