Stream It Or Skip It: ‘CMA Fest: 50 Years Of Fan Fair’ on Hulu, A Doc Celebrating The Country Music Event’s Evolution And Legacy

Last June, the Country Music Association threw its big annual party in downtown Nashville, with over 90,000 people attending each day of music. CMA Fest: 50 Years of Fan Fair is a documentary film celebrating the festival’s five decades of existence, from its origins as a kind of industry trade show to the stadium-sized extravaganza it is today. There are plenty of testimonials here, too, with appearances from country stars like Dolly Parton, Luke Bryan, Tricia Yearwood, and Keith Urban, and such newer faces of the genre as Carly Pearce, Brothers Osbourne, Luke Combs, Breland, and Lainey Wilson. 

CMA FEST – 50 YEARS OF FAN FAIR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: Nowadays, CMA Fest plays across four days and ten stages in downtown Nashville. But it wasn’t always that huge. As country music old timer Bill Anderson describes in CMA Fest: 50 Years of Fan Fair, the event’s roots lie in an annual gathering of country radio disc jockeys, who would descend on Nashville for some industry schmoozing with the record companies. Pretty soon fans figured out that the event was a good time to get access to artists like Loretta Lynn and George Jones and Ernest Tubb, and by 1972 it was officially a convention. “So, in ‘75,” I get my Mercury/Polygram recording contract,” Reba McEntire says in the doc. “‘76 rolls around, and they say ‘Well, we want you to come from Oklahoma and go to Fan Fair.” And in what became the norm for artists, McEntire set up her little booth and started greeting the fans.

As Fan Fair evolved into CMA Fest, it also migrated to ever larger venues, moving from its original spot at Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium, to the festival grounds of the Tennessee State Fair – by then, artist booths were set up in the livestock pavilion so as to greet the thousands – and finally to downtown Nashville in 2001, where it’s still staged today. 50 Years of Fan Fair includes some old news footage of the event over the years, with ‘80s country music fans in foam ball caps, ringer tees, and cowboy boots, the escalation in size and cost of artist booths – by the late ‘80s, they resembled auto show stages – and clips of performances and appearances from heavy hitters like Faith Hill, Shania Twain, and Garth Brooks. In 1996, when Brooks was the biggest thing on the planet, he came to the fest and signed autographs for 23 hours straight.

Carrie Underwood says she first attended CMA Fest as a 14-year-old country music fan. Blake Shelton recalls being a young musician just starting out and being flabbergasted by all the talent before him. And a CMA executive says he doesn’t think Keith Urban has ever missed a year. “It’s the spirit of collaboration,” Urban says, “and it goes full circle back to CMA Fest. It’s what I feel with the audience, is a collaborative spirit. They want this thing to be everything. We want it to be everything. OK, well, we’re all wanting the same thing. Let’s just make it happen.”

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? This year’s CMA Fest makes its way to television with a three-hour primetime special on July 19, hosted by Dierks Bentley, Elle King, and Yellowstone co-star Lainey Wilson. And another iconic music festival with deep roots in genre and fan connection will also get the retrospective treatment soon – a three-part docu series about Lollapalooza is in the works at Paramount+. 

Performance Worth Watching: Of the included interviews, Wynonna Judd is the probably the most refreshing presence here, and certainly the most candid. She shares a few anecdotes about Fan Fair and CMA Fest in the old days – “We didn’t have Facebook, we had face-to-face” – and stresses that, in the Judds’ 19 straight years of attendance, “We signed every single autograph. My mom was so good about that.” (The doc also works in a few beats of silence in tribute to Naomi Judd, who died in 2022.) Later, Wynonna describes her feelings in the moments before she took the stage at the last CMA’s to sing “Why Not Me” with Carly Pearce. “I’m the mom at the prom by the punchbowl, watchin’ the kids. I look over at Carly, and I go, ‘Oh my gosh, I am passing the baton.’ It was the strangest thing, for me to stand there as Wnyonna F-ing Judd, to hand off to the next generation of greatness. ‘It’s your turn.’” 

Memorable Dialogue: The artist testimonials in 50 Years of Fan Fair are full of reverence for what participating in the event means to them. “When I get on that stage, it’s somethin’ I hold dear,” Luke Bryan says. “It’s somethin’ that’s special to me because I never forget the years of what it took to get the headlining slot.” And Lainey Wilson says playing the fest is a goal. “I’ve been in Nashville for 11 years – I moved here in a camping trailer. So I was camper trailer girl, dreamin’ about bein’ part of CMA Fest, and dang it, I am a part of it now.”

Sex and Skin: No way, man.

Our Take: “I don’t believe in idol worship,” Dolly Parton says in CMA Fest: 50 Years of Fan Fair. “But I do believe that everybody needs a hero. And as a songwriter, I try to write for people. I try to write what they can’t say for themselves.” That sentiment seems to be at the heart of what CMA Fest aims for, since it still includes artist access and autograph signings even as the event itself has become supersized. And this doc is at its best when the artists interviewed describe how the festival continues to serve fan loyalty and the reciprocity that they share. “I’m so glad that I have the relationship with CMA Fest as a fan first,” Kelsea Ballerini says. “I filter every decision I make as an artist through my fans, and I just want to make sure that now that I’m on this side of it, I’m mindful of that. I make sure that the 30 seconds I have with someone counts.” And just to prove Ballerini’s point, 50 Years of Fan Fair also includes an interview with one of her superfans, who proudly displays an arm tattoo of Ballerini’s lyrics in her own handwriting.

It is a little bit strange that a music documentary doesn’t feature very much music. With all of the talent gathered here, Lainey Wilson is the only interviewee who actually grabs a guitar and sings a bit. But there are lots and lots of clips, and in that regard the vintage stuff is pretty great, even in a small sample size. And 50 Years of Fan Fair does a good job of highlighting its evolution alongside the changes in country music itself over time, so there’s connectivity between an old appearance by Minnie Pearl on a tiny Fain Fair stage and Keith Urban hopping on “Old Town Road” with Lil Nas X before a crowd of thousands.    

Our Call: STREAM IT, certainly if you are a regular CMA Fest attendee, but especially if you’re a country music fan, since CMA Fest: 50 Years of Fan Fair is filled with some of the genre’s biggest names describing how important the listeners are. Or as Keith Urban puts it, “Audiences are 50% of what we do. Without them, it would just be one long sound check.” 

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges