American Currents Exhibit Opens at the Country Music Hall of Fame

The American Currents: The Music of 2017 exhibit opens on Friday, March 9 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The exhibit includes memorabilia from influential artists, producers and songwriters from the least year, including items from Chris Young, Florida Georgia Line, Randy Travis, Kane Brown, producer Dave Cobb, songwriter Ashley Gorley, and many more.

PopCulture.com caught up with several of the people featured in the exhibit, to find out what they have included, and how they really feel about being honored in such a prestigious way for their talents.

“They asked me to pull a bunch of stuff – they don’t tell you what they’re going to use,” Young told PopCulture.com. “So I just pulled a bunch of stuff from my house; I have stuff off my walls. They were like, ‘Pick things that you think are demarcations in your career of, ‘This was a moment.’ And so, obviously I had to give them the jacket from the Opry induction. They’ve got my guitar that I used from all of my radio tours, when I was coming up. That is not reliced; it is actually that old and beat up because I drug that thing all across the country. It was really cool seeing the stuff that they picked.”

Gorley, the hit songwriter behind recent hits like Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Back Road” and Thomas Rhett’s “Marry Me,” contributed some items that had professional significance, and one item that touched a chord in his personal life.

“We turned in some stuff, some of it was funny stuff, but what they ended up using was the ASCAP Song of the Year Triple Play Award, which is very cool,” he shared. “But then there’s also an award from Belmont University, where I went to school, something they gave me because I always try to go back. I taught there for a little while. I love coaching, teaching, trying to mentor people that are trying to get into the business, and try to guide them … And then there’s a thing my daughter made, a little thing she painted, like a medallion, because she saw that some people were giving us medallions at parties, and wrote like ‘Best Songwriter in the World,’ or something like that on there, when she was eight or nine.”

Cobb, who produced Chris Stapleton’s From a Room: Volume 1 and Traveller, among others, contributed the guitar he had when he first moved to town, never imagining that it would one day be included in an exhibit in the Hall of Fame.

“It’s probably cheesy to say it,” Cobb conceded, “but never, coming from south Georgia, did I think we’d be in Nashville, let alone here [at the Hall of Fame].”

Shawn Camp, who was also included in the American Currents exhibit last year, has been collaborating with Loretta Lynn, and is the songwriter of several of country music’s biggest hits, including Garth Brooks’ “Two Pina Coladas,” “How Long Gone” by Brooks & Dunn, and others.

“It’s pretty cool,” Camp says of his inclusion once again. “I’m in awe of all these great artists up here, and it’s kind of mind-blowing,” Camp said. “I’ve got an old Manuel shirt from the early ’90s, when I was on Warner Bros., on my first album cover I wore it. A guitar that I started out with when I was a kid. When I was 16, my dad said, ‘I’m going to help you either buy a car, or I’ll help you get this Martin guitar.’ I was like, ‘Well we’ve got to get this Martin guitar, because I can play the guitar and maybe earn enough to get a car someday.’ So that was my high school car that’s actually in there.”

Other items in the American Currents exhibit include Jason Aldean’s ACM trophy for Entertainer of the Year, outfits worn on ABC’s Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2018, the fur coat worn by Maren Morris on the cover of her Hero album, the jacket, T-shirt and jeans worn by Luke Bryan during his performance of “Light It Up” at the 2017 CMA Awards and much more.

More information on the American Currents exhibit can be found by visiting CountryMusicHallofFame.org.

Photo Credit: Instagram/CountryMusicHallofFame