Two Marshall residents will represent the city this weekend as nominees for the annual Texas Country Music Awards, the ceremony for which is Sunday at Billy Bob’s Texas.
Country music star Dale Watson and Ashli Dansby with KMHT Radio are both nominated for awards for this year’s competition, the first nomination for these awards for both community members.
Dansby is nominated for the Broadcast Personality of the Year award, with Watson nominated for the Roots/Alternative Artist or Band of the Year Award.
“It is truly an honor to even be nominated for something like this,” Watson said, “There is a lot that goes into an award ceremony like this, a lot of people put in a lot of work.”
Along with the award nomination, Dansby said that she will also be working as the red carpet interviewer during this year’ award ceremony.
“It is such a high honor to even be nominated, let alone be nominated and also be asked to do the red carpet interviews for all of these nominee during this event,” she said.
Ashli Dansby
Dansby said that this is her first nomination for the annual awards, though she has been familiar with them for a number of years as professional in the industry.
She has spent the last 20 years as a dedicated radio broadcast professional, after falling in love with the world of radio when visiting her father at work.
Dansby said that he father used to work as a sales representative in a radio station in Elk City, where she got her first chance to try broadcast radio when the station representatives asked her to do an ad read one day.
“I did the ad read in one take and, really, it was in that moment that I knew I wanted to be in radio,” she said.
Dansby started her career in Marshall before moving for a while to work in a larger network, before eventually finding her way back home to Marshall, where she now works as the program director of KMHT station.
“I was really honored and very surprised to be nominated,” she said, “It really is such an honor to be considered among everyone else who was nominated this year.”
Watson is also familiar with the awards, though he said that the nomination came as a surprise.
Both being nominated for and winning awards is something that Watson is very familiar with however, having been selected as both for a number of international and nation wide country music awards throughout his career.
“If there has been anything I have done throughout my career, I hope that it is to bring the roots of country music from here in Texas to people all over the world,” Watson said.
He added though, that award ceremonies tend to be “a young man’s game” and that he found himself honored to be the one of the oldest artists considered for nomination this year.
“We have a lot of really good, young talent here,” Watson said, “It’s really an honor to be considered as impactful as many of these talents.”
