Viral star Oliver Anthony unleashed a firestorm recently when he made multiple accusations against performers at country festivals as part of a greater 15-minute video rant addressing some of the ills of the mainstream country music industry.
Much of what Oliver Anthony said in the video happened to be true. But his characterization of the amount of audio trickery occurring at country festivals was empirically false, and implicated basically the entire country music industry, creating significant amounts of collateral damage in the process. That is why we’ve seen scores of country performers coming forward to criticize Oliver Anthony and his comments.
The biggest problem with Anthony’s accusations is the broad brush he painted with. He didn’t say some or even most country performers use backing tracks. He said, “Everybody runs backing tracks.” When talking about “Autotune modulators” and “drum loops,” he said “they all do it.”
It was Parker McCollum who was personally implicated in the accusations since Anthony said the performer who played after him at the 2024 Carolina Country Fest employed these kinds of electronic enhancements, including “six Autotune modulators on a pedal board.”
Parker McCollum subsequently responded in a video, “100% fabricated lie. I have never ever ever one time have I used Autotune, or a drum loop, or anything fake of any kind on stage. Me and my guys are rippin’ it the real deal ever single night. There has never been one single part of our show, not one note that was not live, raw, and in the moment. 100% fabricated story.”
Many other performers also spoke up in Parker McCollum’s defense, including Koe Wetzel, Kolby Cooper, and Kassi Ashton, all of whom have toured with Parker McCollum, and would be in a position to verify if he used such enhancement tools. Corey Kent offered a more detailed assessment of the accusations, explaining the differences between mainstream country, independent country, and Texas country where Parker McCollum comes from.
“That guy is probably one of ten acts that I know that doesn’t run any kind of vocal tuning and doesn’t run any backing tracks,” said Cory Kent. “I would say, what you’re saying about 2024 country artists is pretty true. Most of them have vocal tuning because they’re not great live. Most of them have to have backing tracks because they’re not willing to hire the right people to play those parts or they’re trying to save a buck.”
Cory Kent continues, “Parker is the exact opposite of that. This guy lives in Texas, grew up in the Texas club scene. You get crucified out here if you do that stuff. If there’s one person that should never be accused of vocal tuning and backing tracks, it’s Parker … if you’re going to accuse somebody, drop their name specifically so there’s no misinformation.”
For the record, Oliver Anthony never named Parker McCollum specifically. He could have meant a different performer, and it could have even been a different festival he was recalling. It was Whiskey Riff who made Anthony’s quotes seem like a direct call out of McCollum when they posted an article about it.
Paul Cauthen also went on his own rant against Oliver Anthony over the matter, while Drayton Farley posted a photo of a mythical Autotune modulator pedal board to illustrate the absurdity of Oliver Anthony’s comments.
Some of Oliver Anthony’s fans have spoken up about how it feels like the rest of the country music industry is ganging up on him unfairly. But this is a great example of including a leaven of truth in an otherwise falsehood, creating the most dangerous information. Many of these country performers felt like they had no other choice but to speak up because their credibility and authenticity had been called into question. Meanwhile, Oliver Anthony has yet to clarify his comments, or offer an apology.
Oliver Anthony’s comments and the backlash that ensued illustrates the bifurcated nature of the country music scene between the independent and the mainstream. But as independent acts get booked more and more at mainstream festivals due to the rise in popularity of independent country, you’re starting to see these two approaches to live music intermingle more and more. It’s very likely Oliver Anthony did see someone at the Carolina Country Fest using Autotune and backing tracks. It’s just unlikely it was Parker McCollum.
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Every artist when they’re coming up goes through a period where they perform at clubs, and perhaps theaters before they’re allowed to attain headliner status, if they ever do. This even happened for Zach Bryan, despite his meteoric rise. Zach played pre-parties and midday slots at festivals up to 2022. Even Florida Georgia Line when their song “Cruise” was helping to launch the Bro-Country era were put on a club tour before graduating to amphitheaters and arenas.
Aside from a two night stint at the Ryman Auditorium, a show at Billy Bob’s Texas (the biggest honky tonk in the world)—and some club shows in Europe—Oliver Anthony went almost immediately to amphitheaters and arenas, along with headliner or direct support status at festivals, including the Carolina Country Fest he alluded to in his comments. This was all due to the meteoric nature of his song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which went #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“People don’t realize that a band can make $450,000 for standing on stage for an hour,” Oliver Anthony said during his rant. Sure, they can. But this is only the very top headliners, or the “direct support” performers at the biggest festivals. The vast majority of country performers in both the independent and mainstream realm make much, much less. And even that $450,000 figure is misleading when factoring in fees and expenses.
Most opening acts are making somewhere between $500-$1,500 at a country music festival, or maybe upwards of $3,000 if they’re lucky. But that money isn’t going directly into their pockets. If they have an agent, that agent gets a percentage. Then you have to pay for travel expenses such as gas and food. You have to pay the band and any crew. And often, opening bands don’t get lodging accommodations like the bigger bands might.
For many opening bands that often make up 20%-50% of a festival roster, they’re lucky to break even playing a festival. It’s the opportunity at exposure and the experience that they’re mostly getting paid in. Sometimes they don’t even get tickets to the festival except for the day they’re scheduled to play.
But this is only part of the story. If you’re a new or up-and-coming artist and you play an event such as SXSW or AmericanaFest, you’re only getting paid a marginal stipend. To attempt to get their name out there, many of these performers might play upwards of three or four performances in a day, and half a dozen to a dozen over the entirety of the event. These events are basically pay to play, but are considered worth it to try and help find a label, a manager, a booking agent, and to play for press and influencers.
It can be even worse for these up-and-coming acts if they don’t participate in these kinds of events at all. Many artists who simply look at the dollars and cents of the matter often never make it out of their local markets because the first few tours an artists plays often lose money. It’s very rare for a performer to be picked up as an opening act on a big tour, or to rocket immediately to headliners status like Oliver Anthony did.
Then you have your midday performers at festivals who are more of the journeyman or established artists, or artists who are creating a lot of buzz and can perhaps hopscotch the opening slots. Usually in this instance, they are making relatively good money, but nowhere near a $450,000 payout at a festival. They’re more likely making somewhere between $5,000-$50,000, and again, this is all before expenses. This is not money that goes directly into the artist’s pocket.
It’s never fair to name a performer’s booking rate publicly, any more than it’s healthy in a workplace for co-workers to know each other’s salaries. But as an example, after a dispute over a cancellation by Carly Pearce went public, it was exposed she got paid $75,000 for a headliner performance. This is a top woman in the mainstream, and she was getting paid well south of $450,000.
It’s only the very top headliners who regularly make $450,000. Some might make significantly more, up to over $1 million for a performance. But often these performers have a crew of 8-20 people to pay, on top of the on-stage musicians, multiple buses, and sometimes multiple semi-trucks of stageworks, props, and merch. Again, the agent gets a percentage before anyone else sees a dime. Everything has to be insured, from the employees, to the buses and equipment. Much of the equipment is rented.
By the time the headliner themselves receives a check, and their personal manager takes another 20% right off the top, they’re still probably walking away with a handsome payday. But it’s not $450,000 for an hour’s worth of work. And unless they’re Oliver Anthony, their handsome payday has been earned from hours, days, and often years spent playing for nobody in empty or half-empty clubs, showcasing in songwriter bars or at SXSW, and touring around in a sweaty Econoline vans, losing money to get their name out there, including big mainstream acts like Parker McCollum.
Meanwhile, many of the independent festivals who are paying these opening, midday, direct support, and headline performers are in a perilous position each year to pay for talent. If the weather doesn’t pan out, or if some headliner cools off between when the lineup is announced and the event happens, they could lose it all.
LiveNation, C3 Presents, and AEG have deep coffers and can lose money on an event for a year or two. Independent promoters can’t. They have to compete with the premiums that LiveNation and others can pay for performers. Festivals are expected to pay upwards of 125% to 200% of what a performer historically makes in a given market if they simply played a tour show according to the tracking of companies like Pollstar or Billboard’s Boxscore numbers.
All of this is the reasons there was almost universal condemnation of Oliver Anthony’s characterizations of country performers at festivals. The performers who sounded off on Oliver Anthony’s characterizations have lived through this harrowing experience of having to sleep on couches and play for nothing, hoping some day it will finally pay off, which for some performers it has, and for others it never did.
Oliver Anthony is in an incredibly unique position, and he could use his platform to inform the public, and expose the industry and many of the ills it contains, including the use of audio trickery and enhancements in both the live and recorded setting. But naming names as opposed to casting aspersions, and understanding the bifurcated independent/mainstream dichotomy in country music is essential to making those words stick, as opposed to creating collateral damage and chaos among what otherwise might be like-minded musicians, and brothers in arms in the fight to keep country music authentic.
