Nashville, Tennessee, might be 13,000 kilometres away from mama and home, and inaccessible by pick-up truck or train, but that never had a score of New Zealand country music artists crying in their beer or giving up on their dream of singing on the Grand Ole Opry radio show.

Maria Dallas and producer Felton Jarvis in RCA's studios in Nashville, Tennessee, 1967

From the nation’s biggest country stars of the 1960s, John Grenell, Maria Dallas, and The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band, to the 2020s success stories of Camille French and Tami Neilson, New Zealanders have proven they are worthy of a turn on country’s spiritual home.

A steady stream of New Zealand artists visiting the Opry in the 1970s was set in motion by US country pioneer and actor Tex Ritter when he extended an invitation to New Zealand pioneer Rusty Greaves. In the 1980s, the household names of That’s Country had a generous benefactor in former teen idol George Hamilton IV. Both Americans had been Grand Ole Opry members since the 1960s.

The Grand Ole Opry started life as the WSM Barn Dance on Saturday 28 November, 1925. Original announcer George D. Hay gave the show its famous moniker on Saturday 10 December, 1927, when it followed a classical music programme: “For the past hour, we have been listening to music largely from Grand Opera,” he said, “but from now on, we will present the Grand Ole Opry.”

The Opry outgrew several venues before settling in at the Ryman Auditorium in June 1943. The Ryman became known as “the Mother Church of Country Music”, but by 1974 it had fallen into disrepair and weekly crowds had well outgrown its 2,362-seat capacity. The show moved to the 4,000-seat, air-conditioned Grand Ole Opry House on Saturday, 16 March, 1974. A six-foot circle cut from the Ryman stage was installed centre stage at its new home.

Independent Grand Ole Opry historian Byron Fay writes Fayfare’s Opry Blog and has access to many Grand Ole Opry log sheets. He has been instrumental in pinpointing dates when New Zealanders appeared on the show. But often when an artist was a walk-in guest on another act’s spot – as was the case for the New Zealanders who sang there in the 80s and early 90s – their name would not be noted.

“The log sheets only cover the Saturday night Grand Ole Opry shows, which was considered the actual Opry show,” Fay told AudioCulture. “There were also Friday night Opry shows, and while they were broadcast on WSM, the Friday show was not considered the prime show and many of the Opry’s members did not appear. It was not until the late 1970s that the Friday shows were considered on the same level as Saturday night.” Nowadays, depending on the time of the year, the show is broadcast between two and five nights a week.

So, as the Grand Ole Opry leads up to its 100th birthday in November 2025, AudioCulture presents the history of New Zealanders who made it all the way to the holy grail of country music. Best efforts have been made to ensure the record is complete, but if there are omissions, please get in touch.

The Trailblazers

After nine years in the US and Canada, the father of Australasian country music Tex Morton returned to Australia around February 1959. He brought with him the Grand Ole Opry Tour headlined by the “King of Country Music” Roy Acuff and The Smoky Mountain Boys, and featuring the Wilburn Brothers, Melba Montgomery and June Webb. Opening in Sydney, the tour had stops in Melbourne and Adelaide.

In The Australian Women’s Weekly of 11 March 1959, Morton boasted that he had previously appeared on the Grand Ole Opry. However, in the 2023 biography Tex Morton, author Andrew K. Smith revealed there was no evidence to back up the claim. In a letter to the author circa 1990, Bob Pinson – record collector, historian, and longtime Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum staffer – wrote that he had searched the Opry archives but could find no mention of Morton. The singer had, however, recorded seven sides for Columbia at Castle Recording Studios in Nashville in 1953.

Joe Brown and John Hore in the USA, 1966. The interviewer at right is Bob Ferris, of Hollywood's KNX.CBS. - Gisborne Photo News

Enjoying immense success as John Hore at home, John Grenell adopted the stage name John Denver for his trip to the United States in October 1966; Denver being his middle name. As he is absent from the Grand Ole Opry log sheets, Grenell’s performance during the Country Music Disc Jockey Convention in Nashville is most likely to have been on the WSM/Grand Ole Opry-affiliated International Show.

The Country Music Disc Jockey Association was founded at the Grand Ole Opry birthday celebration in 1953. Five years later the association conceived the Country Music Association that instigated annual banquets during the Opry birthday, and a Country Music Hall of Fame. By 1967, the banquets had become so popular that the press began referring to the Opry birthday as CMA Week.

To dissuade fans who wanted to catch a glimpse of their favourite country stars from attending the industry-only DJ convention, WSM and the CMA created Fan Fair in 1972. It was initially held in April but, from its second year onwards, moved to June. The CMA renamed the event the CMA Music Festival in 2004, and then CMA Fest in 2018.

The first New Zealander to appear on the log sheets as a bona fide artist on the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast was Maria Dallas, who featured during Ernest Tubb’s segment on Saturday 4 March, 1967. “You’ve never seen such confusion in your life,” she told the Sunday News of the experience. “People are rehearsing all over the place, in a very tiny room. Suddenly someone yells, ‘You’re on,’ and that’s it.”

The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band feature in Bill Monroe’s spot in the programme for the Grand Ole Opry, June 12, 1971

Four years later, The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band became the only self-contained New Zealand unit to appear on the Opry, when they were part of Bill Monroe’s 10pm slot on Saturday 12 June, 1971. They were also due to appear on his earlier 7pm segment but were still on the long drive south-west from Pennsylvania.

Monroe introduced the band to the stage, and they kicked off with the Slim Dusty-penned ‘Big Beggin’ Fool’. They followed that with fiddle player Colleen Trenwith’s pick-up into the tearjerker ‘How Lonely Can You Get’, and when bass guitarist Miles Reay hit a high A in his vocal harmony, it brought the house down.

Banjo player Paul Trenwith met his hero Earl Scruggs backstage and, despite being tongue-tied, managed a hello, while Colleen Trenwith and guitarist Alan Rhodes were given an audience with Roy Acuff in his dressing-room. “I wish I'd gone,” Paul Trenwith told AudioCulture. “I was probably the only one who had Roy Acuff albums!”

The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band’s United States visit was arranged with American folklorist and musician Mike Seeger and his wife Alice Gerrard, who had met the band previously in New Zealand. Their Opry appearance preceded a week at Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Festival in Bean Blossom, Indiana, so Monroe was pleased to accommodate the band on his slot to promote the festival.

Paul Trenwith said the band never realised at the time the high esteem in which US country fans held the Grand Ole Opry. “I knew a bit about it,” he said. “[Mandolinist] Graham Lovejoy also knew a fair bit about it, but I’m convinced the HCBB as a whole never appreciated how important our appearance was. Even now, when I mention it to American musicians, they are amazed and attribute me with great importance. Here in New Zealand, I think it’s considered another country music gig.”

Going International

In the 1970s, several New Zealand acts in various combinations became regular participants in the International Show during CMA Week every October. Grand Ole Opry expert Byron Fay said although these shows were not Opry-sponsored, they did use the full-on WSM/Grand Ole Opry-emblazoned microphone stands and backdrop when they took place at the Opry House.

While on the New Zealand leg of a 1972 CMA/UNICEF tour to aid the children of Bangladesh, Tex Ritter invited Rusty Greaves to attend CMA Week later that year. Greaves received multiple standing ovations for ‘She Taught Me To Yodel’, not to mention praise from Ritter. “I have travelled all over this world, but this little guy from New Zealand is the ace of all yodellers I have ever heard,” Ritter said.

Eddie Low on the Grand Ole Opry stage, 1973, from his 1976 album Eddie Low in USA and Canada (Joe Brown). In the liner notes Tex Ritter is quoted as saying, “He makes Tom Jones look like a sharecropper.”

The following year, Eddie Low was a sensation when he was there with Maria Dallas and guitarist Gray Bartlett. In his mid-70s radio documentary The Eddie Low Story, Dunedin broadcaster and DJ Neil Collins mentioned Low appearing on the International Show as well as the Grand Ole Opry show.

“Together with his management, I travelled with Eddie to the United States in October 1973,” Collins wrote on the rear of Low’s 1976 LP In USA And Canada. “The partially blind but brilliant Māori entertainer brought the house down. I stood proudly, along with some 3000 hardcore music businesspeople, as they cheered him back to centre stage for the show’s only encore.”

The radio documentary featured Low’s performance from a subsequent Grand Ole Opry spot. As Byron Fay couldn’t find the appearance in the Opry logs, it could be that this was a walk-in on a programmed spot for one of the many Nashville friends Low was rapidly making.

Low sang the often-covered ‘Just Out Of Reach’ and received an incredible ovation. “Eddie, that means they want to hear some more,” the host says. “Come back out here. What else have you got for us?” His rendition of the country standard ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’ was just as well received. Never short of a quote, Tex Ritter can be heard on the documentary giving his verdict: “Eddie Low was rather a sensation here today, he was sensational. I thought he was just dynamic. He makes Tom Jones look like a sharecropper.”

Low would appear once more on the Grand Ole Opry, on the broadcast logged on Saturday 17 June, 1978. He appeared at 7pm with host Del Reeves, Justin Tubb, and The Boys From Indiana on the first show, then at 10pm with host Roy Drusky on the second.

Born in Wyndham and raised in Seaward Downs and Invercargill, Johnny McCall was playing in bands in Auckland by the 1970s. He appeared on the International Show in Nashville during CMA Week in 1974. - McCall family collection

In 1974, Rusty Greaves and Gray Bartlett returned for the International Show, this time with little-known Southland-raised singer Johnny McCall. On Saturday October 26, 1974, Greaves made his Grand Ole Opry broadcast debut, singing his staple ‘She Taught Me To Yodel’ on the first show, and ‘Maple On The Hill’ on the second. In doing so he became the first Kiwi to perform in the sacred circle at the new Grand Ole Opry House.

Back in New Zealand, Gray Bartlett spoke to the Auckland Star. He believed the New Zealand media should take a leaf out of their Dutch and Japanese counterparts’ books and attend the 1975 event: the Grand Ole Opry’s 50th birthday. “We [Bartlett, Greaves and McCall] went down well,” Bartlett was quoted. “We got tremendous publicity for New Zealand. People in America are looking for New Zealand shows. We send people to cover football matches, and horse races and yacht races. This is something really important, this is something with great potential for publicising New Zealand and its entertainers.”

Nearly 10 years later, the Grand Ole Opry-backed Nashville Network did buy a New Zealand show, That’s Country, which went out to a potential viewing audience of 30 million Americans. John McCall appeared on an early series of That’s Country where he met Sydney pedal steel guitarist Kenny Kitching and then moved his band to Sydney. The John McCall Band recruited Kitching and released the album Sundown in 1982. McCall passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2003.

Auckland violinist Eric Struckett and 19-year-old Kevin Greaves performing the George Jones hit 'White Lightning’ at the CMA Week International Show in 1975. Rusty Greaves is behind Kevin. - Greaves family collection

For the CMA Week International Show during the Grand Ole Opry’s 50th birthday celebrations in October 1975, Rusty Greaves made it a family affair, bringing along his third son, Kevin, and second daughter, Michelle. A father of 14, Greaves also enlisted Auckland violinist Eric Struckett, who had been part of The Astor Barnyard Boys when they released ‘Ruby Red Lips’ b/w ‘Chicken Reel’ on the Tanza label in 1950.

Only eight years old at the time, Michelle Lightband (née Greaves) remembers little of the experience other than the warmth extended to the Kiwis by the Nashville acts. “Everyone thought I was so cute,” she said. “We went back to an after party at the hotel, not far from the venue. Charley Pride scooped me up and was introducing me to everyone as ‘Michelle all the way from New Zealand.’ I was made to feel very special when I was there.”

Although various festival programmes and newspaper and magazine articles through the years have exaggerated the number of times Rusty Greaves appeared on the Opry, Lightband reckoned it was likely four. On that fourth occasion, in 1978, Greaves, his wife, Gladys, and fifth son, Peter, were made honorary citizens of Metropolitan Nashville by then-Mayor Richard Fulton for Greaves’ work as an ambassador for New Zealand and his dedication to country music.

Also returning for the 50th anniversary week, nine years after he had appeared on his first International Show, was John Grenell. He had flown out of New Zealand a day after the 7am birth of an Appaloosa filly on his Double D stud farm at Whitecliffs, in the Malvern Hills.

By George, That’s Country!

A slew of New Zealand artists in the 1980s and early 1990s owed their performance on the Grand Ole Opry show to the generosity of George Hamilton IV, the “International Ambassador of Country Music”. Hamilton, whose ‘Abilene’ spent four weeks at No.1 on Billboard’s country singles chart in 1963, was the American guest on the first episode of TVNZ’s That’s Country in 1980.

Hamilton wrote of the experience in the foreword to John Berry’s Television New Zealand Country Music: “During the next few days I met for the first time some very talented folks I have now come to respect and admire very much, like John Hore (now John Grenell), Red McKelvie, Suzanne Prentice – artists I had heard of but had never actually seen perform. I was in for quite a surprise! These singers and musicians were equal to (and I thought in some cases better than) many of my contemporaries in Nashville.”

The circumstances leading to Suzanne Prentice’s debut on the Grand Ole Opry in 1979 have been lost to time, but two further appearances in the 1980s were as a walk-in guest on George Hamilton IV’s slot. “I’d worked with George a lot, both in New Zealand and Canada, and in the States,” Prentice told AudioCulture. “So, George and I had a great sort of relationship for many years, and he set it up for me to appear on there, which was just great. He was very much the Southern gentleman. George was great for New Zealand country music, he really was.”

Most likely on the 1979 occasion, Prentice sang ‘I’m Little But I’m Loud’ and was surprised to be joined on stage by the song’s co-writer Little Jimmy Dickens, wearing his trademark Nudie suit and 10-gallon hat.

“And I wore a dress that my mother made,” Prentice said. “Getting up there with all these bloody stars and there I come, the wee kid from Invercargill, with a little red-and-white gingham frock with a frill round the bottom. But, you know, when you go on stage and you’re short like I am, then you sing something like ‘I’m Little But I’m Loud’, the Americans especially love that sort of thing.

“You go in there and it’s quite a daunting place, when you consider its history and everybody who’s there, but it was amazing; the warmth that you felt when you were there, and everybody treated you so well. I mean, all of the other acts that were on the stage, they were just lovely.”

Patsy Riggir and US country music pioneer Ernest Tubb at the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, Tennesse, in the early 1980s

Patsy Riggir met George Hamilton IV when they were both part of the NZ Gold Guitar Road Show put together by Ross and Jenny Blackadder at the beginning of the 1980s. “George Hamilton IV was out here doing some filming for That’s Country, and so Jenny asked him if he’d like to join the tour of the South Island,” Riggir said. “He was thrilled to bits. And, so, I got to know George quite well.”

In 1981, a Foxton-based travel agent tapped Riggir and Radio New Zealand broadcaster Wayne Mowat to lead a 90-strong Fan Fair package tour that would take in Hawaii, San Francisco, Colorado, Las Vegas and Nashville, where Riggir would perform at Fan Fair. Hamilton met them in Music City and invited Riggir to sing on his Grand Ole Opry set. When the travel agent repeated the trip the following year, Hamilton again had Riggir join him on the Opry.

“Those two Opry appearances were pretty jolly special,” Riggir reminisced. “George was such a gentleman. It was tremendous. They were all so very friendly, so welcoming. I must admit, I was so nervous and so stressed that part of it went past like in a dream, and I thought, if I could only do it again, I’d be able to absorb a lot more than what I did.”

At Napier's Municipal Theatre in 1983, country music promoter Jim Toner presents a gift to George Hamilton IV during a concert. Performers to the right of Hamilton are Belinda Burgiss, Bert Hura, Susane Thomson, Glen Moffatt and Alan Payne. - Glen Moffatt collection

Napier City Country Music Club founder and bandleader Jim Toner encountered George Hamilton IV when the American was part of a concert at the city’s Municipal Theatre. Hamilton ended up at the Toners’ Georges Drive home where phone numbers were exchanged.

Around September 1983, Toner’s second daughter, Celine Toner, travelled with her fiancé Barry Green to the United States. The fare was part of a prize Celine had won with her sister Lynne the previous year, when they took out the 1982 Country Quest in Auckland. They decided to give George Hamilton IV a ring at his North Carolina home.

“He said, ‘Oh, I’m going to be in Nashville on such-and-such a date,’” Celine Toner said. “And we just happened to be there at the same time and thought, ‘Oh, great, we’ll catch up.’ He said, ‘Would you like to sing on my show?’ We were totally unprepared, but it was great.”

Celine Toner at the Grand Ole Opry with George Hamilton IV, 1984

Toner sang ‘Would You Lay With Me (In A Field Of Stone)’, a 1970s hit for one of her idols, Tanya Tucker. She had no chord charts, but Hamilton called his band together, made introductions, and they mapped the song out. “I was just so nervous; the worst I’ve ever been,” Toner said. “We were on there with Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers, Hank Snow, Jeannie C. Reilly. It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done in my career.”

After Hamilton spent the day with Toner and Green, he gave them a couple of packets of Goo-Goo Cluster candy bars (a longtime Opry sponsor) and drove them back to their hotel. An hour into his trip home to North Carolina, he noticed his guests had left the Goo-Goo Clusters in his car and he turned around and took the chocolate-covered bars back to the holidaying Kiwis.

Hamilton’s son, George Hamilton V, was in the car on that occasion and told AudioCulture it was a perfect example of his father’s inclusive nature. “George IV was one of a kind,” he said. “He always went out of his way to help international country music folks when they came to Nashville, and he loved having them on the Opry and having the chance to introduce international artists to Nashville and America.He also loved taking them on a personal sightseeing tour of Nashville and introducing them to Nashville industry folks.”

Gray Bartlett, George Hamilton IV and Brendan Dugan backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, in the early 1980s.

Brendan Dugan and Gray Bartlett were performing at the International Country and Western Association show in Fort Worth, Texas, on the Fourth of July 1984, when George Hamilton IV phoned to invite them to perform during his Grand Ole Opry spot the following night.

They drove the 700-odd miles (more than 1,100 kilometres) during the night, slept a few hours and took him up on the offer. “He gave us half his appearance,” Dugan remembered. “So, there were four songs. George did two songs, Gray did one, I did one – that’s how it came around. It was quite an amazing thing. George Hamilton IV loved the Kiwis. In lots of ways, he took it on that he was gonna look after the New Zealanders.”

Napier singer Jon Fletcher, just moments after his 1992 appearance on the Grand Ole Opry. “It gives you goosebumps and those whāwhā feelings,” he said. - Jon Fletcher collection

Part of Napier singer Jon Fletcher’s prize for winning the 1991 NZ Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year title was a trip to the following year’s Fan Fair in Nashville. Fletcher’s mentor Jim Toner was straight on the phone to George Hamilton IV and secured Fletcher a walk-in song on the Opry broadcast.

“Yeah, it’s all about whanaungatanga and relationships that enabled that to happen,” Fletcher said. “It was just mind-blowing for this little Māori boy – me singing up there. I think Eddie Low had been there first, but I think I was the next Māori after him who performed on the Grand Ole Opry.”

Fletcher turned up with typical country music club chord charts for the Tom Jones B-side ‘A Daughter’s Question’ only to be told by the musicians that they couldn’t read them. Accustomed to the Nashville number system, the musicians transcribed the song in the time it took Fletcher to sing it.

“Charts are written in the green room, and they just do it. They’re all session musos of course, so they’re guns. George was there as well, making sure that everything was going smoothly and holding my hand. He was very gracious. He said he remembered me and Hawke’s Bay. He was a true gentleman.”

Fletcher’s performance was on Saturday June 13, 1992. “It was at the new Opry House, but they’ve got a piece of the old Ryman Auditorium in that stage, so you stand on that old bit [the circle], and it does give you goosebumps and those whāwhā feelings when you’re performing on it.”

A New Age

Whangārei-born Keith Urban was well and truly an Australian by the time of his Friday August 15, 1997, Grand Ole Opry debut with his band The Ranch, backing Slim Dusty. He made his solo debut on Friday September 29, 2000, and became the only New Zealand-born member of the Opry, with his induction taking place on Saturday April 21, 2012.

The Opry management bestow membership based on critical and commercial success, respect for the history of country music and commitment to appear with some regularity on the programme. Opry members have permission to perform or even host any show they wish.

Initially moving to Australia in 1991 to tour with her big sister Jenny Morris, Shanley Del made a name for herself in the Australian county scene in the 1990s and was part of an Australia/Canada Showcase at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds at Fan Fair just days before appearing on the Grand Ole Opry on Friday June 19, 1998.

At the fairgrounds gig, Del had shared a caravan with The Lynns – Loretta Lynn’s twin daughters Peggy and Patsy. “I had been lying on the grass the day before and had got these things called chiggers in my skin,” Del said. “They’re like grass mites and they’re really itchy. So, I was in the caravan, scratching away at these chigger bites, and the girls said, ‘You got chigger bites?’ They said put clear nail polish on it and that suffocates them, and they stop itching.”

Shanley Del with Skeeter Davis, just prior to going on stage at the Grand Old Opry, Nashville, 1998. "I was really nervous and Ms Davis was very kind," says Del. 

A few nights later, Shanley Del was on the Opry with Skeeter Davis and Loretta Lynn herself. When she told the ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ she’d met her daughters and that they had told her the remedy for chigger bites was clear nail varnish, Lynn responded, “That don’t work! Ain’t nothin’ work for them lil varmints!”

Waiting for her turn in the circle, a nervous Del was buoyed up by Skeeter Davis, who had been suspended from the Opry for more than a year in the 1970s for dedicating a gospel song to a group of church workers who had been arrested for evangelising at a mall. “She put her arm around me and said, ‘You know, you’re gonna be fine,’” Del said. “I was really nervous, and Ms Davis was very kind.”

Kylie Harris backstage with Charley Pride, Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, 2001. - Kylie Harris Collection

Resident in Nashville since 1997, Kylie Harris had already appeared on the Grand Ole Opry twice as backing singer/guitarist for both Anita Cochran and Chalee Tennison before making her solo debut as a walk-in on Charley Pride’s slot on Friday September 7, 2001. She had attended Opry broadcasts many times, mostly at the behest of Pride, who she opened for in New Zealand and Australia in 1997.

“Both experiences were incredible [with Cochran and Tennison], but nothing could compare to performing there in 2001, backed by Charley Pride’s band,” Harris said. “It was my first solo performance, and I had so many friends in the audience. Bouquets of flowers in my dressing room, and many well-wishes before my big moment.”

Invited to perform on the Opry again in 2004, Harris organised for her parents to fly to Nashville for the occasion, tucking a card under the tree in New Zealand the preceding Christmas that revealed they’d be watching her perform on the Opry stage. “The joy I felt watching my father’s tears as he read the card is something I’ll never forget,” she said.

“When the big day finally arrived, I had a rehearsal with the Opry band and took photos in the circle with my parents. It remains one of my favourite photos, every country singer’s dream. Then came performance time. My mum texted me from the audience to say she’d just broken her glasses, but she was holding them up to her face to still see me! When I got on stage, I couldn’t resist sharing her mishap with the audience. I also remember struggling to make my mouth sing the words of Emmylou Harris’s ‘One Of These Days’ because I was smiling so hard.

“It was definitely one of my most treasured opportunities to play there, twice,” Harris said. “And I do owe that opportunity to Charley Pride’s longtime manager John Daines. He knew it was on my dreams list, and eventually he made it happen!”

A groundswell of Nashville industry opinion led to The French Family Band – Gisborne wahine Camille Te Nahu, her Australian husband Stuie French and their younger son Sonny – making their Grand Ole Opry debut on Wednesday March 29, 2023. Among their most vocal supporters were Connie Smith, a member of the Opry since 1965, and her husband Marty Stuart, a member since 1992.

The legendary couple were avid followers of the family’s weekly livestreamed concerts from their Hendersonville home during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Connie and Marty were huge advocates for us doing that [the Opry],” Te Nahu said. “Connie said, ‘I’ve never asked for any favours or anything in my time of being a member of the Grand Ole Opry, but I’m gonna be telling them that they need to be having you guys,’ as did Marty.”

When the city reopened, Opry vice-president and executive producer Dan Rogers went to see the band and approved an appearance. The news was sprung on them during an Opry broadcast that included Brothers Of The Heart, a side-project band that at times included Stuie French on guitar.

“We all went to watch them, and in the middle of their set, they stunned us,” Te Nahu said. “They said, ‘Stuie’s out of The French Family Band, and they’re all here.’ We all stood up, and they said, ‘Well, on behalf of the Grand Ole Opry, we’d like to invite you to make your debut this spring.’ We just died on the spot.”

 

Danny's Song - The French Family Band at the Grand Ole Opry, 23 June 2023.

A month later, The French Family Band had their own reserved and labelled car park and were in the circle on the Opry stage. “On the way home, we were on such a high, like, just buzzing, like, friggin’ done the Opry! Next minute, we hear a siren. We got pulled over for the first ever time because one of our tail-lights were out. ‘Well, we did just play at the Grand Ole Opry!’” The French Family Band performed there a further three times in 2023 and once in 2024.

New Zealand-based Canadian chanteuse Tami Neilson was such a hit at the Patsy Cline: Walkin’ After Midnight TV special taping at the Ryman Auditorium in April 2024 that she was invited to make her Grand Ole Opry debut five months later.

“I was second batter up and shaking so hard I had to put both my hands on the microphone to steady them as I sang ‘Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray’,” Neilson wrote on Facebook. “As I sang the last note, the audience stood to their feet while tears rolled down my cheeks, and unbeknownst to me, the Opry folks were in that audience. The next day, my manager got a phone call inviting me to have my Opry debut.”

 

Tami Neilson performs ‘Borrow My Boots’ with Opry member Ashley McBryde, Grace Bowers and Shelly Fairchild, during Neilson’s Opry debut, September 2024. Neilson, McBryde and Fairchild wrote the song in an hour during a Zoom session between Nashville and New Zealand.

When Neilson took to the stage at the Grand Ole Opry House on Tuesday September 17, 2024, she again performed ‘Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray’. “I chose to honour Patsy Cline my first time singing in that sacred circle, because it is this song that led me to this stage. Patsy famously took fellow girl singers under her wing, and I feel like she did it once again for me.”

Neilson harkened back to when, as a 16-year-old, she and the Neilson family band were living at the KOA campground just three miles from the Opry House, performing morning shows on the General Jackson showboat at the Opryland theme park.

“When we finally got to visit the Opry – I remember Little Jimmy Dickens and Porter Wagoner in sparkling Nudie suits, the square dancers twirling in gingham skirts, the electricity and magic of watching a live radio broadcast – I sat in the audience, dreaming of standing in that sacred circle, singing on that beloved stage.” Returning to the Opry on Friday, April 18, 2025, she sang her own song, ‘Cry Over You’.

Close Enough For Country

Nobody listening might have heard their names, but Otago singer/songwriter Jeff Rea and former Suburban Reptiles, Swingers and Midnight Oil bass guitarist Bones Hillman both made multiple appearances on the Grand Ole Opry as sidemen for prominent American singers.

During the first half of the 1990s, Jeff Rea graced the Opry stage many times as acoustic guitarist and backing singer in chart-topping Texan Gary Morris’s band, after the two had met when Morris was the American guest on That’s Country in 1983.

The most unlikely of New Zealanders to be heard on the Grand Ole Opry, Bones Hillman’s musical pedigree did not point towards a stint in country music, but he played upright bass in the band of Elizabeth Cook, once described in The New York Times as an “idiosyncratic traditionalist”.

Bones Hillman performing in Nashville, Tennessee, October 2011. - John Mason II / CC BY-SA 3.0

Hillman appeared on the Opry with Cook at least 10 times from 2009 until around 2014, when the Nashville session grind turned music into a job, and he moved away. At the time of his passing in November 2020, Cook wrote on her Facebook page: “Always funny. Always swag. 1000% grade-A rock star. Whether playing LA, Letterman or a bluegrass festival in the middle of nowhere, he had light. He was relentlessly and wickedly funny and he could get away with murder.

“I never quite understood how he wound up playing bass in my band. He’d joined the global rock star group Midnight Oil in 1987. Later, on hiatus, he landed in East Nashville from Australia. He’d decided he wanted to play upright bass with a country artist. I was the lucky winner.”

Moving to the United States in the 2010s, Auckland duo Tattletale Saints have played the Opry as backing musicians for other artists. Vanessa McGowan appeared a handful of times as bass guitarist, backing vocalist and musical director for singer/songwriter Brandy Clark, while guitarist Cy Winstanley appeared three times with two different artists – Aubrie Sellers, daughter of Jason Sellers and Lee Ann Womack, and Ashley Campbell, daughter of country music royalty Glen Campbell.

The Bads were invited to take part in Marty Stuart’s Late Night Jam (not a Grand Ole Opry gig) at the Ryman Auditorium during the CMA Music Festival in June 2015. “We got the gig through Phil Clarke, who is a Kiwi,” Dianne Swann said. “He was Marty’s tour manager. He played our albums on the tour bus and Marty thought we sounded interesting.”

With the traditional Opry venues increasingly becoming Nashville tour stops for mainstream acts in the last decade or so, Lorde kicked off her US Solar Power Tour at the Opry House in 2022, and Crowded House played the Ryman, with Tami Neilson as a support, on their Dreamers Are Waiting Tour in 2023.

As for the Grand Ole Opry show itself, Camille French and family, and Tami Neilson appear best placed to return to the circle, but who will be the next New Zealander to accomplish the feat? When will that be? Whoever and when, one thing’s for certain; to paraphrase Paul Trenwith of The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band, it’s not just another country gig.