The 25th annual Americana Honors Awards opened with an authentically historic American rock and roll reunion and ended with a first-time Artist of the Year award for progressive acoustic guitarist and songwriter Molly Tuttle.
Rarely has the awards show kept such a big secret until the day of the show, and even some in the audience were surprised by the stunning opening – three songs performed by all of the surviving members of The Heartbreakers, playing together for the first time since Tom Petty’s death in 2017. Modern country icon Chris Stapleton took Petty’s place for “American Girl,” “Breakdown” and “You Wreck Me.” The band is this year marking the 50th anniversary of its debut, self-titled album.
The occasion was a Lifetime Achievement Award for Petty and the band. Accepting for Petty was his daughter Adria, who made a profound and eloquent speech that even on a night of abundant remarks about the power of and values behind music is worth quoting at some length.
"If my Dad was here, there would be a thousand watts smile on his face for this band right now,” she said. “Working on the legacy the last nine years, I've learned my dad achieved a lot in his short 66 years. In addition to being a songwriter, a musician, a vocalist, a bandleader. He was a standard bearer for decency and integrity in business practices. He was a complete ambassador for inspiration, fun, discipline, excellence, craft, forgiveness, charity, you name it.”
Petty also spoke about the bonds between music-makers and the society they live in. “He looked out for his heroes as they aged and the newcomers as they arrived on the scene. My opinion is his consistency in protecting the value of music, and his growth as a person, and his grace in this regard, was his lifetime achievement. After literally a lifetime around this band, I'm even more deeply convinced of the magic, the importance, and the responsibility of writing and creating music. It's gentle power that moves and educates and comforts masses of people at the same time. . . My Dad approached his job with a reverence for being a messenger worthy of the job."
Mike Campbell, who is showcasing at this year’s Americanafest with his Dirty Knobs band, reminisced about his lifelong friendship and partnership with Petty. “It's been 10 years, and we're still grieving. We'll probably be grieving till the last day we live. But I'm okay, and we're okay. And he's okay. And the music's alive.”
The show, hosted again by Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale, the Milk Carton Kids, had a few technical bumps but even with that climactic beginning, it sustained a high level of emotional power and beauty, with performances by Boy Golden, Brandi Carlile, Crowe Boys, Flatland Cavalry, I’m With Her, Jesse Welles, Kashus Culpepper, Kathleen Edwards, Ken Pomeroy, Margo Price, Mon Rovîa, S.G. Goodman, and Molly Tuttle, who sang an acoustic version of her murder ballad “Rosalee” with her husband Ketch Secor on fiddle, Don Was on bass and the McCrary Sisters lending harmony.
Upon learning she’d been named Artist of the Year, the beaming Tuttle said, "I am shocked." But she spread her thanks around and got a particularly rich round of applause for thanking her father for his role as her first guitar teacher and a professional music educator. "I have so much love for music instructors and teachers," she said. "And my grandfather was a farmer, and played the banjo, and he'd take my father down to the Grand Ole Opry. And I'm just so honored to be carrying on the tradition of American roots music."
Artists Langhorne Slim and Shakey Graves took the podium to salute Dualtone Records for 25 years in business, citing its diverse and excellent roster. "Here's to 25 more years of that good ole Amerikinda,” Slim said, borrowing a term the label has used to describe its eclectic spirit. Then Slim and Graves presented the award for Duo/Group of the Year, to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, who also won the category last year.
"I wish Dave was here," Welch said, without explanation. She noted they didn't release a record this year, but the duo made a huge impression touring widely with their personal acoustic interpretations of Grateful Dead songs rooted in the Dead’s 1981 Reckoning album. "All we did was drive around and play a lot of music!” Welch said. “I'm quite overwhelmed to feel what it's like to be recognized just for playing a lot of music. I love this community and I love being in this room with all of you."
The 2026 Emerging Act of the Year is Tulsa, OK folk artist Ken Pomeroy who released her acclaimed breakout album Cruel Joke in 2025. "I am so excited to be here in general,” the 23-year-old songwriter said. “I feel like I’ve already won the night being sat next to Gillian Welch,” she joked before thanking her musical partners and support team.
Song of the Year went to six-time Americana award winner Brandi Carlile for her 2025 single “Returning To Myself.” The award was presented by Elton John lyricist and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bernie Taupin, who praised Carlile as an exemplar of Americana, which he said is “the real country of today. People are saying things that need to be said. Americana is the heart of American music."
Carlile said that Taupin was her hero, “the reason I put pen to paper."
This year’s Instrumentalist Of The Year is lead guitarist Mandy Fer, who tours with Allison Russell and her own husband/wife duo Sway Wild. "When I was a 16-year-old girl and first picking up the electric guitar I noticed a huge voice of women being highlighted on stage as lead guitarists. And that became my life's work - being a part of filling that void,” Fer said. She called the award “the greatest honor of my life."
Presenter Nathaniel Rateliff announced that the Album Of The Year winner was Tyler Childers for his Snipe Hunter of 2025. Childers, who is famously cynical about the Americana concept, was, in Rateliff's words, a "no show."
The emotional anchors of the show continued to be the lifetime achievement awards. Dolly Parton had been selected for the award before her untimely passing last month. Thus it was deeply poignant to see her pre-taped acceptance speech by video. Emmylou Harris made the presentation, telling Dolly’s story, including her long apprenticeship/partnership with country star Porter Wagoner in the 1960s. "She wanted more. She deserved more. And she sought out to get it always, always on her own terms,” Harris said. “And we all know what happened when Dolly set her sights on something. She didn't just succeed. She expanded the borders of what a musician could be. She was a country star, then a pop star, then a global icon. She was one of our all-time greatest songwriters, but she shone just as brightly on stage."
Parton’s recorded message exhibited the same warmth and sparkle she shared with the world throughout her life. “Roots music, what they now call Americana music, is what I grew up playing back in the Smoky Mountains,” she said. She noted her pilgrimage back to East Tennessee in 1997 when she wrote songs for her album Hungry Again, and how that set up a trilogy of bluegrass and acoustic albums "that changed the course of my career in so many ways. New fans discovered these albums. New Americana music communities embraced them. And looking back on it all, I see this era of my career as a musical renaissance of sorts."
Brandi Carlile joined the trio I’m With Her to sing “Coat of Many Colors” in one of the night’s most tear-jerking performances.
And then there was Robert Plant, ushered into Lifetime Achievement status by all-time Americana Award winner and Plant’s long-time collaborator Buddy Miller. When he met Plant (a singer he’d seen on Led Zeppelin’s first US tour), Miller said, "I met a man who loves music in all its forms."
"As a band leader he is fearless,” Miller went on. “As a singer he has an unmatched tenderness and intensity. And as a musician and a human he sees the thread that connects the music in all of us. He's always looking forward."
Plant reflected warmly on 20 years ago, when he was welcomed into the home of Alison Krauss, where they and T Bone Burnett began working on the massively successful collaboration album Raising Sand, after which "an amazing adventure unfolded for me." He spoke of the implications of American roots songs and singers as "echoes from immigrant worlds." Plant then stepped to center stage and sang a smoldering "Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down," a 1930s spiritual that he once recorded with Buddy Miller on the 2010 album Band Of Joy. The audience was thrilled when the band cued up another Band Of Joy song, and a brighter one, "Angel Dance," from the catalog of Los Lobos.
Other highlights and honors included a Hayes Carll and Elizabeth Cook tribute to the recently departed Todd Snider, including a rendition of his famous “Play A Train Song.” And most of the artist cast and the house band gathered on stage to close out the show by playing a less-than-orderly “Dance The Night Away” in honor of Mavericks founder and singer Raul Malo, who passed away last December.
2026 Honors & Awards Winners:
Album of the Year: Snipe Hunter; Tyler Childers; Produced by Rick Rubin and Nick Sanborn
Artist of the Year: Molly Tuttle
Duo/Group of the Year: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
Emerging Act of the Year: Ken Pomeroy
Song of the Year: "Returning to Myself," Brandi Carlile; Written by Brandi Carlile
Instrumentalist of the Year: Mandy Fer
