CMA 2016 Fest Day 2 (Friday):
I was very excited to wake up for Day 2 at CMA Fest. I started my morning at the Cole Swindell Down Home Fan Club party. This is one thing I didn’t do the first year at CMA Fest was plan ahead to go the fan club parties. The party was a lot of fun, small, intimate, acoustic and was great to see Cole in that setting. Last year at CMA fest Cole gave me goosebumps during his performance and truly made me into a fan that day. He has that special something and is truly one of the artists that gets it, he has stayed humble and is great to his fans. He played for about an hour or so, then took photos with everyone. We received a signed poster, shirt, and koozie as well.
After this we headed over to Fan Fair X to get into the hopeful line for one of my favorites Mr. Steven Tyler. Yesterday when we were there we were told they would not allow anyone to start in the hopeful line until 2 hours ahead of the signing so we were not happy to get over there to find out they actually started the hopeful line right when the doors opened for a 3:00 signing. Communication with your customers should always be important to the staff representing you and honest communication should be paramount. I had won the overflow contest for Jamie Lyn Spears meet and greet passes so we headed over to do that.
After we walked over to the area where Steven was signing and were fortunate enough to be given two tickets. Steven Tyler is one of the absolute best at meet and greets. He is a legend, he’s been in the business for well over 30 years and many of the newcomers could learn a lot by watching him engage with his fans. Steven took time with every single person he met, he spoke to you and looked you directly in the eye, asked your name, you could have a short conversation, his photographer took the photo, gave you an autograph and a hug and kiss. It’s nearly impossible to walk away from an interaction with Steven and not feel special and appreciated. He stayed for well over the allotted time of 2 hours which was not at all surprising. 
The best part of CMA Fest is you truly never know who you will run into. We were walking back to our hotel and look up and there is Charles Esten! He was so sweet and took a photo with us and we congratulated him on Nashville being picked up by the CMT network!
The line up at the stadium Friday was:
National Anthem: Frankie Ballard
Clint Black
Chris Stapleton
Sam Hunt
Eric Church
Hank Williams Jr
Carrie Underwood
The performances again were all really good. Frankie did a great rendition on the electric guitar of the National Anthem and Clint Black played a handful of his hits. Chris Janson also made a surprise appearance to sing his hit Buy Me a Boat. Chris is another one of those special performers that is absolutely loving and is appreciative of the opportunity to live his dream. Chris Stapleton is one amazing songwriter and singer. Sam Hunt, I had never seen perform live before but, will definitely be looking for tour to come to my city in the near future. Eric Church just commands the stage, he’s an amazing performer and I always look forward to his performances. Carrie Underwood was absolutely fantastic. She took the stage with a different presence than last year, it was great to see her dressed down and full of sassy attitude. I have always liked her since American Idol but, walked away being truly impressed after her performance to close out Day 2.
For day two attire I went with clothes from: https://factory.jcrew.com/
For carrying just the necessities around CMA Fest I always go to my Coach Cross body or wristlets: http://coach.com
Additional videos can be found on my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLzUFhYU32shIwac71Fd81w
For additional photos from CMA Fest check out my IG and Facebook pages @lightscmemories.
Until next time,
Xoxoxo
Heather
Fest I wanted to go all in and really enjoy everything that the city of Nashville had to offer leading up to the Festival Kick off. I decided to fly in on Tuesday and get things started. For the pre-festival nights we found a hotel outside the city as most of the downtown hotels were extremely high in price.
rst stop was the City of Hope Softball game. This is a really fun event every year but, it is sweltering at the ball park so you want to drink a lot and stay hydrated. You really get to see the fun personalities and competitive spirit of the celebrities and all for a great cause. City of Hope does a lot of tremendous work. They raised over $200,000 for cancer research and there was a wide range of celebrities that showed up to play including: Bret Michaels, Vince Gill, Barry Zito, Lauren Alaina, Craig Wayne Boyd, Danielle Bradbery, Bobby Bo
nes, Bucky Covington, Jessie James Decker, Charles Esten, Nick Fradiani, Mickey Guyton, Jonathan Jackson, Chris Lane, LOCASH, Scotty McCreery, A Thousand Horses, Tristan McIntosh, David Nail, Cassadee Pope, RaeLynn, Jamie Lynn Spears, Mark Wills and Brett Young. Trisha Yearwood sang the national anthem. The event Emcee’s were Bill Cody and Lorianne Crooks. Here is a video of Trisha Yearwood singing the national anthem:
Wednesday was a day I was really looking forward to. My friends and I were selected for the Pink Carpet arrivals for the CMT Awards. That might just be one of the most fun events I have ever participated in. I will say there was a lot of standing around waiting for hours until it was time to get into position. The one drawback was after they had us all set then they let the general public over and they were not following the rules, guidelines which was disappointing. If you ever do it don’t try to take photos of you and multiple friends. At first I thought that would make it easier for the celebrities to take one pic and get us all in but, it wasn’t effective. Truthfully in many ways it would have been better to be across the street where the general public was standing because most of the celebrities ran over there after g
etting out of their cars. However it was too much fun standing there and seeing who was stepping out of the limos as they pulled up right in front of us. Luke Bryan, Thomas Rhett, Cole Swindell etc. all got out right in front of us. It was so nice to see Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman arrive and they might just be the sweetest couple ever. We were able to get selfie’s with S
am Hunt, Frankie Ballard, Maren Morris, Billy Ray Cyrus & Easton Corbin.
e headed into the CMT Awards. This was another fun event that we planned a bit last minute and it was really exciting to be in the room and watch the awards show live, all the interactions the stars had with each other on commercial breaks etc. I really had a great time.