The year-end marker in the country music calendar, the 2021 Jack Daniel’s New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash, has added a host of major names to the December 31 bill, including CMA Female Vocalist of the Year Carly Pearce, Lady A, and Sam Hunt.
The five-hour broadcast, hosted by radio and TV personality Bobby Bones and Entertainment Tonight’s Rachel Smith, will air live from 7-10 pm and then continues 10:30-12:30am CT on CBS. It will also be streamed live and available on demand on Paramount+. This is the first time that Nashville has anchored an entire New Year’s Eve national TV special.
Other names joining the party, at more than a dozen downtown locations in Nashville, are Ingrid Andress, Breland, King Calaway, Riley Green, Chris Janson, Jon Pardi, and Lainey Wilson. The event will include performances from Lower Broadway’s honky-tonks, bars and clubs. This part of the event is free and open to the public, with proof of a negative Covid-19 test within the previous 72 hours or of a Covid-19 vaccine.
Those additions join the previously announced bill of stars including Jason Aldean, Jimmie Allen, Kelsea Ballerini, Gabby Barrett, Dierks Bentley, Brooks & Dunn, Luke Bryan, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Elle King, Miranda Lambert, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Cole Swindell, and the Zac Brown Band.
The show will feature over 50 back-to-back performances, including collaborations between artists and special guests. It will cross multiple time zones and will include Nashville’s famed Music Note Drop, in which a fifteen-foot music note symbol makes a one-minute descent amid a firework display at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park.
Pearce, Lady A, Green, and Janson are among the artists due to play on the event’s second stage at Skydeck on Broadway, the extensive rooftop bar and entertainment venue at Assembly Food Hall, in what will be a ticketed show.