Brad Paisley came to Nashville to make country music, and he had two real goals…one, be a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and two, win a CMA award. Brad became a member of the Opry in February of 2001, which was just months after he won the CMA Horizon Award in 2000. (note that the Horizon Award was renamed New Artist Of The Year in 2008) Brad recalls that he was real humbled by winning, and while he thought he had a good shot at walking away with the trophy, he also knew there was a long list of people who thought they were going to win, and didn’t. But when he did win, it meant a lot because not only as an artist, but as a fan, he knew what it meant to be called a CMA award winner. I wonder how he would have felt if when he was walking off that stage someone told him, that not only would he go on to win many more CMA awards, but he would co-host the show one day too! You can watch Brad and Carrie Underwood take the stage and host the 50th Annual CMA Awards this Wednesday November 2nd when it airs on ABC, live from Nashville Tennessee.

  Brad Paisley recalls how it felt to win the Horizon Award back in 2000. (:54)
“I was really humbled by it. I mean I remember…you wonder going up to it…to something like that, you have a sense of if you have a chance or not, and I thought I probably did, but until they read your name, there have been shoe-ins that lost and and so for me there’s a couple things I really wanted when I got to this town, and one of them was to be a member of the Opry…that was number-one on the list. And the second thing, honestly, would have probably been a CMA award because I grew up watching this, I know the importance of it, I know why it exists and what it’s here for and how it furthers our format and tries to basically spread country music all over the globe. To be a person who won an award like that, not to mention several others later, that  was something I really wanted to accomplish  and nothing says ‘you made it,’ like that.”