When Maren Morris takes the stage at the 2020 ACM Awards on Wednesday night (Sept. 16), it’ll be her first big awards show performance since giving birth to her son, Hayes Andrew Hurd, in late March. She’s hoping he’ll be able to watch the special moment, too.
“I don’t know what time in the show I am, but he can stay up a little late to watch Mom,” Morris tells Taste of Country Nights, even though “I don’t think it’s quite registered [to him] that the people in the TV are real.”
Morris will be performing “To Hell & Back,” from her sophomore album, Girl, from the Ryman Auditorium. The album is one of five nominated for Album of the Year at the ACMs in 2020; if it wins, it’ll be a posthumous honor for Busbee, the late producer who died in September of 2019 of brain cancer.
“This is, in a lot of ways, the last remaining piece of art that I will make with him, so if it received that honor tomorrow, that would be amazing,” Morris reflects. She adds, “I’ll always treasure those years and albums that I had with Busbee. He was such a champion of my sound forming in that beginning time that we had together.”
Morris has continued her friendship with Busbee’s family — his wife and three daughters — since his death. The two “text all the time,” the singer shares.
“Me being a new mother, she’s just been so supportive of me,” Morris says of Busbee’s wife, “and I just love that I’ll forever have a friend in her.”
In addition to Album of the Year, Morris is nominated for Female Artist of the Year at the 2020 ACM Awards. She’s already a winner at the show this year, as “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” a collaboration between Miranda Lambert, Morris and the rest of the women who were on Lambert’s 2019 Roadside Bars & Pink Guitars Tour, earned Music Event of the Year.
The 2020 ACM Awards will air live from Nashville, for the first time ever, on CBS. The show is scheduled to begin at 8PM ET and will take place at the Ryman, the Bluebird Cafe and the Grand Ole Opry House.
The Boot will be staying up late covering the most buzzed-about winners, fashion and moments at the 2020 ACM Awards. Readers can watch along with us by checking back to TheBoot.com for the latest CMAs headlines, liking The Boot on Facebook and following The Boot on Twitter.
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