Photo Credit: Hunter Berry/CMA.
Nashville, TN (January 31, 2023)—The Country Music Association has long honored the production professionals that make tours and events happen virtually every night of the year. After two years of postponement due to the pandemic, the CMA Touring Awards returned last night at Marathon Music Works in Nashville. The event, hosted by Keith Urban, gave credit where credit was due in the touring world, naming winners in 15 categories, ranging from Coach/Truck Driver to Talent Agent…to FOH and Monitor Engineers.
Taking home the FOH Engineer of the Year award was Robert Scovill, honored for work on Kenny Chesney’s 2022 “Here and Now” tour. The production, which sold just shy of 1.3 million tickets across 41 shows, marked the first time that Scovill toured with the country legend—and Scovill’s first major tour since the passing of Tom Petty, who he mixed for decades. The full tale was featured as a cover story in the November, 2022 issue of Mix and can be found here. Also nominated in the category were Aaron Lain (Morgan Wallen), Todd Lewis (Luke Combs), Frank Sgambellone (Luke Bryan) and Trey Smith (Thomas Rhett).
Also honored at the event was Michael Zuehsow, who won Monitor Engineer of the Year for his work for Luke Combs in 2022 which included a string of summer stadium dates, followed by the “Middle of Somewhere” tour in the fall. Zuehsow has mixed monitors for Combs since late 2018. Also nominated in the category were Jimmy Nicholson (Thomas Rhett), Phillip Robinson (Kenny Chesney), Scott Tatter (Dierks Bentley) and Phil Wilkey (Keith Urban).
