On a trip home to Golden, Texas, Kacey Musgraves spotted a town sign she had never noticed before. “It just says, ‘Golden, Texas: Somewhere in the middle of nowhere,'” she told NPR Music in March. She liked it so much that her new album is called “Middle of Nowhere.”
That album has her busy this month. On Wednesday, Nov. 18, Kacey performs at the CMA Awards on ABC, with Lainey Wilson as host. She is up for five awards, including Female Vocalist of the Year and Album of the Year.
Golden is a tiny East Texas town of about 200 people, seven miles from Mineola, where her dad, Craig, has run a print shop. Her mom, Karen, is an artist. Karen was the one who got the music started.
“My mother started taking me to guitar lessons and vocal lessons,” Kacey told the Savannah Morning News in 2014, as quoted by People. “She encouraged me to play instruments and eventually write.”
As a little girl, Kacey sang western swing on the Texas opry circuit in a fringed cowgirl outfit, Texas Monthly reported. She also sang yodeling duets with a friend, Alina Tatum. The two called themselves the Texas Two Bits.
Kacey later shared a home video of one of those early performances on her own YouTube channel.
Kacey sings “Rainbow Connection” at 9 years old
Somebody had to get that little girl to all those shows. That job went to her grandmother Barbara, whom Kacey calls Nana.
“She was my original booking agent whenever I was 10, 12 years old,” Kacey told NPR in 2019. “She was the one carting me around in the minivan, taking me around to wherever I would sing.”
When the Country Music Hall of Fame opened an exhibit on Kacey’s career that same year, she pointed Nana out to the crowd. “That lady right there was my first booking agent,” she said, according to an ABC report. Nana kept a press kit ready at all times for anybody who would listen.
In 2018, Nana got to see where all that driving led. She was Kacey’s date at the CMA Awards. “My grandma drove up from Texas, so she’ll be here,” Kacey said on the red carpet. That night, “Golden Hour” won Album of the Year.
Kacey and her Nana at the 2018 CMA Awards
Family has a way of turning up in Kacey’s music. In 2025, one of her grandpas got his own moment on a record.
That spring, Kacey went back to Lost Highway Records, the label that first signed her in 2011. Her first release there was “Lost Highway,” the Leon Payne song Hank Williams made famous in 1949. Payne reportedly wrote it while trying to hitchhike home to Alba, Texas. “Alba is the next town over to the teeny, tiny town I’m from, Golden,” Kacey told The Hollywood Reporter.
Her grandpa happened to be in town while she was making it. “He’s 88. He was visiting Nashville and I wanted his voice on this, so we convinced him to get in the vocal booth,” Kacey shared when the song came out.
Here is what he does. Press play, and the song opens with the crackle of an old radio. A radio announcer comes on and introduces Kacey, just like a DJ on an old country station. That announcer is her grandpa.
“He was always one of the biggest champions of my singing and learning traditional country music,” Kacey said. “I’ll have that forever, you know?”
You can hear him for yourself at the very start of Kacey’s official video for the song.
Hear Kacey’s grandpa at the start of “Lost Highway”
The video itself is simple, with a little armadillo standing in for Texas. Kacey takes the CMA stage Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. For Female Vocalist of the Year, she is up against Miranda Lambert, Ella Langley, Megan Moroney and Lainey Wilson.