CLINT BLACK, ROBERT EARL KEEN, SCOTTY MCCREERY, AND CARLY PEARCE TRADE SONGS—AND STORIES—AT ALL FOR THE HALL DALLAS

L-R: Scotty McCreery, Clink Black, Robert Earl Keen, Carly Pearce

CLINT BLACK, ROBERT EARL KEEN, SCOTTY MCCREERY, AND CARLY PEARCE TRADE SONGS—AND STORIES—AT ALL FOR THE HALL DALLAS

Intimate gala, auction, and concert supports
Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum education programs

Clint Black set the tone for the main event of All for the Hall Dallas, presented by Winston & Strawn LLP, as he chatted amiably with the crowd at Gilley’s Dallas on Tuesday night (September 10) before performing his first song, his 1997 hit “Something That We Do.” He made it clear that this “guitar pull” concert, featuring singer-songwriters Black, Robert Earl Keen, Scotty McCreery, and Carly Pearce, would be an informal and intimate experience—just the performers, their guitars, and their observations on music and life. The four artists traded not only songs they had written, but also plenty of humor, throughout the seventy-five-minute show.

A running bit about the age difference between thirty-year-old McCreery—who told Black and Keen he grew up listening to them—and sixty-two-year-old Black kept the crowd laughing as Black teased McCreery about the title of one song the younger singer performed, “No Country for Old Men.”

“I can’t help but feel like that was directed at me,” Black quipped, then countered, “I’m gonna do a song that I wrote back before you were even alive.” With Pearce subbing in for Wynonna Judd, he played 1993’s “A Bad Goodbye.” (Black and Judd released the song in May of that year; McCreery was born that October.)

“Always say yes to things like this, ’cause you never know what’s gonna happen,” Black told the crowd after Pearce shared that she’d suggested doing the song—with herself as a duet partner—to Black before the show. Keen, seated between the two, told them it “sounded pretty good, even from here.”

For the audience at All for the Hall Dallas, those special moments also included Black encouraging the crowd to guess the rhymes in his 2015 song “Better and Worse”; Pearce refusing to play her final song until Black, who used his last song to cover Country Music Hall of Fame member Don Williams, sang his own classic, “Killin’ Time”; and Keen, despite the holidays still being more than two months away, jovially performing “Merry Christmas from the Family.”

Keen announced his retirement from performing in 2022 but has been playing live plenty this year. That turnabout is no surprise to fellow performer Elizabeth Cook, Keen told the audience, who dubbed his retirement party his “retirement (ha-ha) party.” Keen now refers to his 1994 song “I’m Comin’ Home,” one of his song choices for All for the Hall Dallas, as his “retirement (ha-ha) song.”

“Music is one of our greatest communication devices. Music helps us understand each other, understand our culture, and understand ourselves,” Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum CEO Kyle Young told the audience before the four performers took the stage. It was a theme McCreery and Pearce, in particular, returned to throughout the night, whether sharing story songs about a failed relationship (Pearce’s “What He Didn’t Do”) or those inspired by his grandparents’ fifty-plus-year marriage (McCreery’s “Five More Minutes”).

“Scotty and I have very different lives,” Pearce humorously observed as McCreery followed her vengeful “Truck on Fire” with his lovestruck “It Matters to Her.” Throughout the evening, both artists admitted their excitement at sharing the stage with such a talented group of performers—particularly McCreery, who was playing his first All for the Hall concert.

“Anytime you get to do country music for a good cause, I’ll come runnin’,” he said.

Prior to the night’s live auction and main performance, high school senior Elena Vo performed an original song, “What You Mean to Me,” which she wrote in the Words & Music program. The museum’s flagship education program, Words & Music pairs students with a professional songwriter for an interactive songwriting workshop. Vo and her classmates at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center, a high school in the Dallas Independent School District, have participated in Words & Music for two years in teacher Devlin DeCutler’s modern band class.

Monday night (September 9), All for the Hall Dallas began with a patron party at the home of the event’s honorary co-chairs, Anne and Steve Stodghill. Country trio Midland performed several of their hits and shared songs from their next album, Barely Blue, due out September 20.

The All for the Hall series of fundraising concerts began in 2005, when Country Music Hall of Fame member Vince Gill suggested that country music artists donate the proceeds from one annual performance to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Since then, All for the Hall concerts have raised nearly $8 million in support of the museum’s educational initiatives, which directly served more than 230,000 people in 2023 through both in-person and virtual programs.