Americana Award Winners Include Molly Tuttle, Brandi Carlile, Gillian Welch and Tyler Childers, as Robert Plant and Others Receive Lifetime Honors — SkimNews
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- Molly Tuttle won artist of the year at the Americana Music Honors & Awards in Nashville — her first win in the category and first nomination since a 2018 instrumentalist nod — credited to her fifth studio album "So Long Little Miss Sunshine" and recent marriage to Old Crow Medicine Show's Ketch Secor (married Aug. 22).
- Brandi Carlile took song of the year as sole songwriter for "Returning to Me," the title track of her 2025 album, though she said on stage she would have preferred I'm With Her's "Wild and Clear and Blue."
- Gillian Welch and David Rawlings repeated as duo/group of the year — back-to-back wins — while Tyler Childers won album of the year as an absentee for "Snipe Hunter," produced with Rick Rubin and Nick Sanborn.
- Robert Plant received his Lifetime Achievement Award in his first Americana Honors appearance in 15 years, performing "Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down" and "Angel Dance" and recalling how Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett welcomed him into Nashville 20 years ago.
- Lifetime honors also went to Dolly Parton and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, with Carlile and I'm With Her performing "Coat of Many Colors" and Chris Stapleton joining the Heartbreakers for "American Girl," "Breakdown" and "You Wreck Me."
- Milk Carton Kids used their hosting duties to mount a pointed critique of generative AI in music, quoting Gillian Welch's 2000 lyric "we're gonna do it anyway" and voicing support for Jason Isbell's lawsuit against AI platforms.
- Mandy Far won instrumentalist of the year and used her speech to challenge gender stereotypes in lead guitar, citing Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Bonnie Raitt as trailblazers and calling it her "life's work" to fill that void.
Why it matters: Tuttle's first artist-of-the-year win signals Americana embracing her more mainstream-leaning fifth album after a single prior nomination seven years ago. The Milk Carton Kids' AI critique, with explicit support for Jason Isbell's lawsuit, positions the scene as an organized counterweight to generative music, while lifetime honors to Plant, Petty and Parton underline its reverence for legacy figures.
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