Meet Jed Hilly, Americana’s Great Evangelist

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“I believe that Americana is the heart and soul of this community,” Jed Hilly says via phone from his office in Franklin, Tennessee.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone more passionate about Americana music (or anything, for that matter) than Hilly, Executive Director of the Americana Music Association since 2007, who spoke at length on the association’s many accomplishments this summer, which include some important additions to the GRAMMY ballot and this August’s Americanafest NYC.

The latter of those accomplishments was a first for the AMA, inspired largely by a covert visit to the association’s flagship Nashville festival by a Lincoln Center producer. She was so impressed with the festival that she called Hilly to dream up what would eventually become a seven-day event featuring the likes of Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash and Jim Lauderdale, among others.

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“They called me and said, ‘We would like to know if you would be interested in curating an event at Lincoln Center,'” Hilly says of his New York collaborators. “That was a pretty funny phone call for me to have, having had my parents take me to the Nutcracker every year from the time I was four until I was fourteen. They were pitching me. I finally said, ‘You don’t have to pitch me. I’m in.’ It turned into a great partnership.”

The event resounding success, one that Hilly describes as nothing short of “truly extraordinary”

“One day I was sitting in a cafe on Columbus Ave and I hear these people walking around going, ‘You know, they really are Americana,'” he laughs. “It was awesome! Random people walking by, talking about this world and community that so many passionate folks have given so much to create in the last decade or so. That was a really neat thing, to stand on the street and hear people talking about it in New York City.”

For a community that is so concentrated in Nashville, that kind of exposure is crucial, and Hilly and his team work tirelessly to ensure their artists get their due. In June, they scored a major victory with the Recording Academy, successfully lobbying for the addition of a new GRAMMY category, Best American Roots Music Performance.

“As you may know, they cut back from 114 and our field was the only field that has added categories in the last few years,” he explains. “It’s a great victory for the association. It’s a great victory for the Americana community. It’s a great victory for and statement by the Recording Academy. They are changing with the times. They are cognizant of the musical landscape that is out there. That’s a very cool thing. ”

Making sure Americana artists are recognized for their work is just one small part of what the AMA does, particularly since the group expanded its mission from that of a trade association to one of an advocacy group a few years ago.

“We’ve really become an artist advocacy group, first and foremost,” he says. “We focused our energy not so much on the climate of sales and business but on the artistry and musicianship. The focus has been to support the artist, first and foremost, in their craft.”

On Hilly’s mind now, of course, is this week’s Americana Music Festival, an annual event that brings thousands to Music City from across the globe. Over the years, the festival has played host to legends and newcomers alike, serving as crucial means for breaking new acts in an increasingly competitive climate.

“A lot of our event, I think, is about discovery,” Hilly says. “That, to me, is the key to why you and I, why we all love music. We love discovering that new sounds that does something to our hearts and minds when we hear it. We all have different taste and music hits us in different ways, but one of the things that’s so special about our event is the discovery element.”

With the recent explosion of Americana over the last few years, submissions from artists hoping to play the Nashville festival have multiplied, too, leading Hilly and his team to take an increasingly curated approach to selecting showcase lineups.

“I’m really proud of the curation process that we do, where you can go to one club and see somebody you’ve never seen before or ever heard of, and see a legend show up onstage by surprise, or by design,” he explains.

With such a diverse array of artists all operating beneath the Americana umbrella (if you check out the schedule for this week’s showcases, artists range from psychedelic country troubadour Sturgill Simpson to the Billie Holiday-influenced Valerie June), Hilly sees the most important common ground as a shared mentality, rather than genre, among AMA’s artists.

“I think the common bond is the appreciation for the craft, musicianship and songwriting,” Hilly explains. “That’s where the focus is. That’s been, I think, the lifeblood of our success in the last five years.”

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